Welbars - Breed thread and discussion

[Magicbubble]

How big are Bantam welbar eggs please

 

[dheltzel]

A beautiful Silver Welbar pullet owned by a friend. These interbreed with the normal gold color birds. Silver is sexlinked and dominant, so a silver hen and gold roo will produce all gold pullets and silver cockerels. My breeding roos are silver, split for gold, so the resulting chicks are about 50/50 of the 2 colors.

 

[Shepshill]

I have my first welbar - actually from dheltzel. We expect to see her laying in a month or two (probably late October at the earliest). She is about four to five months old and already has a gorgeous red comb and wattle coming in. She's so pretty - she is my husband's new favorite. While I don't get to handle the newest pullets (picture below) like I did the older hens when we first got them, she is easy to pick up off of the roost at night, does not freak out when I touch her, and is overall super sweet. I am sure that as she gets older and I have more time to spend with her, she'll be just as tame as our older hens. I'm so excited to see how her eggs look! She's already very big in size - about as big as our two-year-old hens.

Buying from dheltzel was a very easy experience, and we received a healthy pullet as promised. We drove from DC to PA to go get her and integrated her to the flock along with the blue barnevelder we purchased the day before at a swap. These two are now inseparable.

.

She’s beautiful!

 

[Shepshill]

View attachment 1304974
A beautiful Silver Welbar pullet owned by a friend. These interbreed with the normal gold color birds. Silver is sexlinked and dominant, so a silver hen and gold roo will produce all gold pullets and silver cockerels. My breeding roos are silver, split for gold, so the resulting chicks are about 50/50 of the 2 colors.

She’s gorgeous!

 

[Upper Brook House Farm]

Hi, are welbar hens good broodies and are the cocks loud?
Thanks,
James

Every breed needs it's own message thread, right? Even if it is still rare.

Welbars were created in the UK in the early 40's as part of the autosexing chicken "craze". They lend themselves very well to that, being one of the easier paths to clearly sexable chicks. Originally intended as a utility breed like Rhodebars and Legbars, they fell out of favor even in the UK, but apparently a small number of breeders have been keeping them from going extinct.

There are a few pages devoted to Welbars. The best I have found in hours of research is this one: http://www.harislau.info/welbars

I have spent the last 3 years recreating this breed from the original genetic "recipe". Welbars are often used as an example of how an autosexing breed is created, but they have never been imported to the US (that I have been able to find).

Here are some pictures from my flock:

A major concern with any chicken is the eggs they lay. This is a comparison of Welbars, Welsummers and Copper Marans, all gathered directly from my flocks.
Of these 3 breeds, my Welbars are clearly laying the most eggs per hen.

One of my Welbar pullets


Flock of Welbars, expecting a treat, not a photo op!


Pair of Welbar chicks, showing how easily they are sexed (female on left).

 

[TinyTXFarm]

We found Welbar chicks at Tractor Supply today and grabbed two. I also got two Dominique pullets. I can’t wait to see them all grown. We hope the broody hen we stuck them in with who has one hatched already will not reject them. :/

 

[Dazed and Confused]

This thread needs to start up again.

So my old man has recently retired and decided to breed chickens, which is great, I've already bought one (Barred Rock hen), thrown it in his pen and thanked him for feeding and raising my bird for the next number of years.

Much like myself, Dan runs before he walks and has spent the summer hatching various different birds with a 'loose' idea of what he wants to do in the future. His flock currently contains:

- 8 Welbar hens
- 3 RIR's (1 roo 2 hens... we think, its still early)
- 7 Cream Legbars (2 roos, 5 hens)
- 1 BR - her name is Ellie

So, my original thought was to create some Rhodebar's, using the RIR's to breed back across. however, it appears from some reading that they are genetically more complex than i originally gave them credit for... Whereas the Welbar's can be made from 3 generations with Welsummers (please correct me if I'm wrong). The great thing about this last minute change, is we have some "pure breed" welbars already which we can use to benchmark our success / or failure against.

I have done some research, gone deep into the darkness of genetics, found myself dazed and confused and ultimately looking for some advice... So, the next step is to go hunting on the dark chicken web and find a Welsummer Roo (a Casper for my Ellie). I believe the male offspring will be single barred, and the hen will not.

Does anyone have a photo of the 1st generation roo with the single barring? it would be great if someone could share photos of the birds they bred to get to their flock of welbars.

also, when they say the birds are single barred, is there a visual difference to double barred? or is it purely a terminology for the genetic code?

