The Legbar Thread!

[ChicKat]

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.

Thanks for the insights and posting. I was astonished when I first saw this picture at how large her hen "Lillian" looks, compared to a lot of CL hens here in the USA... we had discussed that Jill must be very petite as well as the hen being big. Much better coloration - and just less "saturated" colors -- or pushed colors to give the vibrant colors - the hen's legs look the normal yellow. Thanks!

 

[ChicKat]

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.

Here's a quote from Breeding for Success by Grant Brereton:

"Laced Wyandottes are double-mated. The exhibition male is required to have a distinctive hackle with clear white shouldering. This is in contrast to the pullet-breeding male who has laced shoulder feathers and produces exhibition females. An important point to grasp is that many such birds are neither one variety or the other; these days they are very mixed up in the UK. Over the last decade or so, the lines have tended to be pullet breeding, perhaps for the obvious reason that people can easily keep more pullets than cockerels.

As well as being double-mated, the Silver Laced Variety has a strict standard as far as feather marking requirements in the respective areas are concerned, making it difficult to produce ideal specimens - so many factors have to be correct." p.49

In another part of the book - the author shows two top prize winners and mentions that the two wouldn't be bred. (Partridge Wyandottes) That the equivalent of the opposite sex would be bred - and I infer that the opposite-sex of the pair may not even be to Standard.

Soldier, GaryDean26 and KPenley bring up good points of what most CL owners envision, and that is that there wouldn't be a requirement for double mating to have quality birds, that the SOP is written in such a way that it doesn't create genetic/phenotypic impossibilites, and as Soldier states the important traits of the breed aren't lost in favor of just the looks...such as egg color and productivity.

Just as an aside, in beef cattle too - (or our breed anyway) Performance is a part of the pedigree papers -- such as the expected weight gain from the average, the expected birth weight of the calves above or below the averages etc...based upon the performance going back generations. It's called epd (expected progeny differences)

 

[GaryDean26]

Well....here are the first year laying records of two Cream Legbar Hens in the U.S.


Lilly's actual egg color of egg laid this week were an oac81. The egg size of actual eggs laid this week were 68 grams. Her record for single yolk eggs was 73 grams and 81 grams for double yolk eggs.

Robin's actual egg color of eggs laid this week were an oac123. The egg size of actual eggs laid this week were 54 grams. Her largest eggs were not recorded, but I know I saw some eggs from her around 60 grams. Note: Color saturation and shell texture of her eggs was much better than that of Lilly.

In light of record keeping and egg production I thought I would bump this up. I will post egg records of the two F1 keepers that I am currently tracking. I heavily factored laying ability into their selection and they are proving to be much more prolific than the foundation hens were.

 

[ChicKat]

In light of record keeping and egg production I thought I would bump this up. I will post egg records of the two F1 keepers that I am currently tracking. I heavily factored laying ability into their selection and they are proving to be much more prolific than the foundation hens were.

So cool - did you/could you post blanks or links in the Cream Legbar Club Club house for people to use?

Also - big question -- do you do the 'annual egg count' of a hen on her year or on the calendar year. In otherwords: -- She starts in June--her year;s egg count ends the following May - right? (It would have to) -- and how to you mark molting and broody?
Thnks

OOPs - maybe diagram answers the first Q.

 

[GaryDean26]

-- do you do the 'annual egg count' of a hen on her year or on the calendar year.

Thnks

Egg production contest typically run from the first day of November to last day of the following October. If you are just tracking the number of eggs in a calendar year you can start on any day you want and go for a year (i.e. January 1st to December 31, or from the first egg in the spring to the same day the following year, from the last egg in the fall to the same day the following year, etc.).

If you are tracking the first year of production. You have to start with the first pullet egg that is laid and stop on that day the following year. The charts above are first year production and started with the first pullet egg which I marked with an 'X'.

Individual egg records are not always possible with flocks. My day's 4H note book has a similar egg chart to what is above, but rather than a slash for days eggs are laid and blanks for day eggs aren't laid, it just has the total number of eggs laid by the flock and then at the end of each month he would divide the total by the number of hen in the flock to get a flock average for each month.

Another alternative to an annual chart for individual egg production is to just do a one month chart. One month charts are very good indicators of which hens have the highest "rate-of-lay" and may be possible for many flock owners that can't put the time into tracking eggs for a full year.

 

[ChicKat]

Egg production contest typically run from the first day of November to last day of the following October. If you are just tracking the number of eggs in a calendar year you can start on any day you want and go for a year (i.e. January 1st to December 31, or from the first egg in the spring to the same day the following year, from the last egg in the fall to the same day the following year, etc.).

If you are tracking the first year of production. You have to start with the first pullet egg that is laid and stop on that day the following year. The charts above are first year production and started with the first pullet egg which I marked with an 'X'.

Individual egg records are not always possible with flocks. My day's 4H note book has a similar egg chart to what is above, but rather than a slash for days eggs are laid and blanks for day eggs aren't laid, it just has the total number of eggs laid by the flock and then at the end of each month he would divide the total by the number of hen in the flock to get a flock average for each month.

Another alternative to an annual chart for individual egg production is to just do a one month chart. One month charts are very good indicators of which hens have the highest "rate-of-lay" and may be possible for many flock owners that can't put the time into tracking eggs for a full year.

"curiouser and curiouser" as Alice would say. So it seems that you could have a per-pullet chart to track her own first year - and also a chart for the calendar year - of which there would be some overlap with her individual chart - but would match the calendar year.... Reminds me of Statistics class in Grad School

Hen Cam website has posted a sample similar to the chart you used;
http://hencam.com/henblog/2012/01/egg-record-chart/

you CAN RIGHT CLICK and then open in a new tab if you are on a Windows OS and print just the page.....

Ms. Terry near Boston - thank you -- and thank you for Hen Cam--- http://hencam.com/

I LOVE being able to see your chickens in their run..... so relaxing -- now I want a hen Cam -- Oh Santa Claus.....

copying this post to the Clubhouse for reference.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I noticed something this morning about my 2 single comb cockerels I kept over. One of them got the tips of his comb frozen off back in October and the rest of his comb is near black since we've gotten below 0 with 20 mph winds this week (and getting colder this weekend). I figured I'll cull him soon because he just isn't as thrifty as I'd like to see in my birds. That cockerel is from my original rooster on a Jordan Farm's hen I got from a friend. The cockerel out of my original pair has a slightly shorter comb but same width and such and has no frost bite. They are kept in a pen with 2 faverolles and my 2 rose combed cockerels, the house they have is just a little cube with an opening so they all have the same base environment if that makes sense. We're supposed to get to -15 by Sunday, then next week will have highs in the single digits. If the single combed cockerel can avoid frost bite in that weather, I plan to make him my main breeder.
Also, just an update on the pullets- none of my single combed pullets have laid since the end of October which I expected anyway. The rose combed pullets have all started laying like crazy in the last couple weeks. None of my other hens (wyandottes, marans, faverolles) are laying right now, just the legbar ladies. It's little things like going out to the coop to find nothing but beautiful blue eggs that make this project worth it

 

[enola]

Do you guys use artificial light when tracking a hen for a whole year?

 

[nicalandia]

Quote:
how do you track by artificial light?

 

[KPenley]

Do you guys use artificial light when tracking a hen for a whole year?

I think this is a personal choice. I'm tracking my girls, but on a calendar not a cool chart yet, and we don't use artificial heat or light.