Cream Legbar questions for breeding.

[The Moonshiner]

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.

I have Leghorns so some of my projects are duckwing based and since Welsummer are duckwing based also your birds also interest me.
I've also made straight lavender and lavender barred. I agree lavender barred looked a lot better in my head then they did on the ground.
I've done some stuff with crele and silver crele and with lavender on various patterns.
So many people frown on anything with lavender because of the shedder gene. I still love the gene and color but ya I've mostly moved on to all the same but with blue instead.

 

[dheltzel]

I have Leghorns so some of my projects are duckwing based and since Welsummer are duckwing based also your birds also interest me.
I've also made straight lavender and lavender barred. I agree lavender barred looked a lot better in my head then they did on the ground.
I've done some stuff with crele and silver crele and with lavender on various patterns.
So many people frown on anything with lavender because of the shedder gene. I still love the gene and color but ya I've mostly moved on to all the same but with blue instead.

I've never seen anything definitive about the "shredder gene" being an actual gene with linkage to lavender. It does not appear in all lavender birds, adding to the confusion. Since I make the colors I like and not to become future showable colors, I only care about feather shredding if it happens in a bird and I find it distasteful.

Lavender is interesting to me because it has had some research into the gene placement. A Florida lab has a genetic test for the lavender gene, but it does not work for many of the lavender chickens - I know because I helped them test it by sending genetic samples from all my lavender breeds and found that all the large fowl did not test positive for the lavender gene, but the bantams did! I am fairly certain that there is a 3rd allele one the gene controlling the lavender dilution. What if one of them exhibits the shredding and the other does not? Wouldn't that be a great test - to tell you which allele a bird has for lavender. The lab did not seem interested in pursuing that as part of their test, and as I predicted, at least one customer has gotten quite mad when they sent samples that tested negative - from a lavender bird.
I put some notes about this test and the crosses I made to "prove" that this is a 3rd allele and not a separate gene with the same phenotype effect. http://welbars.com/index.php/extras/projects/

 

[dheltzel]

I have Leghorns so some of my projects are duckwing based and since Welsummer are duckwing based also your birds also interest me.
I've also made straight lavender and lavender barred. I agree lavender barred looked a lot better in my head then they did on the ground.
I've done some stuff with crele and silver crele and with lavender on various patterns.

Have you worked with rosecomb leghorns? That is my latest project.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I come to the conclusion that the original breeder released them too soon and left much for me to fix.

This is too true with the Opal Legbars.
I was working with the Isabel Leghorns when the opal project started.
Honestly the ILs were released with issues too.
We were all dealing with the shredder gene and the cocketels wing patch. ILs laid tinted eggs so I was fighting to get pure white.
When the opals started she focused so hard and getting as many with the lavender gene on the ground. I was saying slow down and go back to legbars and splits to work on feather quality.
I also thought and suggested to really focus on the blue egg gene and breeding back would help get it locked in instead of so many only carrying one gene.
All that went in one ear and out the other and ya lots of those first eggs went out as an unfinished product imo.

 

[dheltzel]

This is too true with the Opal Legbars.
I was working with the Isabel Leghorns when the opal project started.
Honestly the ILs were released with issues too.
We were all dealing with the shredder gene and the cocketels wing patch. ILs laid tinted eggs so I was fighting to get pure white.
When the opals started she focused so hard and getting as many with the lavender gene on the ground. I was saying slow down and go back to legbars and splits to work on feather quality.
I also thought and suggested to really focus on the blue egg gene and breeding back would help get it locked in instead of so many only carrying one gene.
All that went in one ear and out the other and ya lots of those first eggs went out as an unfinished product imo.

It took me years, and much expensive genetic testing to fix the blue egg gene in my Opals. Now all are O/O and I can move on to the other problems in the Opals. I have been trying to get the O/O opals out to other breeders. Once I had the testing done and my flock all homozygous, it is far cheaper for someone to buy some chicks from me than to get their flock tested. We need several good breeders around the country to work on distributing high quality Opals so people don't have to start with the junk birds that are out there now.

BTW, next spring Sand Hill Preservation Center will have a fully homozygous flock of Opal Legbars. He sells his Opal chicks for like 1/10 of that Meyer Hatchery sells them for, and they will be far better breeding stock!

