The Legbar Thread!

[ChicKat]

Curtis,

You make many points with the aforementioned evaluation. I guess that I am finding myself somewhat confused by what appears to be the character of "later" GF stock and progeny. It is clear that the colors of the females have changed. I have a female that was hatched by a breeder in NC on September 18 and a female that I hatched from one of her eggs on October 12. Both of these young pullets (not pictured) are looking like Soldier's pullets. This includes the nearly black crest and the black tips in the breast area. So ... lets compare photos.




Jill Rees' "Lillian", the award winning UK CCL

So when we place the pictures "side-by-side", what have we learned? Soldier's pullet is a beautiful bird and my two "dark ones" will be very similar, if not even darker. Yet this taking all of the above photos into consideration, how can we be so sanctimonious in our views of what the "correct color" is for what we are trying to achieve. At this point, I am almost at a loss in trying to decide what direction the breeding should go.

When one looks at the colors in the above photos, what is the correct color that should be documented in the SOP? With all the information that I had acquired as well as foundation stock, I thought that I had a decent handle on what I was trying to breed and develop. Even the colors of Jill Rees' birds are in line with my earlier conceptions. However, with the advent of this darker version of CCL pullets, I am starting to question just what our friends in the UK may have bred into cream legbars for which we are totally unaware. The occasional production of a white sport CCL is one in which I can accept and manage. These very dark CCL pullets are another story.

I would certainly like to hear others views on this!

Hey HaplessRunner---

Bear some things in mind. The photo of Lillian - may be tweaked in software like PhotoShop. That would mean that somewhere along the way--someone hit "saturate". It is even possible to set the digital camera to a more saturated photograph -- different cameras have a different name...like Vibrant Colors -- and then there is the whole light thing - was the venue of the Natioinals in 2012 lit by flourescents and the photographer had to compensate to take out the green that flourescent lights put on photos...etc. Look at the yellow of Lillian's legs and see that they are nearly egg-yolk orange as a 'tell' for photo saturation. Although the colors we see on our screens are representative, they are not the same as they would appear in 'real life' -- which is why there aren't many virtual judging contests. --

The pullet you show running free is probably closer to" correct" color and in real life --- were your pullet standing next to Lillian, it could be that they would appear to have very similar coloration.

On behalf of Judging -- judges say that they must handle the chicken--there is so much more than color (believe it or not -- LOL)---

Here's where I'm kind of confused about the taupe and brown we are seeing - in the original 1958 SOP it doesn't mention any other female body coloration that silver, and gray ( ETA of course cream is there for the nexk hackles and the crest...)---and lots of CL females have a lot of taupe. Interesting to us in English, taupe is a color, in French it is a mole...so you get an idea of the silvery-brown. \

Here's a cut and paste from the Club webpage for female color:

Comb, Face, and Wattles: Bright red.
Beak: Yellow.
Eyes: Reddish bay.
Ear-lobes: Enamel white.
Head: Plumage, cream and gray.
Crest: Cream and gray, some chestnut permissible.
Neck: Hackle—cream, softly barred gray.
Front of neck—salmon.

Wings: Fronts, Bows and Coverts—silver-gray, faintly barred.
Primaries—gray, peppered.
Secondaries—gray, very faintly barred.

Back: Gray, softly barred, feathers having a lighter shaft permissible.

Tail: Main Tail and Coverts—silver-gray, faintly barred.

Breast: Salmon, well defined in outline, some feathers having a slightly lighter shaft permissible.

Body and Fluff: Silver-gray, indistinctly barred.

Legs and Toes: Yellow.

Under-Color of All Sections: Silver-gray.


As a result, I would conclude that the more gray the female body-color is -- the more accurately the female would represent the SOP.

I also agree with you on two other points: 1. without knowing exactly what the target looks like -- it is going to be very difficult to get the bulls-eye. LOL 2. The various generations of CL that we are seeing - are certainly identifiable by the date of their launch from GFF. It is only in 2013 pullets that I have seen a plethora of the dark tipped breast feathers and there seems to be a lot of permanent white specks showing up in females also....unlike Lillian who hasn't got black tips and hasn't got white specks.

Of the possible 100 points that could be awarded to a show chicken - I think only 10 or 20 are color...so Lillian may have won for her other (non-color) qualities. Also, what I have heard is that there are not a lot of CLs in shows either in the USA or in the UK.

 

[ChicKat]

I am new to this breed and have been lurking but on her website in the gallery of her birds she has both dark med and light pullets/hens in her pens. If she is the premier breeder in the UK she must have a reason for keeping them in all colors and variations. Why does she not have pics of her roos?????

Hi DMRippy-

So glad that you are lurking and that you weigh in every now and then.....

