The Legbar Thread!

[normanack]

I would love to meet people and bring hatching eggs.  My wife gives me a hard time because almost every major trip we take involves stopping to see someone with Cream Legbars.  This trip will be a tight schedual which is the only reason I didn't suggested some meet-ups myself a few months ago.  :/

I will be flying from Texas to the Bay area after work on Thurday getting into my cousin's home at about 11:30 PM that night.  Then we have to be up and to the starting line an hour from his home by 6:30 the next morning We rotating the baton through our 6 person team all day on Friday, through the night, and then all day Saturday.  Our predicted finish time is about 5:00 PM on Saturday and I fly back to Texas Early on Sunday morning.   At least I will get to see my team.  Some of my cousins (who are spread out from Sacramento to San Jose) I haven't seen in about 2 years.  My parent are travling out from Dallas to drive the team van and I have a friend from Tulsa that will be one of our team volunteers too. 

Curtis, don't read this.

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Wouldn't it be cool if someone met Curtis at the finish line with some eggs?
Only half-kidding. ;-)

 

[lonnyandrinda]

Curtis, don't read this.
Wouldn't it be cool if someone met Curtis at the finish line with some eggs?
Only half-kidding. ;-)

 

[Runawaylobster]

I have a legbar question..... I purchased some eggs from someone about 100 miles from me, and drove there to pick them up so that the post office would not hurt them.

of the dozen eggs i hatched three boys, and two girls. One of the girls is no more, due to a predator, but i still have the other girl. BUT and this is the but, she looks altogether like she is part ameraucana, ie: she grew muffs..

the eggs were from greenfire stock but who knows if there was some other thing going on... so the question is, is is a practice that folks have crossed in ameraucanas to try to improve egg color, or does this represent some kind of inbuilt aberration ...

my knowledge on legbars is very poor so i need a little assistance. since this is my only remaining female should i cross her back to the boys i hatched to essentilally try to get rid of the ameraucana influence??

 

[Papa Brooder]

I have a legbar question..... I purchased some eggs from someone about 100 miles from me, and drove there to pick them up so that the post office would not hurt them.

of the dozen eggs i hatched three boys, and two girls. One of the girls is no more, due to a predator, but i still have the other girl. BUT and this is the but, she looks altogether like she is part ameraucana, ie: she grew muffs..

the eggs were from greenfire stock but who knows if there was some other thing going on... so the question is, is is a practice that folks have crossed in ameraucanas to try to improve egg color, or does this represent some kind of inbuilt aberration ...

my knowledge on legbars is very poor so i need a little assistance. since this is my only remaining female should i cross her back to the boys i hatched to essentilally try to get rid of the ameraucana influence??

Hey there, personally, if she hatched out with muffs, I would let the person you bought eggs from know. Perhaps it wasn't actually a CL egg but eggs got mixed up and it was from one their project pens? perhaps a rogue roo was involved? but, no harm in asking and perhaps you could get some more eggs. do you have a picture of her?

 

[Papa Brooder]

Papa Brooder,

Good question.

Yes it is possibly, but Normanack and you are the only ones that have claimed to see this so far. The blue egg gene is dominant just like the cresting gene is so in the same way you could get a non-crested hen from a pair that both have cresting gene [Cr] and one non-cresting gene [cr], [Cr/cr] x [Cr/cr] = [cr/cr] you could also end up with pairs that are split for the blue egg gene [O] and the lack of the blue egg gene [o], to producing white egg offspring, [O/o] x [O/o] = [o/o]

http://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/2012/07/08/gms2-breeding-for-blue-eggs/

I recommend reading the above resource to see how this blue egg gene is passed and how to test mate for it. Until you have your breeders proved out, the problem will grow. Best to get thing fix at the beginning. I have only test mated one of my three cockerels. I am waiting for those dang 25 week old pullets from the test mate to start laying. If they all lay blue eggs then I will know my cockerel is complete for the blue egg gene [O/O], if I get any blue eggs from the cross, I will know that he is no good as a breeder and that I now have to test mate all of his offspring before moving that breeding line foreword.