 

[The Moonshiner]

Have you worked with rosecomb leghorns? That is my latest project.

I have a bit. It was actually to see how the lavender looked on dark brown Leghorns as opposed to the regular browns.
The only dark browns I could find were rosecomb.
I love making new colors/patterns so I always have too many projects going on. Soon into the project with the rosecomb birds I started thinking I wonder what this or that would look with a rosecomb.
I quickly got out of them and got rid of them all in fear that my projects might just all double.

 

[dheltzel]

I have a bit. It was actually to see how the lavender looked on dark brown Leghorns as opposed to the regular browns.
The only dark browns I could find were rosecomb.
I love making new colors/patterns so I always have too many projects going on. Soon into the project with the rosecomb birds I started thinking I wonder what this or that would look with a rosecomb.
I quickly got out of them and got rid of them all in fear that my projects might just all double.

I probably bit off more than I should have with adding Rosecomb brown leghorns. The number of spin-off projects from them is mind-boggling.
Sometimes I get a new breed and quickly decide I don't like them. Leghorns have never been my favorites (no offense intended - the poultry world needs diversity of likes). These are "supposed" to be the more docile of the Leghorns. We'll see. In any case, they are scarce in my area and worth a look for someone that wants a more frost hardy but high productivity layer.

 

[The Moonshiner]

It took me years, and much expensive genetic testing to fix the blue egg gene in my Opals. Now all are O/O and I can move on to the other problems in the Opals. I have been trying to get the O/O opals out to other breeders. Once I had the testing done and my flock all homozygous, it is far cheaper for someone to buy some chicks from me than to get their flock tested. We need several good breeders around the country to work on distributing high quality Opals so people don't have to start with the junk birds that are out there now.

BTW, next spring Sand Hill Preservation Center will have a fully homozygous flock of Opal Legbars. He sells his Opal chicks for like 1/10 of that Meyer Hatchery sells them for, and they will be far better breeding stock!

Oh I know. When opals started there wasn't testing. I explained if she kept working with Legbars and splits focusing on the blue egg gene she could carry the lavender gene.
She still had a few ILs and I had lots of Leghorns. Test breeding back to leghorns could of sorted out getting pure blue egg gene stock.
Of course it would of been a pain and time consuming but I always considered that egg color should take priority since they were supposed to be legbars.
As you are well aware it seems getting the lavender pattern seemed far easier imo then maintaining that egg color.

 

[The Moonshiner]

No offense. For such a well known breed as leghorns are I've never found them popular with many. Hell here I can't even sell eggs for eating because they're white. People think farm fresh need to be brown.
I went through a few breeds and settled on Orps for a whole. They were popular but grew to slow, ate a ton, etc etc.
I had some leghorns in my mixed flock and admired their ability to survive free ranging so I switched to them and loved them.
My grandmother raised them when I was young and she was my main chicken enabler so also in her honor.
I'm like you I can pick a pattern and see how it can spiderweb into different directions.
I just breed for myself but I figured regardless of the breed I can show others the possibilities. If I can make this, that or the other with Leghorns then anyone can make things with other breeds if put their minds to it.

 

[dheltzel]

Oh I know. When opals started there wasn't testing. I explained if she kept working with Legbars and splits focusing on the blue egg gene she could carry the lavender gene.
She still had a few ILs and I had lots of Leghorns. Test breeding back to leghorns could of sorted out getting pure blue egg gene stock.
Of course it would of been a pain and time consuming but I always considered that egg color should take priority since they were supposed to be legbars.
As you are well aware it seems getting the lavender pattern seemed far easier imo then maintaining that egg color.

This exactly proves my instincts about the Isabel Welbars. If they do not lay an egg that is dark enough to be called a Welsummer, then I have more work to do, I am currently raising the f6 chicks and they look good, but with Welsummer, as with Legbars, it is ALL about egg color. Fixing the blue egg gene is easy now with genetic testing, but it is expensive and if your goal is to generate money, then it is tempting to skip it, but that is simply the wrong thing to do.
These are eggs I collected from my f5 flock. Only the 2 dark green ones were set to hatch the f6 generation. Even those are not as dark a green as I would like.