Breeding Cream Legbars

[ChickInn829]

Hello everyone!

We have had chickens for several years now and my children have recently become interested in raising/selling chickens (3 months) as a little side business. They are especially interested in cream legbars.

Please forgive my ignorance, but if you breed a CL rooster with CL hen, will you get CL chicks? I know they’re breed created from three different breeds, so I wasn’t sure if the breed stays pure or not. Any information would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

[R2elk]

Hello everyone!

We have had chickens for several years now and my children have recently become interested in raising/selling chickens (3 months) as a little side business. They are especially interested in cream legbars.

Please forgive my ignorance, but if you breed a CL rooster with CL hen, will you get CL chicks? I know they’re breed created from three different breeds, so I wasn’t sure if the breed stays pure or not. Any information would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

They breed true.

 

[eulogos]

I once hoped to do it, but the CL male was the one chick of 20 (at a sort of teen-ager stage) taken by some predator who dug under the wire. Maybe because he was the only male and already was trying to defend the rest? Then the female just dropped dead at only a year and a few months old, for no apparent reason. That totally discouraged me. I did set some of her eggs before she died and have a few hens who are clearly her descendants, although of course, mixed.

 

[R2elk]

They breed true.

To clarify if the Cream Legbars that are used are homozygous for their traits, they will breed true. If they happen to be heterozygous for their dominant traits, it is possible that they might not breed true. A couple of their dominant traits which only require the presence of a single copy of the gene for the trait to be expressed are the crest and the blue egg genes.

 

[ChickInn829]

To clarify if the Cream Legbars that are used are homozygous for their traits, they will breed true. If they happen to be heterozygous for their dominant traits, it is possible that they might not breed true. A couple of their dominant traits which only require the presence of a single copy of the gene for the trait to be expressed are the crest and the blue egg genes.

Thank you so much... Do you know any of the homozygous traits that I should be looking for in our flock?

 

[R2elk]

Thank you so much... Do you know any of the homozygous traits that I should be looking for in our flock?

The problem with those traits are that they are dominant traits. This means that you can only learn about whether they are homozygous or heterozygous is through DNA testing or carefully managed and recorded test breedings and their results. If the breedings result in offspring that do not have a crest, both of the parents have to be heterozygous for the crest gene. The same thing applies to the blue egg gene. If female offspring do not produce blue eggs, then both of the parents have to be heterozygous for the blue egg gene or in the case of the rooster, possibly not having even one blue egg gene.

It would be helpful to obtain access to the proposed SOP for Cream Legbars and try to breed for the desired traits. I believe that @duluthralphie may be able to help you in that area.

 

[duluthralphie]

The Cream legbar proposed SOP can be found here:

https://creamlegbarclub.com/breed-1/

Also keep in mind there is some fine tuning on the color being done.