The Legbar Thread!

[normanack]

Is the Cream Legbar crest technically considered a tassel? Poultry Breeding and Genetics (ed. R. D. Crawford, 1990) describes a tassel as "a tuft or crest of feathers rising from the head at the rear of the comb and falling gracefully over the back of the neck." Examples of tasselled breeds given are Watermaal, Altsteirer, Old English Game, Pyncheon,and Sulmtaler Bantam.

Crest genetics info given are that it is an incompletely dominant autosomal gene, and involves only one pair of genes. It also notes that whether all crest sizes and shapes are caused by the same gene isn't known. So far I haven't found any info on whether comb and crest genes are linked. It is kind of an old book, but it's the one my library has.

 

[puglady]

My 3 legbar boys came in today. These were in place of the one they forgot in my shipment of girls last week. Very different coloring on all 3. I'm hoping that indicates that there's one from each line. I'm super excited about the "packing peanuts" as well, 2 FBCMs!

 

[redchicken9]

Here's the address to a site with a good discussion of genetics and coloring. Sorry it might not be an active link.
http://www.the-coop.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=99193&page=all

I need to admit up front this is just a quick synopsis of what I saw discussed.

The title says The Classroom @ The Coop. The discussion is the trend towards CL males that look all cuckoo in appearance. It also gets into cream versus silver in the plumage. Cream great, silver not. At one point it throws out GFF as having fertility issues (speculated). Not that I have heard or thought this. It has some great photos, but took me being on the site for over 10 minutes before they showed. Also talks about Emily de Grey's birds, which were linked on this site awhile back. They are the photos of two males next to each other with the written statement that the top male is correct according to standards, however this is not seemingly completely true (B/B versus B/b+). According to reading (my paraphrase here) the thing that makes the color correct is gold based (s+) and 2 ig copies to inhibit the gold and turn it cream. It also talks some about the chestnut being permissible according to the UK standards.

 

[Flaming Chicken]

Ooooh. I love the coloring on the boys. I wonder what they will look like when they mature?

My 3 legbar boys came in today. These were in place of the one they forgot in my shipment of girls last week. Very different coloring on all 3. I'm hoping that indicates that there's one from each line. I'm super excited about the "packing peanuts" as well, 2 FBCMs!

 

[redchicken9]

Puglady, Super cute packing peanuts! Loved the expression!

 

[GaryDean26]

Thanks Redchicken9 for the link to "The Coop" thread.

I read that thread at the beginning of the year. It formed a lot of my options on color, but after re-reading it last week I realized that a lot of the things they stated can be miss-leading. For example, the comments about GFF having fertility problems has got to be totally bogus. My GFF Cream Legbars have had perfect fertility and I am sure that Greenfire's results have been no less than what people with stock from them have been.

The thread on "the Coop" really focused on the cockerel color being too like in the show birds in the UK, but after BlackBird's post I re-read the Cream Plumage paper by Punnet and he said that some of the cream hens could almost be mistake for silver (so my ideas had to changed somewhat from what I had formerly concluded).

Note: There is nothing better than reading a primary source of actually research to clear up any doubts. One of my main attractions to the Cream Legbar breed was the careful research and documentation that was kept when the breed was created. There are not many breeds in the world with that type of information available.

 

[Wolf-Kim]

Wow, you did get quite the assortment of Cream legbar cockerels!

If you go and buy a color assortment of zipties. You should keep the same color zip tie on each chick so we all can watch their progress and be able to keep notes on them. The ties are easily cut off and replaced as they grow. I know I would be extremely interested in seeing how the chick down compares to the adult coloration! Pretty please.

 

[puglady]

Wow, you did get quite the assortment of Cream legbar cockerels!

If you go and buy a color assortment of zipties. You should keep the same color zip tie on each chick so we all can watch their progress and be able to keep notes on them. The ties are easily cut off and replaced as they grow. I know I would be extremely interested in seeing how the chick down compares to the adult coloration! Pretty please.

Well.....since you said pretty please I'll go get some in the morning

. I took a look at the GFF site and it looks like the peanuts are birchen Marans but I'm still super excited to have them. I've got an email out to GFF inquiring about which lines the boys and girls came from. Hopefully they'll get back to me shortly. They're all super active and are doing really well after their trip. So far I couldn't be happier!

 

[Wolf-Kim]

I like the zips because you can do an array of color and they are easy to remove and replace as the chick grows.

I really look forward to how your three guys grow out(I know you are too!). I am so excited for you! And you got packing peanuts(fingers crossed for Marans HENS!)

 

[Papa Brooder]

agreed. I want to see that difference. All my cockerels looked virtually identical when they were chicks and still look virtually identical at about 16 weeks. gonna band them and photograph tomorrow. today, here is my roo and his three ladies, there were 4 until yesterday when I lost one of my CL pullets who I found stroked out in the nesting box, she just couldn't recover. it was 112 degrees that day. so sad.






on my roo, is that "chestnut" color what is on his back? I'm not a big color describer but there is a lot of color on these birds and I personally think they look great. But, is that what most are saying should be more tame? or not present? gonna go look at that ladies pictures now that was mention a few pages back.