Thoughts on some of my Legbars?

[LikeTurkeys]

I've been trying to breed my Legbars to the proposed SOP. I've obtained birds both from a hatchery and from a reputable breeder, and while the breeders' birds are definitely better, I feel like they still have a lot of faults. So all of you Legbar enthusiasts, I'd love some of your input! Right now I feel like I'm struggling with high tail angles and a lot of hypermelanization. I have some Golden Crele cockerels that are split to cream that I feel I could really work with to improve crest and color in my hatchery birds, would love some feedback on them.

I'll start with the cockerels. The first 2 are both Golden Creles split to cream. They both have magnificent crests which I feel is important to offset some of my hatchery pullets, which have small crests. The first seems to be more golden (?) and has a higher tail angle and flopped comb, so I tend to prefer the second one.

The next 2 cockerels are both creams, I like the one standing in the grass but he seems to have a short back and the tail is dangerously high. The second cream has a really high tail (it's actually squirrely and has gotten worse since taking that photo) and his comb is not pretty. But he has a lighter crest than the first one, so I'm still wondering if I should try breeding him to offset hypermelanization.

The next pics are of some of my pullets. I like the lighter grey coloring on first one, but both have small, dark crests. What are your thoughts on the third? Love the size of her crest but again it's a dark crest. I don't have any light crested females. Fourth is nervous sho she's standing tall but not as nice as the third.

Look forward to your feedback. @GaryDean26 would love to hear your thoughts on these as well.

Thanks all.

 

[GaryDean26]

Marie Bethell Bird 1: Yes, this on is definitely crele. The excessive amount of chestnut on his crest would make me guess that he has red enhancers which could give red throats to offspring. The chestnut in his wing bow is not solid nor is it a bright red so that is encouraging if you want to breed cream birds from him but not if you want to breed crele birds from him. His saddle feathers show the copper color at the top of the back but as you move further down in is the lighter diluted color with again is encouraging if you want to breed cream birds, but not if you want to breed crele from him. He is definitely from cream lines. His tail angles look good, but the grey fluff that is protruding between the saddle feathers and the sickle feathers is something that I was told by a Judge is not good and so you will want to select offspring out of him that has less of that when selecting for the next generation. The back is straight and downward sloping as it should be. Yes it is possibly too short. The back on the commercial leghorns is 2-3 times that length. Longer backs are always better for utilities. The comb is possibly overgrown. The limit is that the comb should not grow past the tip of the beak. Yes, he has the larg crest, but for his that is not a good thing because it is interfering with the comb. If the crest on the males is too far foreward or too large it will cause the folding that your are seeing on this guy. Getting the comb correct on the Legbar males is possibly the hardest thing to get right on the Legbar and it so in many ways it is the thing that sets apart Standard Bred Legbars from production legbars. .

 

[GaryDean26]

Marie Bethell No 2. This one is a lot lighter than his brother, but he is still not showing cream Plumage. He still is showing crele coloration. Again like his brother he has the diluted saddle feathers. A good crele male would have bronze-colored saddle feathers. this is NOT that, but a cream bird will not have the red ticking that you are seeing in the saddle feathers of this male. This red ticking and the excessive chestnut on the crest are again a tell that this line is carrying red enhancers in the line that are to the Cream Standard. My experience is that this shows up in the form of chestnut on the throat of the hens (noticeably darker colors than the salmon breast). Again the diluting resulting in the lighter colors tell me that he is from cream lines and not from Crele lines. the Dilutors have no place in the Crele lines. He is not a Standard Bread Crele. Like his brother the comb looks to be overgrown. He looks to have two or three points extending in front of the tip of the beak at the angle he is standing if this photo. I would pair him with hens that have smaller combs that don't fold over. These big combs are susceptible to frostbite, are more susceptible to twisting and folding over, and are less attractive that appropriately sized combs. The tail in not as full on this cockerel as the first one, but it is a lower angle so I feel it is a better tail than the first one (other may go the other way). Like that these cockerels have strong wings that are well tucked up. The first sign of weakness that is usually seen in a line is drooping wings on the cockerels. I also like the white ear lobes on these males. This one has a spec of red on his lobe which will get worse with age. It is sometimes worth waiting until the cockerels are 2-years old to breed to see which ones hold the white the best on their ear lobes as they get older. The hens also play a factor is the earlobes though so it is easier to monitor hens than to hold on cockerels for an extra year before breeding them.

