The Legbar Thread!

[CibolaChooks]

Good to know, I've heard calf manna praised on the CSU thread by Dragonlady who swears by it for her import orps getting to their incredible size and coloring. Is it 1 Tbsp per bird? Do you mix it in their feed or give it to them straight?

you can do both.

 

[KPenley]

Or is everyone thinking our legbars can be like the bbs genetics sometimes you get black (golds) sometimes you get blue(cream).

I meant to address this yesterday for newbies coming in. For anyone wanting to continue breeding the Light Brown Legbar, tentative name per FMP, the cream will pop up occasionally until the recessive color is bred out. However, if you are a Cream Legbar breeder then your goal is 100% cream chicks. Any other percentage means that one or more of your breeders are not cream. IOW since cream is recessive it takes a copy from both parents to show up, and two cream parents will always produce cream offspring.

 

[LaBella]

LaBella, Thanks for your comments! Cream is an interesting color. While it is diluted gold, when you combine it with double barring it comes out looking close to silver or at least off white. Without the extra dilution it would look more like the cream you were describing. So why can't we call it silver or gray?
We can't call it silver or gray because it isn't genetically. A true cream bird, when bred to a gold bird, produces all gold offspring. A true silver will not (silver cock to gold hen would produce all silver offspring, other way around would produce sex linked chicks).
Why do we want to breed Cream Legbars to look cream/offwhite/silverish? Because it's the standard, not a preference. Quite simply that's the way it is. Punnett was most likely the president of the Poultry Club of Great Britain when the standard was written and approved. He may have written it himself, but he definitely approved it.

You are of course correct that breeders can do whatever they want with their birds!!! I actually hope that some breeders keep the golden colors going, whether it become a variety or not, just because they are beautiful birds.

I may not have been clear in what I was saying. There seems to be a movement to where there is a leaning towards colorless birds. I can go with off white, that's cream enough for me, but silver and white are a different phenotype than cream. One thing that came about early in either the legbar thread (this one) or the cream legbar thread was the assertation that US birds had too much color according to some of our Britsh brethern in birds. That may be true. I have been doing heavy research into this breed long before I posted and it seems to me that the UK birds have too little color, especially their roos.
Standards can be interpreted incorrectly. It happens all the time. This is why you have rotties turning into a bracheocephalic breed when they are NOT supposed to be short muzzled. And when you talk about color, something that is very open to personal interpretation, lines can get blurred even more. I'm not even going to get into how fads can change the look of something, and how one group can have undue influence on the character of a breed.
The cream legbar is more than a silver legbar with a puff head and blue eggs. I think that care should be taken to insure that's not what happens to them. We should want them to look cream/off white not silver, BECAUSE that is the standard.
Double barring is a double dilute, I grant that, which is why I am OK with off white in roos. Off white is not white. But that means that the females should have that same cream color I was referring to, being single barred and but there are a number of hens and pullets I have seen have that same off white coloration which makes them look too light to me. As a further concern, someone did point out that taking the roos too light may lighten the salmon of the hen breast to where they're sub standard because their salmon has been washed out.
It just seems to me that cream should be an intermediary color between silver and gold. While they're going to be lighter than golds by a great deal, especially the roos, if you put a crestless cream roo next to a silver (were they still in existence) you should be able to tell the difference. It would be slight, but it would be there. I have been taking notes and saving links, though I seem to have misplaced my notebook otherwise I would point out where I am pulling my thoughts from.
The golds are pretty, but they are not cream. And a chicken my be genetically a cream, but should we not be able to see the phenotype as cream as well? Should we take them too light, they may have a cream genotype, but the phenotype will be that of a silver, and I am not so certain that is what the CLB should be.

And my comment about telling breeders what to do with their birds was NOT aimed at any one at all. It's a carry over from my dog breeding days. It just means that I myself am not telling people what they should and should not do with their animals. That I have no say in it, and I am OK with whatever they chose to do because it is their yard. Meaning to say that while I am concerned about the CLB going too light, if that's the way it goes, that's the way it goes, and I'm not telling anyone what to do, what I think they should do. However things turn out for the breed, I'll either abide by it if I like it, or go my own way with them if I don't.

 

[dretd]

LaBella, Thanks for your comments! Cream is an interesting color. While it is diluted gold, when you combine it with double barring it comes out looking close to silver or at least off white. Without the extra dilution it would look more like the cream you were describing. So why can't we call it silver or gray?
We can't call it silver or gray because it isn't genetically. A true cream bird, when bred to a gold bird, produces all gold offspring. A true silver will not (silver cock to gold hen would produce all silver offspring, other way around would produce sex linked chicks).
Why do we want to breed Cream Legbars to look cream/offwhite/silverish? Because it's the standard, not a preference. Quite simply that's the way it is. Punnett was most likely the president of the Poultry Club of Great Britain when the standard was written and approved. He may have written it himself, but he definitely approved it.

You are of course correct that breeders can do whatever they want with their birds!!! I actually hope that some breeders keep the golden colors going, whether it become a variety or not, just because they are beautiful birds.

BTW offtopic, but I wrote in the tail angle at 45 degrees above horizontal based on the APA Leghorn and Plymouth Barred Rock Standards. If specified in the standard as above horizontal, then it is above horizontal. If not specified, the angle is measured in respect to the angle of the back. This is open to discussion, but perhaps we should move it to the SOP thread

KPenley. First of all, thank you so much for all of the hard work you have put in with the SOP! Huge job well done, and it must be overwhelming getting pulled about by all of the input you receive from everyone.

