The Legbar Thread!

[nicalandia]

Some say these "other" Legbar versions lay white eggs. That's a difficult achievement coming from the brown egg laying barred rock in only 5 generations, isn't it?

Leghorns are known to have brown egg shell inhibitors, unlike most other breeds

 

[HaHaUthinkso]

Leghorns are known to have brown egg shell inhibitors, unlike most other breeds

Thank you !!!

 

[nicalandia]

Thank you !!!

Tim Adkerson research on the matter.. source> http://www.maranschickenclubusa.com/files/eggreview.pdf

"Another question arises as to why the Black Langshan x LightBrown Leghorn F1 cross segregated so many white egg shell layers

Theanswer is that the Leghorn also carried a recessive autosomal gene thatinhibited the production of brown pigments (Wei et al., 1992)"

 

[nicalandia]

But its all about autosexing and the work that was done by 1 guy to achieve that without whom we would not be here talking.

I think what affected the regular gold legbar is that the Crele leghorn was already an stablished breed(from breeding Brown leghorn x Cuckoo leghorn) and were basically indistinguishable from each other , and Crele Leghorns have been autosexable during the same time as the "Autosexing" Legbar,

here> " The chicks sex will be immediately recognisable at birth. The males will have a light yellow spot on the head, as opposed to the females" from source> http://www.leghorn.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=102&Itemid=195 so this didnt help them onthe fancy world, the Cream Lebars have a different more exotic look to them(Cream, Crested and Lay blue eggs) thats why the persist

 

[chicken pickin]

I think everyone should read the SOP and interpret it to the best of their ability. I have my own interpretation and it may be accurate or not--who knows? I think that the winning lines from England are all fairly light (and I mean very grey/light in tone) so many people look at he winning birds and breed to that goal whether or not it matches the SOP. Why did they gain favor? Again a guess: years ago the breed had fallen out of favor and was resurrected to a certain degree by outcrosses. If someone is looking at a bird and wanting a Cream not a Gold, then the tendency is to go with the lighter color because you know for sure it is Cream even though there may be a range of Cream. You get into a mindset that the lighter is better and pretty soon that is all there is since all the red and chestnut has been eliminated from the gene pool. But you have also selected for an overall lighter toned bird by de-emphasizing the dark grey barring.

The current SOP says:
Neck: Hackle—cream, sparsely barred with gray.
Shoulder—cream, barred with dark gray, some chestnut permissible.
Wings: Fronts and Bows—dark gray, faintly barred, some chestnut permissible.
Coverts—gray, barred, tipped in cream.
Primaries—dark gray, faintly barred, some white permissible.
Secondaries—dark gray, more clearly barred.

According to this, the goal is for a grey to dark grey on the wing with an allowance for chestnut (the way it is worded, there is a preference for no chestnut otherwise it would say mottled dark grey and chestnut, with birds lacking chestnut allowed). So from my point of view, all of the birds that I am seeing that are very light to white with minimal barring are too light if you are to follow the; by the way, I own a 'light' one and am using him for breeding, but he is not my ideal--merely a stepping stone in my path to a destination that will always be just over the horizon. There should be more/darker grey on the wings than I see commonly, but that doesn't mean that a dark shading is necessarily chestnut but could be chestnut. At least that is how I interpret the SOP.

Im glad you brought up this light gray and dark gray. As I have been looking at my roosters I have been trying to decide some of my goals. I have been drawn to the idea of a darker gray CL rooster. I recently decided on my 2 new breeders, one is what I would consider dark gray the other I would consider light gray. And while I like them both for various reasons and I plan to use them both for breeding I am still drawn to the idea of the darker gray.

Here is a backend pic taken this morn of them side by side to show the contrast.



here are a few more of the dark one








And a few of the light one








and again together light on left dark on right


I am leaning towards the darker male since I envision CL to be a little on the darker gray side. I also hope to one day start seeing a more grayish pullet instead of the mousey brown we see so often.

 

[nicalandia]

I really like your dark barred male, while dark, he is also has good cream color, and in the SOP calls for dark well defined breast and underbody

 

[chicken pickin]

Thank You.

I am excited to start using him with my girls. He is still young though being about 15weeks old.

 

[vlhavens]

Thank you !!!

Yes, thank you everyone!
Now, how do we pump up the blue color in the Legbar egg.
And, if one could, considering it's a result of an organ secretion, would more of that secretion be good for the fowl, and, would even more secretion make the egg bluer instead of another tone?

 

[vlhavens]

Amazing!
Of all I've read about this, I've never encountered that fact before.

 

[ChicKat]

Particularly since it's a brown egg layer!?
Perhaps it was to bulk up the breed, and make them more winter hardy?

Good point...The original Legbars that Punnett created the Gold Legbar, and later the Silver Legbar, weren't blue egg-layers, so the egg color was far less important than the eggs themselves. I think, though that you do have a good point - a bit heftier bird was probably welcome in those times of scarcity.