 

[GaryDean26]

Marie Bethell Cream No 1. Yes this one is the correct cream plumage. He looks like he is from the Jill Rees line. Around 2008 there was a breeder in the UK name Emily DeGrey that set out to breed SOP Legbars. Most of the Legbars there at the time were colored like your non-creme boys. They were dilute from being bred from cream lines, but they did not have cream plumage. They were what I call Swavers which is what the Dutch call dirty Cream Dutch Bantam lines/birds. Emily overshot the mark in the opinion of some of the geneticists. The ones I have seen comment on the Cream Legbar Breed say that genetically a gold-based bird with the [ig] inhibitor of gold (AKA "cream") gene should have red on the shoulders. Emily in her efforts to breed out the red enhancers that are introduced from outcrosses to brown leghorns, which was a common practice for production, bred in diluters that covered the red on the shoulders of the males. Through her success with the breed, the lines in the UK became void of red-shouldered males. The Rees birds are from these lines. The non-Rees lines in the USA have red on the shoulders of the males. I feel that the Rees line color is closer to the standard for the Silver Legbars than for Cream Legbars. For reference here is a commercial Cream Leghorn that I grew out in 2014. I was going to use the commercial Leghorns to cross with the Legbars to see how the barring gene affected the way the cream plumage looked. M.S. hitting the flock that fall and being relocated with my work to another state in 2015 terminated this project died but I always like to see the hackles on the Cream Males to be visibly a darker shade than the white earlobes. Yours doesn't have the earlobes matching the hackle colors so he is probably good on cream (easier to see in person than in photos). I still think it is funny to see these boys without the red smudges on their shoulders though. This one possibly has the best comb of the four.

 

[LikeTurkeys]

Thanks so much @GaryDean26 for all your input! I'm learning so much

Marie Bethell Cream No 1. Yes this one is the correct cream plumage. He looks like he is from the Jill Rees line. Around 2008 there was a breeder in the UK name Emily DeGrey that set out to breed SOP Legbars. Most of the Legbars there at the time were colored like your non-creme boys. They were dilute from being bred from cream lines, but they did have cream plumage. They were what I call Swavers which is what the Dutch call dirty Cream Dutch Bantam lines/birds. Emily overshoot the mark in the opinion of some of the geneticists. The ones I have seen comment on the Cream legbar Breed say that genetically a gold-based bird with the [ig] inhibitor of gold (AKA "cream") gene should have red on the shoulders. Emily in her efforts to breed out the red enhancers that are introduced from outcrosses to brown leghorns, which was a common practice for production, bred in diluters that covered the red on the shoulders of the males. Through her success with the breed, the lines in the UK became void of red-shouldered males. The Rees line is from these lines. The non-Rees lines in the USA have red on the shoulders of the males. I feel that the Rees line type color is closer to the standard for Silver Legbars than it is for Cream Legbars. For reference here is a commercial Cream Leghorn that I grew out in 2014. I was going to use the commercial Leghorns to cross with the Legbars to see how the barring gene affected the way the cream plumage looked. M.S. hitting the flock that fall and being relocated with my work to another state in 2015 terminated this project but I always like to see the hackles on the Cream Males to be visibly a darker shade than the white earlobes. Yours doesn't have the earlobes matching the hackle colors so he is probably good on cream (easier to see in person than in photos). I still think it is funny to see these boys without the red smudges on their shoulders though. This one possibly has the best comb of the four.