Thanks for that. Always makes my head spin a bit trying to understand all the genetics. It was strange as I hatched a lot of chicks and grew out an entire second flock. never saw anything but blue eggs. I get the long term testing to know what genes they carry and actually have a white legbar hen I can throw into the pen to start that process, although I will have to rotate my roos as I have two in there. But gonna try to throw her in there this weekend if I can find a buddy for her so she doesn't get too beat up. Bummer that it's such a long journey to find an answer especially when it seems so rare. As many legbars as are out there now, I am curious to see if it starts popping up more or if it will remain pretty random and almost unknown. I grew out a lot of pullets to laying age and then sold them after I chose my second flock, seems strange that I never saw a cream egg. Seems like there should be more popping up if those genes are out there like that? Is it true that theoretically if a roo and hen are both Oo that 25% of the offspring will be oo? Also, then if OO breeds to Oo, you would never see the white egg? So essentially once you determine a roo is OO you wouldn't have to worry about what the hens are, right?

 

[lawatt]

Thanks for that. Always makes my head spin a bit trying to understand all the genetics. It was strange as I hatched a lot of chicks and grew out an entire second flock. never saw anything but blue eggs. I get the long term testing to know what genes they carry and actually have a white legbar hen I can throw into the pen to start that process, although I will have to rotate my roos as I have two in there. But gonna try to throw her in there this weekend if I can find a buddy for her so she doesn't get too beat up. Bummer that it's such a long journey to find an answer especially when it seems so rare. As many legbars as are out there now, I am curious to see if it starts popping up more or if it will remain pretty random and almost unknown. I grew out a lot of pullets to laying age and then sold them after I chose my second flock, seems strange that I never saw a cream egg. Seems like there should be more popping up if those genes are out there like that? Is it true that theoretically if a roo and hen are both Oo that 25% of the offspring will be oo? Also, then if OO breeds to Oo, you would never see the white egg? So essentially once you determine a roo is OO you wouldn't have to worry about what the hens are, right?

yes, that's right -- basic Mendelian genetics there. it's exactly like the way you get blues, blacks, and splashes in BBS breeds, except in that case, Blbl (blue) physically looks different than BlBl (splash) -- whereas OO and Oo outwardly look the same. so if you have an OO rooster, all of the eggs will be blue-based no matter what the hen's genetics are.

 

[Runawaylobster]

Hey there, personally, if she hatched out with muffs, I would let the person you bought eggs from know. Perhaps it wasn't actually a CL egg but eggs got mixed up and it was from one their project pens? perhaps a rogue roo was involved? but, no harm in asking and perhaps you could get some more eggs. do you have a picture of her?

it certainly could be a rogue roo or an egg mixup for sure.. she did promise more eggs but i never got them...

I will take pics of her in the morning and post them... Also she is twice the size of the other legbar pullet i had!!

thanks for taking the time to answer my question..

 

[1muttsfan]

It would be quite difficult to get rid of incorrect genes by crossing that pullet with even a purebred bird. If you want CL's, you are better off using her in your layer group and getting some actual CL's from someone more reliable.

 

[normanack]

It would be quite difficult to get rid of incorrect genes by crossing that pullet with even a purebred bird.  If you want CL's, you are better off using her in your layer group and getting some actual CL's from someone more reliable.

That would be my call. I'm still muddled, though --

On the one hand an OO roo with an Oo hen will always produce blue egg layers, but some will carry non-blue . . . So if those birds are mated to Oos, non blue can pop up, right? So if there were even a moderate number of Oos around, that would mean we'd see non blue eggs cropping up more often?

Which leads to my tentative conclusion that Oo and oo must be pretty rare in the total pool of CLs.

Does this make sense?

Is it possible to statistically analyze, based on an estimate of the current US CL population and an estimate of the number of brown egg layers in it, the percentage of carriers?

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Here is a pic of one of my youngest pure cockerels. Ignore the color, I have better colored birds. The reason I am sharing is because I like his type. If he had a smoother sweep, he would have the ideal (to me) body type which can still change as he ages.