The Legbar Thread!

[WyoChickenMamma]

Just had to jump in here real quick and share a picture of my newest additions to my CL flock. You all know that I have struggled all summer with hatching shipped eggs. I finally ended up getting two nice pairs of juveniles from Jordan Farm and at the same time that deal was coming to fruition, madamwlf offered me eggs too. I just couldn't bring myself to try shipped eggs again, so we decided she would hatch them for me and send me the babies. So they arrived this morning, PO called at 6am. I was so happy to see them. So I now have 2 white boys, 1 white girl and 4 regular girls. They made the trip from MD to WY and are all in great shape. Thank you madamwlf! I love them already. So here is a picture of them in the isolation brooder, they will be here for a while before they can go to a grow out pen.

 

[madamwlf]

So happy they made it!!

 

[blackbirds13]

A Call to Arms: Chicken Pedigree Registries

.

In America, creating and
maintaining a registry
could actually give breed
clubs something valuable
to do. Let’s do the
thought experiment that
someone takes the
initiative to form the
American Cream Legbar
Club. The ACLC selects
board members, and a
written breed standard is
adopted. For a period of
three years the board
leaves open the registry;
it reviews applications
from anyone who
submits a cream legbar to
be included in the
registry. Each submittal
would require several
pictures of the bird, and
the board could
determine if the bird
came close enough to the
written standard to merit
inclusion in the registry.
Every bird included in
the registry would be
given a registration
number and have a data
file including its
pictures. After three
years, the registry would
be closed to entering
unregistered birds
(except in unusual
circumstances like a
newly imported cream
legbar), and in the
future only chicks that
were the descendants of
registered birds could
themselves be registered.
Cream legbar hobbyists
could register their birds
online for a small fee
(say, $3), and could
access genealogical data
about their birds. Over
a period of years an
enormous database
would grow with the
valuable result of
promoting pure lineage
and avoiding inbreeding.

I am not sure how I feel about this registry idea and all this communal information keeping. It sounds interesting but could be rife with conflict, especially at the start. There are only 2 places of importation correct? Greenfire and that other place that is closed for now because of some bio-security issue. How would one be assured the pictures submitted were of the birds owned and that eggs were from the stated breeder as there are chicken eggs a-plenty. Once your birds leave your possession they can be bred any old how and passed off as your line....
Also what of competing registries or standards? I can see already from this thread that there may be some disagreement of what this breed should look like going forward, maybe even egg color issues also. What would be a DQ may be controversial. How broad will the standards for the birds be? What if we end up with competing standards, competing registries? This forum is very 'coffee table' if I may borrow a phrase from the Black Copper thread and I'm interested in what will happen when we really start talking breed standards. As for any fees, I guess you may need to recoup administrative costs to cover internet, hosting and data entry, etc expenditures but will it be a one time fee or if you update your account will fees be assessed then. I think if we're talking registry then there has to be concensus, someone's gotta start the ball rolling and toss out a few ideas, suggestions etc on some of this stuff. If Greenfire is doing a registry for their own birds that sounds great if you know which lines your birds came from. I know for all original birds as they were direct purchases and I have an email record from Jenny of the lines, but some don't but I guess they have a general idea. I would not want to join a registry they started...that's to close to comfort for me (and not what they are suggesting) but I'm curious as to what this all will entails. I'm okay with giving general information about the breed for stats and the like. I'm planning on breeding towards a specific goal and I want to be able to differntiate my birds from someone who's just in it for the payday and not concerned about type and the like...Cindylee (sorry Cindylee) might be a really nice person and perhaps her stock is good now but I don't want to be lumped in with birds that look like or come from strains like that...call me a chicken snob but I'm trying to be patient and put in some good effort into perfecting my flock and not sure I want to become part of someone else's registry dumpster...but perhaps a registry may be just what I need in the future...
I do see the value in it but I just don't see any consensus on breed standards being taken up and we here are just a small part of the CLB community that is out there and folks are breeding and selling like wildfire. We know our birds are off the mark from the UK standards and some are fine with that. I am not and so are a few others. I don't want to just accept what we have as the standard because that's what we bought and what was imported. I want to give attention to the original concept behind the bird. I think given the small gene pool it would be a good idea...but...oh so many questions start flowing through my head.

