The Legbar Thread!

[ochochicas]

Quote:
I'd take your rooster if you weren't 5 hours from me. My rooster is too small, and he's mean, so he going to have to go. If you ever make it further West let me know!

 

[ChicKat]

Got some new babes, two are CCL girls!

Cute baby~~

 

[mrsblanchard]

Thanks! She's very cuddly

 

[ChicKat]

I got my first CL that didn't 'breed true'. --

Well she kind of did...but not really. I have a pullet with feathered legs. This is the first CL I have seen with this defect. Isn't that awful? There are 3-leg feathering genes - and since she is the first to show up - it has to be the only one that is recessive. In another thread Sonoran Silkies put up this info-->

"There are three genes for feathered legs; none are sexlinked (meaning that they come from BOTH parents). Two are incompletely dominant; meaning that if present in the bird, they will show. They cannot be hidden, and one two copies will have more feathering than a single copy. One gene is recessive. Pti^1 has two foot feathered alleles as well as the wild-type not-foot feathered allele; Pti^1B is found in brahmas; Pti^1L is found in langshans."

So, please help me out here oh ye genetics wizards.... the gene I need to breed OUT of my flock is the wild-type not-foot feathered allele; Pti^1.... The feet are not feathered.

Only by line-breeding did this recessive show up. Now I need to keep the feather-legged pullet to breed to each of her brothers--- in the event no chicks from that pairing have feathered legs - then he has no recessive Pti^1, so I will know that he is clean for that recessive. - If I decide to breed him to his grandmother who has the recessive, then I will need to breed the hatched females to a feather-legged male with wildtype and breed the males to this same feather-legged pullet to be sure that none of them have inherited the recessive gene.

Does that sound right? So suddenly the feather-legged pullet goes from being a cull to being a detective for the males in my flock. And I will need to try to find a feather-legged male to check all the pullets in the future -- til I am 100% certain that I have that gene eradicated.

Any insights? Anyone else have this happen, or does anyone know more about the wild-type non-foot feathered allele?

 

[enola]

Didn't someone else say they hatched a chick that had a few feathers on it's legs. And they disappeared after the first molt?

 

[KPenley]

Can you breed the pullet to her father to check him first? Otherwise I think your plan of testing her brothers is a good one.

 

[ChicKat]

Can you breed the pullet to her father to check him first? Otherwise I think your plan of testing her brothers is a good one.

She is a product of clean legged mother and clean legged father -- who is the son of the clean legged mother - so she is the result of a mother-son pairing. (The father is now a pelt)--- since it was recessive - neither parent showed feathered legs-- but the father is the son of the mother (it's complicated this line breeding) -- I think it has to be the mother that has the recessive, which she passed to her now deceased son, who is the pullets father . The two of them passed two recessives to this pullet. So her grandmother and mother are the same hen and has to be the source.

Since this is the very first line breeding I have ever done, and since this is the first example in 2-years of a feathered leg - it has to be recessive and it has to be my idolized hen.

But better to know sooner rather than later, and get it out of my flock entirely..IMO.

Both her brothers could have gotten 1-recessive - but not two or they would have feather legs....possibly one or both brothers got no recessives for leg feathering - and both are clean for it. Time for a Punnett square huh? Hopefully at least one - got no recessives -- and I won't know for some long time -- til she starts to lay, and till those eggs hatch - but it shows up pretty young on the juveniles.

Thanks for the insight though....

 

[ChicKat]

Didn't someone else say they hatched a chick that had a few feathers on it's legs. And they disappeared after the first molt?

That is so interesting -- and possible...she is a nice pullet otherwise...but wouldn't that still make her not-to-standard?? Dunno -

 

[A6chickenhome]

Got some new babes, two are CCL girls!

Adorable!

 

[ladycat]

Just an FYI, I have raised literally thousands of chickens over the decades, and now and again, a chick with a few sprigs of feathers on the legs have showed up in pure bred clean legged breeds. It doesn't mean the chick isn't pure bred, it just happens.

I suspect this may be how feather legged chickens got started a couple thousand years ago or however long it was. Someone may have decided to breed together those primitive chickens that had a few sprigs on their legs, and after a few chicken generations, they would have showed more and more sprigs from intense in-breeding until feather legged chickens were established. Then over the next hundreds of years, people crossed those chickens with other breeds until you see all the feather legged breeds we have today.

That's just speculation, but it makes good sense to me.