Thank you for the clarification about the tail angle. It makes sense to have an absolute benchmark not one that moves with the bird. I figure that since Walt (the APA Judge) gave input to the SOP that it was written correctly. Here is a link to the draft as a reminder for folks: http://www.creamlegbarclub.com/30-draft-standard-of-perfection-as-of-2013

I wanted to reiterate your statement above because I think its important. The nomenclature for the breed is based on the genetic makeup of the Legbar lines, not the a description of the color of the breed. A Silver Legbar is genetically Silver. The Cream Legbar is called Cream because it is meant to have the recessive gold inhibiting gene ig. It is not a description of the color of the bird.

Some of the genetically Cream roosters do look very colorful to my eye, probably because they have more Autosomal Red in their makeup. There are some colorful roosters that I honestly cannot tell if they are Cream or not and some obviously not expressing Cream. I personally like the Chestnut and my eventual goal is to have a line of Cream Legbars that are all genetically cream and have some color in the roosters because I think it is pretty. No bird will hit the ideal of the breed 100%. There are always flaws and if I am downgraded at a show because my line is a little more colorful than ideal or my pullet has a little shafting, then so be it-- I guess I wont win the show but I will be personally happy as long as I like my birds and they are all Cream. There may be an advantage to keeping some non-crested birds on your breeding program as well as some more colorful cocks, so that you can maintain your overall look in the middle and so it wont drift too far from the average ie so the crests wont all become bouffant crests (with a risk of vaulted skulls) that will happen if there is no genetic balance. Not all of my flock (or anyone who shows) will be show quality and that is just fine with me. To me, it doesn't mean the birds are not Cream Legbars, it means they are not Show Quality Cream Legbars.

 

[GaryDean26]

I was sent a bunch of photos from a breeder in the UK and was if they looked Silver to me. One look and I said yes. The breeder told me that care was taken to make sure they had a creamy color to them and that the cream color was had to capture on film because the colors always seemed to fade. That breeder for one likes to keep a little color on the cockerels. By little, I mean very little. The goal of that flock was not for the white and black cockerels but they were definatly very light. The some chestnut permissible was more of a some chestnut is desirable interpretation in that flock. Early on I got a lot of photos of Dutch Cream Light Bantams to see how the Cream changed the Gold birds in the male ande female. It is clear that without the barring that the cream birds are a medium to light yellow colorr. With the barrring I am a little confussed. I may have to get aCream Ligh Brown Dutch Bantams cockerel to out cross to a few different breeds of barred hens and then breed back to seem how the barring from each of the barred breeds turnes out on the Cream Base.

P.S. Here is some insight on breeding cream birds http://the-coop.org/dutch/breedclb.htm

 

[KPenley]

You are all more than welcome! It was actually really fun to run the whole thing down line by line with Heather. We debated for 2+ weeks over some points using the APA Standard of Perfection 2010 and 1938 editions, The 6th Edition of the British Poultry Standards, as well as historical articles. Still waiting for feedback from the UK on the color cream and shafting, but I welcome discussion and debate...just be prepared, we are

 

[CibolaChooks]

I was sent a bunch of photos from a breeder in the UK and was if they looked Silver to me. One look and I said yes. The breeder told me that care was taken to make sure they had a creamy color to them and that the cream color was had to capture on film because the colors always seemed to fade. That breeder for one likes to keep a little color on the cockerels. By little, I mean very little. The goal of that flock was not for the white and black cockerels but they were definatly very light. The some chestnut permissible was more of a some chestnut is desirable interpretation in that flock. Early on I got a lot of photos of Dutch Cream Light Bantams to see how the Cream changed the Gold birds in the male ande female. It is clear that without the barring that the cream birds are a medium to light yellow colorr. With the barrring I am a little confussed. I may have to get sa Cream Liigh Brown Dutch Bantams cockerel to out cross to a few different barred breeds of barred hens and then breed back to seem how the barring from each of the barred breeds turnes out on the Cream Base.

P.S. Here is some insight on breeding cream birds http://the-coop.org/dutch/breedclb.htm

it would be really nice if you did and did this experiment. i would love to have real word evidence of how they are effected.

this is an eye opener Ive seen these two things in my birds and others.

. With CLBs the contaminant is not as visual, but will be seen in the reddish or darker orange on the head, saddle of the male. And the females will have a brown cast to the body, especially on the wings coverts, instead of the grey-black back, wings and body.

And I was never really sure about the females, those with palest gold hackles were kept as CLBs.) Indeed some males had straw colored hackle and some had reddish heads tapering to creamishs ends of hackle or even the reverse, lighter at top, darker ends

 

[CibolaChooks]

I meant to address this yesterday for newbies coming in. For anyone wanting to continue breeding the Light Brown Legbar, tentative name per FMP, the cream will pop up occasionally until the recessive color is bred out. However, if you are a Cream Legbar breeder then your goal is 100% cream chicks. Any other percentage means that one or more of your breeders are not cream. IOW since cream is recessive it takes a copy from both parents to show up, and two cream parents will always produce cream offspring.

thats true. cream would almost instantly not come back. except like you said possibly occasionally . and i would guess maybe only the first or second year.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

Another cream related project I want to try is cross a cream legbar with dark brown leghorn, then sibling mate to see how cream and mahogany interact since I don't think anyone has done it yet. In my hypothetical light brown legbars, unless an outcross was made and never bred back, cream birds will always be around. Just like when a friend had cream pop up in their phoenix that came from an outcross to Dutch bantams way back. If two birds have cream anywhere in their history, there os always a chance for them to pop up since it remains hidden until 2 recessive parents are paired up

 

[nicalandia]

Looking at my juvenile rooster pen with new eyes given the latest discussion.

would you be in the look out for the Grey Barring on Saddle, Back, Shoulders? thats why they look grey barred