Right now I'm reading a book by Grant Brereton who is the editor of Fancy Fowl magazine in the UK --and a highly recognized poultry color geneticist. the book is "Breeding for Success"

Here's something he says about raising chickens for the show circuit. Double mating is probably advisable. Fowlman01, Walt Leonard, used to stop by our threads and he said the same thing. Lots of us rookies were rather horrified. "Like if I have to keep a line of birds for correct males, and a different one for correct females - it should be two breeds" -- That's actually a paraphrase from an early 1900's article that is stored in the Cream Legbar Club's "Clubhouse" -- With a breed that has sexual dimorphism like CLs. -- Breeding for success of one trait may diminish the success of the other trait in someone's flock. Brereton uses the example of large combs and wattles in males - where females are preferred with smaller wattles and combs....

The question focuses on - do I want practical chickens that fill my needs, or am I willing to go to these lengths to win in the show room.

It could be that Jill Rees recent first place in the Nationals Poultry show in Nov. with her cockerel placing 1st, and if the cockerel does well in the Federation show in December, she may put more cockerel pictures on website. Over there...there was a problem for quite a while with cockerels having non-straight combs...so lots of UK people didn't even show cockerels. Add to that there are a lot of UK people that have CLs that do not show -- because it isn't their cup-of-tea.

Bottom line - maybe she didn't want to show cockerels that weren't high quality on her website - and now that she has a winning cockerel, she will put pictures up.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

I am new to this breed and have been lurking but on her website in the gallery of her birds she has both dark med and light pullets/hens in her pens. If she is the premier breeder in the UK she must have a reason for keeping them in all colors and variations. Why does she not have pics of her roos?????

Quick note about the females- I have heard Jill state on the Facebook CL page that you get both dark and light pullets from either breeding (dark or light). Which puzzles me a little unless their genetics over there are just as little understood as they are here.... I would think you should be able to pin down some kind of uniformity if you test breed long enough.

 

[GaryDean26]

Quick note about the females- I have heard Jill state on the Facebook CL page that you get both dark and light pullets from either breeding (dark or light). Which puzzles me a little unless their genetics over there are just as little understood as they are here.... I would think you should be able to pin down some kind of uniformity if you test breed long enough.

I agree...you should be able to pin down one or the other.

If you have 8 hens in a breeding pen with one cockerel and you aren't keeping track of who hatches from what egg, and you are selecting cockerels that have melonizers and hens that don't, etc. yes...you are going to get a lot of variation in what you hatch.

The lack of the knowledge of how a trait in a female is expressed in a male is the reason that double mating is used in exhibition lines. Instead of countering each other every mating to were you never seem to get anywhere, you just focus on half of the equation and let all the unknowns on the other half fall where ever they may.

This same lack of knowledge on how a trait in one gender is expression the other is why many SOP" "don't get it right". The SOP may require something for the male that is not genetically the same code as what is required for the female. For example the original APA standard for the Brown leghorn required Dark Brown Cockerels and Light Brown Pullets. Any breeder of Brown leghorns knew that you couldn't achieve the standards of both from the same line and eventually they went back and made the Light Brown and Dark Brown two different varieties.

A perfect SOP would be one that allows for exhibition quality cockerels and pullets to be breed for a single mating that produces uniform offspring. There aren't many perfect SOP's though.

I have a few pairing or groupings in each of my grow out groups. I watch for the characterizes across the range of offspring from each pairing or groups and try to learn how they breed. What are they getting from mom? What are they getting from Dad? What do the majority of the pullets look like? What do the majority of their full brothers look like. What tells do they have of what traits they will passing on? While the SOP was written by people that worked with the breed longer than I have and probably will help me avoid a lot of pitfall if followed, there may be things in my flock that they didn't have in their flocks, so I go more on how I see my flock breed in an effort to get as close as I can to the SOP while taking everything with a grain of salt knowing that the my flock will deviate in some respects. Since I get to choose where it deviates I want to make it in areas that allow my flock to require as little double mating as possible.

 

[KPenley]

Is anyone else keeping track of the darker birds and the faults (ie mottling and black tips) in regard to crossing strains? In my small flocks I have seen dark crests and the faults pop out of two light crested birds, but they were from different breeders. In contrast, one of my girls who was bred to an older rooster from the same strain threw offspring with much more stabilized color. Regretfully, I only tested 3 eggs from an uncrested girl and all the offspring were uncrested, so I will need to try more to see if the crest from the rooster stays light or goes dark like the crossed strain offspring.

