Cream Legbar questions for breeding.

[The Moonshiner]

With silver, the resulting bird would be mostly white, and that seemed like a lot of work to make a white bird.

You lost me here.
Why do you say it would be mostly white?

Your terminology is different then mine....
extended black (eb) Extended black to me is E
Copper Marans are an example of eb Copper Marans are Birchen to me (ER)
E (wild type, chipmunk chick down, AKA BB Red or Partridge)
Wild type to me is e+ & Partridge is eb
Welsummer and Legbars are wild type e+ in my understanding.

I'm confused by your post

 

[RememberTheWay]

View attachment 3933469In keeping with the "picture is worth 1000 words", I already used my 1000 words, so a picture is in order. See the champagne colored chests on the pullets? I love that color. Plus, I am trying to make these look as different as I can from the Opal Legbars, which I raise with them to save space.

Ok- I think that's the part my brain left out. I was actually discussing black Ameraucana's and using them for a self blue project so yes, you are right, extended black was the missing piece. I am curious though for an opal legbar is that on gold too? Or silver? I know a little when it comes to genetics, but I am not by any means an expert. Very green still so still trying to sort things out.

I do have to say that the bird in the photo looks amazing! I love the build on them. What do you use your birds for? Layers? Show? Meat? Dual? What about the extra males from breeding? Just curious

And of course you mentioned Opal legbars..... Do you by any chance have pictures? And do you sell Hatching eggs?

 

[RememberTheWay]

You lost me here.
Why do you say it would be mostly white?

Your terminology is different then mine....
extended black (eb) Extended black to me is E
Copper Marans are an example of eb Copper Marans are Birchen to me (ER)
E (wild type, chipmunk chick down, AKA BB Red or Partridge)
Wild type to me is e+ & Partridge is eb
Welsummer and Legbars are wild type e+ in my understanding.

I'm confused by your post

I was wondering about the mostly white statement too, trying to picture what they meant in my mind. I'm assuming because of the barring on males? But I'm thinking Legbar....so I don't know.... .

Following along for clarification

 

[RememberTheWay]

You lost me here.
Why do you say it would be mostly white?

Your terminology is different then mine....
extended black (eb) Extended black to me is E
Copper Marans are an example of eb Copper Marans are Birchen to me (ER)
E (wild type, chipmunk chick down, AKA BB Red or Partridge)
Wild type to me is e+ & Partridge is eb
Welsummer and Legbars are wild type e+ in my understanding.

I'm confused by your post

In reading the post again, it sounds like maybe she thought the lavender bar would also dilute to silver? Essentially making the entire bird white? Maybe? But I am still not sure. I don't know the abbreviations well enough to catch mistakes the way you can

I am curious though if you could explain to me how choosing the two different lines (her gold vs silver) would play out in regards to color, the purity of them, and leakage please?

 

[The Moonshiner]

I am curious though for an opal legbar is that on gold too? Or silver?

Opal Legbars are lavender on gold duckwing.
CCL were used in making them so there was also the cream gene. It wasn't focused on so when the first ones started going out some had cream and some didn't.

 

[RememberTheWay]

Opal Legbars are lavender on gold duckwing.
CCL were used in making them so there was also the cream gene. It wasn't focused on so when the first ones started going out some had cream and some didn't.

How would I know if mine actually have cream or not?

 

[The Moonshiner]

I was wondering about the mostly white statement too, trying to picture what they meant in my mind. I'm assuming because of the barring on males? But I'm thinking Legbar....so I don't know.... .

Following along for clarification

They definitely have more white when silver based then gold just because white replaces the gold. I can see the barring adding to that but it would add white to the gold based just the same and hens don't really show much barring.

 

[The Moonshiner]

How would I know if mine actually have cream or not?

It would be hard to tell for my eyes. Cream would make the diluted gold tones a little more diluted but not much.
I work with leghorns so cream didn't come into play with me. I did work some with lavender and barring on gold duckwing but I wasn't excited with them so I went back to lavender gold duckwings. I wasn't super enthused with the gold tones and how they looked when diluted so I wondered if I'd be more happy with lavender on silver duckwing.
Imo they looked better. More crisp and clean looking. Lavender silver duckwing are all I have now but I've moved on to working with blue instead of lavender so I've not been doing much with lavender except keeping a few.

 

[dheltzel]

You lost me here.
Why do you say it would be mostly white?

Your terminology is different then mine....
extended black (eb) Extended black to me is E
Copper Marans are an example of eb Copper Marans are Birchen to me (ER)
E (wild type, chipmunk chick down, AKA BB Red or Partridge)
Wild type to me is e+ & Partridge is eb
Welsummer and Legbars are wild type e+ in my understanding.

I'm confused by your post

Sorry, you are right about the e+. I work only with e+ and EB, and seldom mix the 2. A Copper Marans chick looks like a classic extended black to me, and I had assumed the Lavender Marans were the same down type. I sold most of my LM, but still work with that outcross to the Coppers to try to improve egg color. My lavender Marans show a lot of leakage and will not be show type, but I don't show and the egg color interests me more. I may just all them "Lavender Copper Marans" if the show breeders give me grief about the leakage.

I have not done lavender on silver e+, but I think the silver part of the plumage would remain white. The sexlinked barring would certainly remain white. The remaining black would become lavender, but just as a lavender cuckoo looks rather washed out (to me), I think the result would not be to my liking. Already, my Silver Crele Welsummer (aka Silver Welbar) have a lot of white. They still retain some black markings, but when I picture the black diluted to the very light grey from the lavender gene, I don't think the cockerels would look very good. I will have to try to find a pic of a Silver Welbar cockerel.

 

[dheltzel]

Ok- I think that's the part my brain left out. I was actually discussing black Ameraucana's and using them for a self blue project so yes, you are right, extended black was the missing piece. I am curious though for an opal legbar is that on gold too? Or silver? I know a little when it comes to genetics, but I am not by any means an expert. Very green still so still trying to sort things out.

I do have to say that the bird in the photo looks amazing! I love the build on them. What do you use your birds for? Layers? Show? Meat? Dual? What about the extra males from breeding? Just curious

And of course you mentioned Opal legbars..... Do you by any chance have pictures? And do you sell Hatching eggs?

Those in the pic did not lay dark enough eggs, so I didn't feel right about releasing them. This year has seen better egg color, but it is still rather unstable IMO. Releasing a new color variant of an existing breed requires some tradeoffs for sure. I have been years with this and sometimes I think I should be farther along, but breeding for quality is not for the impatient. I hae worked with several new colors of existing breeds and usually I come to the conclusion that the original breeder released them too soon and left much for me to fix.
When I release them, I hope to have 3 final lines from this 1 project:
1) Isabel Crele Welsummers - the dark egg counterpart to the Opal Legbar
2) Isabel Crele Olive Eggers - autosexing, lavender and homozygous for the blue egg gene
3) Crele Olive Eggers - gold variant of #2. Will probably carry lavender in some.

Either of the Olive Eggers will be popular in the local chicks sales as purebreds, or their pullets, crossed to a dark egg line of Copper Marans, would make black sexlinks with even darker egg color. Lots of breeders are making olive egg sexlinks with Cream Legbar X Marans, imagine if instead of starting with light blue, you could start with dark green and then add the even darker shades of the Marans.

As for the Opal Legbars, I have pics and a somewhat out-of-date writeup on my website: http://welbars.com/index.php/legbars/opal-legbars/
I feel like this year I made progress on the cresting. Time will tell if an outcross to the very docile Creams has made progress with the Opal cockerels getting a bit nasty at times.