The Legbar Thread!

[Flaming Chicken]

None of my girls have a crest yet. May be it is to early for them.

Interesting...mine hatched on 2/18 too. Wish I could remember what color their bands were, I think blue but I wouldn't swear to it. I took them off they day they arrived since they were so tight. In visiting other sites I see the girls have small crests by this age and mine don't; I am so disappointed. Hopefully the male can pass the trait on to his daughters. Can't afford more until next year.

 

[redchicken9]

Photo 1: Group shot, nearly 3 weeks old.
Photo 2: Double orange female, before re-banding.
Photo 3: Naked male, lucky boy, no band!
Photo 4: Blue female, my smallest legbar.

Will be naming them soon! Following everyone's discussion, I went to UK sites. Opinion on several sites was that blue eggs denote a higher purity of cream legbar. I lean towards blue, bright (robin's egg) or pastel (sky blue) with some green (ie. mint) but not olive. Olive seems brown to me. On the idea of starting a cream legbar club, I'm interested. In terms of coming up with standards, I'd lean towards provisionally adapting the UK for the next few years as discussion continues. Although I have no real expertise on this, I think it'll take a several years to define club goals or ideals of perfection and equally long (or longer) to be accepted into American standards. I think the birds themselves will need a few years here for us to see what looks good.
Cheers!

 

[Flaming Chicken]

I have started a folder in my profile for the Legbar. I added some photos today. Midnight got poked in the eye so she only wanted to huddle. She is eating now. I will try to get a better picture of her tomorrow.

So exciting. Have you posted photos of you chicks any where yet. I would love to compare them to mine.

 

[klf73]

I have a question.
wouldn't it be "acceptable" to use one of breeds that were used to create this breed to "better" them? If someone used a brown leghorn(which has a nice straight comb and white eggs to not influence the egg color too much) and then crossed back, wouldn't that work?

 

[redchicken9]

Cflaming,
Nice chicks. Hope midnight feels better!
GaryDean26 and Laingcroft love to see your chicks too.

Everyone, is there an etiquette here, is it better to post pics or put them in folder? Happy to do either. For everyone else thanks for sharing yours too!

 

[Flaming Chicken]

Midnight is already eating and seems to have forgotten the insult. When we got home, she wouldn't open her eye. She had something sticky on it. We cleaned her up and put some ointment on it. There is always something with these guys. With my previous chicks and I have gotten chicks every spring for the last 8 years-I just put them in the cage and fed and watered them and not much else.

As far as posting pictures. Both putting them on here or in a folder are fine. I like to use a folder when I have more than 1 or 2 that people might be interested in seeing.

Did you know there is also a Legbar picture thread? I also post pictures there.

Cflaming,
Nice chicks. Hope midnight feels better!
GaryDean26 and Laingcroft love to see your chicks too.

Everyone, is there an etiquette here, is it better to post pics or put them in folder? Happy to do either. For everyone else thanks for sharing yours too!

 

[GaryDean26]

I have a question.
wouldn't it be "acceptable" to use one of breeds that were used to create this breed to "better" them? If someone used a brown leghorn(which has a nice straight comb and white eggs to not influence the egg color too much) and then crossed back, wouldn't that work?

Over the last 75 years breeders in the UK have done a lot of crossing out of the Cream Legbars. One of the common ways to create new bloodlines was to cross the Cream Legbar with Brown Leghorns. The result of this is that there are a lot of Blue Egg laying Golden Legbar being called Cream Legbars in the UK. The "good" Cream Legbar lines are hard to find in the UK. I also got photos of a guy in the UK that was starting with what he was told were Cream Legbars and 80% of them had pea combs. My guess is that this line was crossed with British standard Aracaunas to either work on the cresting or egg color.

I saw something on the site of one of the Heritage Breed groups that said that if you cross out a heritage bird to another breed it automatically makes it a non-heritage bird reguardless of what the other breed is or goals or results are in breeding. Since the Cream Legbar is a UK Heritage Breed you should probablly call any thing that is crossed out to another breed be it Plymoth Rocks, Leghorns, Araucanas or anything else an "Amereican" Cream Legbar, or "Non-Heritage" Cream Legbar, Cream Crele Leghorn, Crested Crele Leghorn, or some other name so that people know if the bird is a Heritage line (which the Cream Legbar name should be reserved for) or something that has been crossed out to create new bloodlines or to otherwise inhance the line.

 

[klf73]

well, I personally think that if a knowledgable person undertook the project using the very same breeds used to create it then it could be beneficial. I don't care that there is a wrinkle in my roos comb (although I do think his low roof in his coop all winter influenced his) and only got this breed for my own enjoyment. Of course I will test my lines and see if the wrinkle carries to the next generation. I think starting with such a small gene pool is going to be detrimental in the long run, other faults will surface as it happens with line breeding any species. To maintain vigor outcrosses will need to be made, selectively. I am keeping mine pure but am considering taking my second roo out to see what I can do. I have a lot of other projects so I may not get to it until next year.
I am actually worried about a lot of my rare breeds, there are no breeds similar to some of them and the gene pool is definitely limited. I have already seen small issues in some of these breeds, but what does anyone think is going to happen if the same lines are used over and over?

 

[anniesmom]

Here, finally, are group pictures of the Cream Legbar chicks I received last Wed. from Greenfire. I ordered a trio of each line. I received a quad of each line plus an extra red banded cockerel. They came banded red, blue, and yellow. The red banded chicks were lighter in weight and darker in color than the other two groups. I believe they were all hatched last Monday, March 12th. The ones with the big white dots on top of their heads are the males.

Blue banded chicks:


Red group:


Yellow group:

 

[Flaming Chicken]

What beautiful chicks! The pictures are nice too.

Here, finally, are group pictures of the Cream Legbar chicks I received last Wed. from Greenfire. I ordered a trio of each line. I received a quad of each line plus an extra red banded cockerel. They came banded red, blue, and yellow. The red banded chicks were lighter in weight and darker in color than the other two groups. I believe they were all hatched last Monday, March 12th. The ones with the big white dots on top of their heads are the males.

Blue banded chicks:


Red group:


Yellow group: