The Accidental Smallholder Forum

Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: PK on February 09, 2017, 05:17:06 pm

Title: Cream legbar eggs
Post by: PK on February 09, 2017, 05:17:06 pm
We got 6 Cream legbar chicks at the end of last summer and at least one has come into lay. We were expecting blue eggs but the couple produced so far are brown with perhaps a hint of olive. Is that it? Or will future eggs change to blue(ish)?
Title: Re: Cream legbar eggs
Post by: ellied on February 09, 2017, 05:37:50 pm
No, I've 5 purebred CL pullets from late June just coming into lay and the eggs are blue from day one.  Olive eggs mean a crossbred hen.  Sorry.

I've 2 crossbred chicks that came from blue eggs in the same batch and it turned out the breeder had an escaped Splash Orpington cockerel for a couple of days.  One is a boy but the other a wee blue/grey hen and she lays cream eggs.  So I'm guessing the pure legbar parent is the hen if your chicks came from blue eggs, but daddy was a brown egg laying breed escapee of some kind.
Title: Re: Cream legbar eggs
Post by: Dans on February 13, 2017, 08:33:40 pm
Same here, our cream legbars laid blue from day one.

Dans
Title: Re: Cream legbar eggs
Post by: PK on February 14, 2017, 04:39:50 pm
After a few days of no eggs there was puzzlingly a beautiful blue egg waiting to be collected today. It must have been the same bird or one of her sisters.
Title: Re: Cream legbar eggs
Post by: Marches Farmer on February 14, 2017, 05:27:10 pm
Could've been more than one cockerel running with the Legbars.  We crossed pure Legbars with a Welsummer hen which gave us excellent layers of  olive-shelled eggs - they have a good temperament, began laying quite young (presumably from their Legbar Mamas) and have coped very well with both free ranging on our windy hilltop and being confined to barracks due to avian 'flu.  We found that the crossbreed female chicks had the brown line down the back and the males were cloudy yellow/grey, following the autosexing colour code for Legbars.