 

[ChicKat]

Just had to jump in here real quick and share a picture of my newest additions to my CL flock. You all know that I have struggled all summer with hatching shipped eggs. I finally ended up getting two nice pairs of juveniles from Jordan Farm and at the same time that deal was coming to fruition, madamwlf offered me eggs too. I just couldn't bring myself to try shipped eggs again, so we decided she would hatch them for me and send me the babies. So they arrived this morning, PO called at 6am. I was so happy to see them. So I now have 2 white boys, 1 white girl and 4 regular girls. They made the trip from MD to WY and are all in great shape. Thank you madamwlf! I love them already. So here is a picture of them in the isolation brooder, they will be here for a while before they can go to a grow out pen.

Very pretty chick!!!

 

[ChicKat]

Thank you Omaeve,

Had you not posted that, I never would have seen it. Who would have thought that the idea of a chicken pedigree database would be considered do-able.

You had also mentioned earlier about a color card. Here is one - not the Ameraucana or Araucana color card...but one that would probably cover blue eggs, green eggs, and maybe even the cream colors previously discussed:

http://www.onlineauctioncolorchart.com/index.html

One thing that it says is 'the exact color would never be matched but you can say -- "it is like color xxx only a bit lighter." to give a person in a remote location the color that you are refering to in your location. ..... I did find a pretty good match for my egg-shell color as 'between xxx and xxx' Something to consider.

 

[ChicKat]

Hi blackbirds13,

Some of your concerns, I understand, and some of them may be resolved by a registry. (For example, the birds that didn't seem quite like cream legbars that were sold at auctions)

It is always possible for someone to 'cheat' and I suppose substitute pictures of birds that are not their own....but I suspect even something like that would come out in a registry and perhaps more problems and disappointments would be prevented than caused. I'm not 100% certain that folks who can't trace back to GFF will have cream legbars. I think that genetically with brown leghorns and barred rocks, throw in a UK crested araucana for crest and egg color and cream gene, someone could 'build their own' cream legbar. But it sounds like something easier said than done. Partially because I don't have information on the other source that imported the birds from the UK.

I think Phage said it well a few pages back too:

"It is critical that we do this, as, as we have already seen, it is too easy for a mistake to happen.
There is software (that zoo etc use) designed exactly for this purpose. Will check it out.

The Basque and Pescadena roosters look so similar to the CL that mistakes will happen, and mixed birds will (have already) flood the market as pures. This is likely why the Ebay prices have sky rocketed again - folk want to start over and replace the dubious birds. ".

A registry would preserve the integrity of the birds of people who do want to work on the integrity of the genetics of cream legbars. We raise registered cattle here, so I am familiar with the registry process. And blood lines are important in animals like cattle and horses and they are used to predict performance. Could that be replicated in chickens? Maybe.

all that being said too--- We probably should start a new thread devoted to the whole idea of the registration of the birds...since it is an administrative topic that is kind of getting away from pictures of our hatches and discussing the birds themselves. What do y'all think?

 

[redchicken9]

Gosh, I don't really know how the chicken thing would go. You take a registered goat and she throw triplets from a registered sire. You fill out information, tattoo the ears and send in for the papers. Easy to know whose babies are whose. An occasional mistake, sure. You take a hen, you hatch or sell 150 eggs. You times that by 10 pullets, hmm up to 1500 new chicks. That's a heck of a lot of data base and work on 1 breeding season. Mistakes, I'm sure. I love my chickens, but not enough to take out a part time job tracking them. Will I track some of my chickens? yes that's the plan. Would I believe someone else is tracking their flock like this? Would a chick picture even prove it was the same chicken? I take the photo of the baby chick I sell, really is anyone going to be able to track this individual. Ok, does anyone chicken tattoo? Are these birds really this valuable for microchip? Maybe you track males, since a lot of them are culled, but no more 2 roos per flock. Hmm, if I bought a chick, would I want the responsibility of tracking its pedigree? Seems cumbersome.

 

[ChicKat]

I agreee redchicken9, but of the 1500 chickens, would you register all of them? Or would you keep a breeding flock and keep those registr. up to date??

 

[normanack]

That auction color chart is a heck of a lot cheaper than Pantone products. Just glancing at it, and I could be wrong, it looks like the color chips are bigger than the ones offered by poultry clubs. Those are cheap, too -- I keep forgetting to order those.

 

[ChicKat]

That auction color chart is a heck of a lot cheaper than Pantone products. Just glancing at it, and I could be wrong, it looks like the color chips are bigger than the ones offered by poultry clubs. Those are cheap, too -- I keep forgetting to order those.

I'm all for saving. :O)

3/4" x 3/4" is the size of the color squares. 12-pages of colors 77 colors on a page.