I am totally guessing here...but I think that ALL the dramatic negative changes are due to suppressed problems popping up from crossed strains (both at GFF and home breeders trying to increase vigor). This would be perfectly normal and to be expected. Which means that if all your birds look like the ones with dark crests and mottling, you're looking at about 5 years of serious breeding (ie. lots of culling) or even more to get back to the quality of the original imported pairs. Rees has only had her birds for 5 years, so I think some minimal discrepancies are reasonable and again to be expected. Since we're all working hard on stabilizing the breed, please don't be discouraged! You are not alone

On the issue of double mating to meet the standard, the UK's modern PCGB is known for it, but that was not always the case...and I don't think that Punnett would have created and standardized a bird that required double mating. Let's see what we can do over the next few years, as pp have described, and see where we are then in regards to the standard.

 

[normanack]

Now that I've got forms (Thank you, Sherry Gates, LaBella, and Kathy Klein!), I can go back through my photos and (admittedly inadequate) written records and keep good track going forward.

 

[ChicKat]

Now that I've got forms (Thank you, Sherry Gates, LaBella, and Kathy Klein!), I can go back through my photos and (admittedly inadequate) written records and keep good track going forward.

I agree - and the only thanks due to me are asking them to weigh in on their take for keeping records. Having a form to fill in makes the whole process easier.
Yea Sherry and LaBella!

and Anne for formatting it and making it so you can just click and get a .pdf without headers and footers.

Good job all three of you!

 

[soldier]

Hi DMRippy-

So glad that you are lurking and that you weigh in every now and then.....

Right now I'm reading a book by Grant Brereton who is the editor of Fancy Fowl magazine in the UK --and a highly recognized poultry color geneticist. the book is "Breeding for Success"

Here's something he says about raising chickens for the show circuit. Double mating is probably advisable. Fowlman01, Walt Leonard, used to stop by our threads and he said the same thing. Lots of us rookies were rather horrified. "Like if I have to keep a line of birds for correct males, and a different one for correct females - it should be two breeds" -- That's actually a paraphrase from an early 1900's article that is stored in the Cream Legbar Club's "Clubhouse" -- With a breed that has sexual dimorphism like CLs. -- Breeding for success of one trait may diminish the success of the other trait in someone's flock. Brereton uses the example of large combs and wattles in males - where females are preferred with smaller wattles and combs....

The question focuses on - do I want practical chickens that fill my needs, or am I willing to go to these lengths to win in the show room.

It could be that Jill Rees recent first place in the Nationals Poultry show in Nov. with her cockerel placing 1st, and if the cockerel does well in the Federation show in December, she may put more cockerel pictures on website. Over there...there was a problem for quite a while with cockerels having non-straight combs...so lots of UK people didn't even show cockerels. Add to that there are a lot of UK people that have CLs that do not show -- because it isn't their cup-of-tea.

Bottom line - maybe she didn't want to show cockerels that weren't high quality on her website - and now that she has a winning cockerel, she will put pictures up.

First off thank all of you for the evaluation of my GGF hen; both qualities and faults. The above statement is so true "Breeding for success of on trait may diminish the success of the other trait in someone's flock." You see this in a lot of breeding programs; as in cattle. When you select for higher weight gains such things will have a negative correlation on things such as milking ability/mothering etc. So if a person breeds for a specific quality they like say "smaller combs" they may not realize that egg production or the blue coloration of eggs actually have a negative coefficient; and over the generations the CLs from that farm will have less egg production and say greener eggs but the combs will be small and straight. A lot of genes are linked in such a way. So as breeders one must realize what they really want but not sacrifice for the overall quality of the CL such as excellent egg production of classy blue eggs. I have to give dedicated breeders credit as it takes lots of dedication, sometimes lots of heart ache, and LOTS of breeding/crosses to achieve the "few" birds that achieve most of the standards in one bird.

I would love to see an annual egg production chart on Jill's birds. I did go to her site and it looks like her eggs a blue but I wonder does an award winning "typey" CL sacrifice on the egg production side of the house. I am not saying CL's should sacrifice SOP but sometimes just breeding for visual/phenotype traits may bring down things like egg color/egg size/bird size/shell thickness and productivity. All traits that are considered "usabilty" traits and not phenotypic type traits. Now I may be wrong, but do these Nationals have an annual lay rate for these birds and display an example of eggs laid by bird to judge egg qualities such as size/color/uniformity etc. In dairy cattle all these statistics are out there on display along with the cow being judged.
Just food for thought.

 

[stoneunhenged]

Maybe I can shed a little light --literally-- on the color of Jill Rees's champion cream legbar hen. Here's a pic I took indoors at Jill's house with artificial light in late December 2012. The color in the picture is unaltered from the original. Worth noting that not only were Jill's birds beautiful, they were also large. As for the roosters, some have floppy combs but others, particularly in more recent hatchings, have more erect combs. Hope this helps.



And here's a 2013 rooster from Jill:

 

[chicken pickin]

They are very beautiful and great coloring on the both of them. I love how big the hen is. My two 20week old pullets are still so very small.