View attachment 3033910View attachment 3033909

I liked this one also because he doesn't have the typical one or two all-white sickle feathers in his tail, which I felt was a good thing. His barring also seemed to be cleaner and better defined than in the others. At the same time, I'm wondering if this means that he is possibly overmelanized. Or is there no connection? What do you think about his body shape? He's my #1 pick for breeding thus far.

 

[LikeTurkeys]

I also always thought that red on the males meant that they had unnecessary red enhancers, so I've been trying to edge away from those. I actually have one that has red on his shoulders and yellower saddles, but he has a really low wing set so I was planning on culling. He also had that typical white feather in his tail.

 

[GaryDean26]

Thanks so much @GaryDean26 for all your input! I'm learning so much


I liked this one also because he doesn't have the typical one or two all-white sickle feathers in his tail, which I felt was a good thing. His barring also seemed to be cleaner and better defined than in the others. At the same time, I'm wondering if this means that he is possibly overmelanized. Or is there no connection? What do you think about his body shape? He's my #1 pick for breeding thus far.

Yes...I noticed that when I started looking at the second cream cockerel. While the second Cream cockerel has a perfect tail junction he had a lot of white in his tail feathers which is something I have constantly struggled with on Legbar cockerels without any real progress. So...the well-barred tail of cream #1 definitely has to be considered. Back to the tail junction on cream #2. It really is perfect. You don't want a sharp angle and you don't what the feathers splitting to where white fluff is coming out. This is about the best image I have seen of a correct tail juncture. I think there are breeders out there who have been working with the chickens for years that think I don't know what I am talking about on these tail joints because they have never seen anything but sharp angles.

Overmelonization? The males are supposed to have dark grey breasts and legs. to where there is an even cream color on the top of the bird from the head to the tail and distinct even dark grey color from the chin to the fluff on the bottom of the bird. These are not showing a real difference in color from the top of the bird to the bottom of the bird. Without the two colors, they are not correct and get confused with cuckoo coloration. Look at the cream leghorn that is posted. See the cream on top and the dark grey to black breast and legs. That is the base color of the male legbar. It just has barring over it. Melonization will keep the male looking correct with barred saddle feathers, dark grey bottom color. It is had to over melanized the males. The females to very easy to over melanized which is the problem. The females get splotch barry on the hackles with lacing that is too wide and crests that lack any cream. So some people have proposed to keep a male line to breed for good coloring on the boys and a female line to keep good color on the girls. I have been trying to find a balance in the middle which has resulted in light gray brests on the males (but still distinct from the cream top color) and a lack of the black barring of the saddle feathers that the SOP calls for on the boys.

 

[GaryDean26]

I also always thought that red on the males meant that they had unnecessary red enhancers, so I've been trying to edge away from those. I actually have one that has red on his shoulders and yellower saddles, but he has a really low wing set so I was planning on culling. He also had that typical white feather in his tail.

There and dozens of red genes. If you are familiar with brown eggs it is the same things as brown egg pigments. Dozens of brown egg genes stack up. Some of those brown egg genes are sexlinked, some are recessive, some are dominant, some are co-dominant, so have linkage, etc. So trying to breed a dark brown egg in a breed like a Marans is not a check box that you can mark off, it is a constant think that you always have to work on to get right and that you can lose really quick. The red genes are the same way. You need them in the Crele lines so you have to constantly be breeding for them or you get dull-washed-looking birds. In the Cream Lines, the UK show breeders have labeled red as bad and have been working for 15+ years to breed out all the red. The SOP for the legbar however does NOT say that all the red should be bred out. It has an allowance for some red and if all the red is bred out you lose the Cream Variety and get a monochrome bird that has nothing unique about it. Yes, breed out the red gene that is causing red on the crest on the males, breed out the gene that is causing red on the throat of the females, breed out the gene that is causing the red barring on the saddle feathers of the males, breed out the gene that is causing red lacing on the body feathers of the females but keep the red smudges on the shoulder of the males. That is caused by the wild-type primary color pattern, not from additional red genes. Keeping those smudges on the shoulder of the male will keep salmon color on the breast of the females as called for in the SOP. Many of the older UK lines have females with only a very faint pink color on their brest. They also lose the cream color as there birds because white and not cream.