 

[dheltzel]

What do your Welbars look like? I have some pics of Welbars on my website: http://welbars.com/doku.php?id=welbars:start
A US hatchery (Privett) has been selling "welbars" and they supply chicks to TSC. I have no idea where they got them, or if they are doing a "trendy name" thing by creating black sexlinks from Barred Rock hens and a Welsummer cockerel. True Welbars should look a lot like the pics on my website, which also has a bunch of links to other sites with Welbar information.
Welbars should lay dark eggs, like a good Welsummer or Marans. Hatcheries tend to breed anything that lays well and slap a name on it for marketing purposes. I have approached several hatcheries and offered to give them stock, but they don't think they can make money selling such an unknown breed.
Also, for anyone on FB, there is a Welbar group there that is much more active than this thread. I am the admin of that group, as well as the originator of most of the true Welbars that exist in the US now. Feel free to message me here or there if you are interested in getting a good start with these birds. I have stopped shipping for this year, but intend to have stock available next spring. The breed needs more champions to develop their own lines and improve them over time.

 

[Dazed and Confused]

What do your Welbars look like? I have some pics of Welbars on my website: http://welbars.com/doku.php?id=welbars:start
A US hatchery (Privett) has been selling "welbars" and they supply chicks to TSC. I have no idea where they got them, or if they are doing a "trendy name" thing by creating black sexlinks from Barred Rock hens and a Welsummer cockerel. True Welbars should look a lot like the pics on my website, which also has a bunch of links to other sites with Welbar information.
Welbars should lay dark eggs, like a good Welsummer or Marans. Hatcheries tend to breed anything that lays well and slap a name on it for marketing purposes. I have approached several hatcheries and offered to give them stock, but they don't think they can make money selling such an unknown breed.
Also, for anyone on FB, there is a Welbar group there that is much more active than this thread. I am the admin of that group, as well as the originator of most of the true Welbars that exist in the US now. Feel free to message me here or there if you are interested in getting a good start with these birds. I have stopped shipping for this year, but intend to have stock available next spring. The breed needs more champions to develop their own lines and improve them over time.

Yes they look just like that, all be it younger. Dad has joined the Autosexing Chicken Association in the UK and found them through there from a man who took his breeding very seriously, so quite confident they are a good representation of the breed. I will drop a photo in here of his stock when I next pop around to check on Ellie.

Welbars are very rare in the UK, we know of 3-4 breeders (who obviously all know each other) and their stock is in some instances derived from each others, as now is ours. so there appears to be a very small gene pool, which was part of my reasoning for trying to develop our own line.

As you can tell I'm am a complete novice, I have no idea if following this process will result in offspring that are a fine example of the breed, or a complete abomination. Out of interest, how did you get your Welbars? did you buy or breed?

 

[dheltzel]

Yes they look just like that, all be it younger. Dad has joined the Autosexing Chicken Association in the UK and found them through there from a man who took his breeding very seriously, so quite confident they are a good representation of the breed. I will drop a photo in here of his stock when I next pop around to check on Ellie.

Welbars are very rare in the UK, we know of 3-4 breeders (who obviously all know each other) and their stock is in some instances derived from each others, as now is ours. so there appears to be a very small gene pool, which was part of my reasoning for trying to develop our own line.

As you can tell I'm am a complete novice, I have no idea if following this process will result in offspring that are a fine example of the breed, or a complete abomination. Out of interest, how did you get your Welbars? did you buy or breed?

Not sure why I assumed you were in the US, just used to participating mostly in groups with local people. Welbars are better represented in the UK. AFAIK, no one successfully imported them to the US, I recreated my line about 5 years ago. A well known importer, who brought Cream Legbars to the US, tried to import Welbars, but could not get them to be correctly autosexing because they were using single barred cockerels and could not see that (though it was obvious from the few pics they posted).

Fortunately, Welbars are the easiest of all common autosexing breeds to outcross but keep pure. Because they are (genetically) simply a Crele Welsummer (Partridge + sex-lined barring), all you need is a single Welbar cockerel to create your own line from Welsummers. I do this regularly to bring in traits I want. Get some Welsummer pullets from a good line (show type, dark eggs, etc). The better the line of Welsummers, the better your Welbars will get. Put your Welbar cockerel with those pullets and hatch a bunch of chicks. The F1's are not autosexing, so you will need to raise them a few weeks before you can cull the cockerels. All the F1 pullets are pure Welbars, with half their genes from those Welsummer pullets. Breed them back to their father and all chicks are autosexing! You can continue to do that outcross with any line of Welsummers that you wish, just remember, bad traits are as heritable as good ones.