The Moonshiner's Leghorns

[Amer]

Okay thank you for telling me that. I remember reading that now that you mention it. My husband and I are going to try to find my copy of the SOP book this weekend. I have bred Old English Games and Black Copper Marans to SOP, but OEG are white legged and Marans are slate legged so the fading yellow leg color in females didn't occur to me as far as SOP until I started looking over the Leghorns for potential flaws.

How do you think the hens look? They aren't perfect by any means, but I don't think they're too bad.

Typewise the top bird is very good. Colorwise she is the correct shade but has shafting whoch is a fault. The second is far too pinched, has shafting, and is too dark in color. She looks kind of unbalanced, are her legs too far back?

 

[Amer]

She's shallow too, I wouldn't use that one for breeding.

 

[KF0002]

Typewise the top bird is very good. Colorwise she is the correct shade but has shafting whoch is a fault. The second is far too pinched, has shafting, and is too dark in color. She looks kind of unbalanced, are her legs too far back?

She is extremely skittish so I think it is the way she was standing because she was leery of me taking pictures. But I can throw her out if she is too dark an not good in type. Here is another picture of her. I struggled to get them to stand still.

Here is another picture of the lighter hen.

They are a starting point as something to work with until I can get my hands on better birds. Maybe @The Moonshiner will sell me some eggs.

 

[Yard Farmer]

I'll be following this thread. Should be interesting - not OEG bantams, but it'll do.

 

[KF0002]

Okay so I threw the dark, higher tailed hen out today as per the advice of @Amer . Then I changed gears a bit. I was always taught that before you work on painting the barn, you have to build it first. I have a White Legbar rooster who identifies as a Leghorn and is begging to be included in this project of mine. Also, I can work on Crele Leghorns as another side project with his progeny. So I put him with the light brown hen today. She has a really nice type and is a very good sized hen. I wish I could capture it in a picture but she is so timid and flighty.

I have enough eggs in the incubators from the Red x Browns to see how they are going to look and hopefully enough useful birds from them. And as of right now, they are feathering out to look like Dark Brown Leghorns I’m thinking.

So the White Legbar rooster is one of many whites thrown from the Cream/Crele line of Legbars I have. They came from GFF and the white is recessive. I know it isn’t ideal to use a breed with a different color egg but I will keep breeding back to Leghorn after this crossing until the Blue egg genes are gone.

Thoughts? Please don’t throw me out of the group. These birds are for my own personal use. Zero birds will be sold.

Just look at this topline and tail! The Leghorn ancestry in this one is strong for sure. He is a 3 year old cock this year. Also this bird is built like a brick and is very wide. Pardon his frost bitten comb. He has a very tiny crest and those are rather easy to breed out.

@Amer can you help me out with the genotype for crele legbar that is phenotypically recessive white?

 

[KF0002]

This is the best picture I could get. She is a nice sized hen with a good wide back. It just is impossible to take a good picture of chickens who think you are trying to eat them.

This picture was taken before all the rearranging of birds. She is now single mated to the White Legbar.

 

[Amer]

Okay so I threw the dark, higher tailed hen out today as per the advice of @Amer . Then I changed gears a bit. I was always taught that before you work on painting the barn, you have to build it first. I have a White Legbar rooster who identifies as a Leghorn and is begging to be included in this project of mine. Also, I can work on Crele Leghorns as another side project with his progeny. So I put him with the light brown hen today. She has a really nice type and is a very good sized hen. I wish I could capture it in a picture but she is so timid and flighty.

I have enough eggs in the incubators from the Red x Browns to see how they are going to look and hopefully enough useful birds from them. And as of right now, they are feathering out to look like Dark Brown Leghorns I’m thinking.

So the White Leghorn rooster is one of many whites thrown from the Cream/Crele line of Legbars I have. They came from GFF and the white is recessive. I know it isn’t ideal to use a breed with a different color egg but I will keep breeding back to Leghorn after this crossing until the Blue egg genes are gone.