Below is one of my cream cockerel next to one of my white White cockerel (2017 photo). I use this to show that Cream is not white. He has less red on his shoulder than I like for a breeder and he would likely produce offspring that look more like the cockerel in the top left behind him that has hackles that are almost white. Notice that the cockerel with the near-white plumage has more red on his shoulder. That one has a red enhancer that targets the crest/saddle/shoulder but does not affect the hackle.

This one was a breeder. I need a white birds in the photo with him though because he is very cream, but without a white bird next to him it is hard to tell.

Here are a few other examples of birds we have grown out. These boys were not breeders (nor were the one in the first photo) but they are useful in showing the range of colors in the Legbar and how hard it is to get their color right. The boy on the left has too light of a breast. The one on the right has the correct breast/leg colors. Note: The saddle feathers and the hackles feathers on the males should match perfectly. The hackles should not be lighter than the saddle feathers and should not be darker at the top of the head than they are at the bottom of the neck. Both of these boys have the amount of red on the shoulders that I like.

 

[GaryDean26]

I will quickly go through the pullets.

Marie Bethel Cream Pullet 1: I am not a fan of the body type on this one. The Legbar should have a straight downward sloping back. They should be no curve or saddle shape to it. This pullet has that short u-shaped back that is correct for many breeds, but not the Legbar. She otherwise is a lovley bird and would be worth working with if you can breed he to a cockerel with a straigh back that could help get offspring that have a better back.

Marie Bethel Cream Pullet 2: I like the appearance of #1 better, but #2 is the one with the correct back and body type. She has a straight, downward-sloping back, 45 deg tail angle, deed tail, wedge-shaped body (i.e. keel line dropping slightly faster than the backline so the bird is deeper at the hips than at the shoulders, etc.)

CLB Pullet #1: This one has what I call an English tail. The British Legbars have a tail type that comes to a point. The APA, however, discriminates against tails that come to point thinking that they are not correct for birds that are designed for laying lots of eggs. So the APA standard for the Legbar calls for a fanned tail. This one has the smallest comb and the one I would use to breed cockerels with comes that is not extending in front of the bear and combs that don't fold over.

CLB Pullets #2: I love the tail and back on this one. I hate the comb though.

I think that you could set up four breeding pairs with these birds and start a project to create your own bloodline to breed to the standard. Doing that you would want to start by getting the body type and combs uniform. Color can ussually wait for the first 3 generations if you are building a new boodline. If you want to just breed one male to the four hens that is fine too. Either the cream cockerels would work for that since there are hens to offset all of their faults. Just focuse on getting cockerels with one less fault every year and in 3-5 years you will have a cockerel that has the better traits of these four with the worse traits breed out. They you can use that cockerel to do the same thing to get uniform hens.

 

[LikeTurkeys]

@GaryDean26 I know this is late, but I really appreciate all of your comments. I plan on compiling them into a doc for easy access

The cream cockerel whose tail angle you said you liked has unfortunately not retained that feature. Over the last few months it has been getting higher and higher - and now it even appears to be slightly more than 90 degrees! I've attached a new photo of him. That coupled with his comb makes me think I should cull. He does have wonderful white earlobes though - and he's the biggest of my creams.

I am thinking of keeping cream #1 as my primary breeder with most of the hens. The 2nd golden crele split is going to be breeding with the pullet who has the U-shaped back, and the 1st golden crele split will be my backup (possibly breeding with the offspring of my primary cream cock). I also have quite a few grow outs that I'll be going over in a couple months (8 cockerels and 16 pullets) - so I'll probably be back for more advice! Thank you so much.