Thoughts? Please don’t throw me out of the group. These birds are for my own personal use. Zero birds will be sold.

Just look at this topline and tail! The Leghorn ancestry in this one is strong for sure. He is a 3 year old cock this year. Also this bird is build like a brick and is very wide. Pardon his frost bitten comb. He has a very tiny crest and those are rather easy to breed out.

@Amer can you help me out with the genotype for crele legbar that is phenotypically recessive white?

View attachment 4083620

View attachment 4083621

Haha, rather heavily built for a Leghorn but I suppose that can be easily bred out.
White Legbars have the same genes as other Legbars, except they are homozygous for the recessive white gene: c/c.
Cream Legbars are duckwing, barred, and cream
e+/e+B/Big/ig
Gold crele Legbars may or may not have a recessive cream allele
e+/e+B/BIg+/ig OR
e+/e+B/BIg+/Ig+
We don't know if he has the cream gene because he is white. So he could have any of the genotypes I listed along with recessive white.

 

[KF0002]

Haha, rather heavily built for a Leghorn but I suppose that can be easily bred out.
White Legbars have the same genes as other Legbars, except they are homozygous for the recessive white gene: c/c.
Cream Legbars are duckwing, barred, and cream
e+/e+B/Big/ig
Gold crele Legbars may or may not have a recessive cream allele
e+/e+B/BIg+/ig OR
e+/e+B/BIg+/Ig+
We don't know if he has the cream gene because he is white. So he could have any of the genotypes I listed along with recessive white.

He is a bit heavier than ideal for a Leghorn, but I really love his type and tail set. I think it will balance out in the offspring. Also, this is just one crossing to him then I will be breeding back to Leghorn from then on. Its really no different than crossing Leghorns to RIR to get black tailed reds and Reds. Outcrossing to other breeds is how a lot of new varieties are created. The blue egg gene is much easier to breed out than brown.

I have crossed a Leghorn/Legbar mix rooster back to a Leghorn hen in the past and a lot of the pullets laid white eggs, while some laid pale blue. This can be selectively bred out in future generations, using Leghorn males over the Leghorn/Legbar crossed females. Once you get to a certain point, you only select pullets with no crest who lay white to breed forward.

Legbars have mostly white ear lobes, are similar essentially in leg color, build, and comb. The topline and tail, and barring genes is what I would really like to take from this crossing. I realize I am reinventing the wheel here as Crele Leghorns have already been done, but like The Moonshiner, my husband and I breed for our own personal use and we enjoy it. We will get excellent layers from the cross, and hopefully some decent birds for us to use in the Leghorn projects. It’s all good fun.

 

[Amer]

He is a bit heavier than ideal for a Leghorn, but I really love his type and tail set. I think it will balance out in the offspring. Also, this is just one crossing to him then I will be breeding back to Leghorn from then on. Its really no different than crossing Leghorns to RIR to get black tailed reds and Reds. Outcrossing to other breeds is how a lot of new varieties are created. The blue egg gene is much easier to breed out than brown.

I have crossed a Leghorn/Legbar mix rooster back to a Leghorn hen in the past and a lot of the pullets laid white eggs, while some laid pale blue. This can be selectively bred out in future generations, using Leghorn males over the Leghorn/Legbar crossed females. Once you get to a certain point, you only select pullets with no crest who lay white to breed forward.

Legbars have mostly white ear lobes, are similar essentially in leg color, build, and comb. The topline and tail, and barring genes is what I would really like to take from this crossing. I realize I am reinventing the wheel here as Crele Leghorns have already been done, but like The Moonshiner, my husband and I breed for our own personal use and we enjoy it. We will get excellent layers from the cross, and hopefully some decent birds for us to use in the Leghorn projects. It’s all good fun.

I'm not seeing the type and tail set but I do think he will be good to use to create creles.

 

[KF0002]

@Amer so recessive white in chickens and recessive white in turkeys is represented by the same letters (cc). Very cool. I’m learning.