Cream Legbar Club Great Britain

Cream Legbar Club Great Britain connect with others who share similar interests & experiences. The purpose of the Org is to preserve, promote Cream Legbar

Raising Cream Legbar and breeding is not just a hobby it is an addiction. I've been breeding Cream Legbars since 2004 and over the past eleven years, we are successfully maintained the breed standard & blue egg laying capability of this famous Cream Legbar. Our stock is our own birds that are of a very high standard and rare Cream Legbar since 2004.

We keep careful data of who lays the blue /olive eggs in our breeding stock /lines by careful selection & breeding only from our lines / stock. We produce a high quality Cream Legbar, that meets the breed standards. There is no doubt that the stunning pastel coloured thick shells, the deep yellow yolk, dense white, and wonderful flavour, make the Cream Legbar eggs very special. Cream Legbar is a prolific layer, producing up to 240 eggs in the first year, and up to 430 over three years. In a good free range situation, many Cream Legbars have lived up to eight years.

The Cream Legbar is an autosexing type of chicken. This means that you can tell the sex of the chick at hatch, and they breed true. The Cream Legbar originated as a cross between Brown Leghorns and Barred Rock with some Araucana blood in them. This is reflected in the crest and the blue eggs that they lay. The egg colour is usually blue, though some will give olive eggs.

The Cream Legbar is quite an old, now very rare in its true form, pure breed. They are not anything to do with the commercial birds being used to produce multicoloured eggs for the supermarket trade.

The first cream legbars I had at the Garden were a bad example of the breed. Like many breeders, I naively trusted the breeder who supplied & took them at their gurantee that these birds were cream legbars. It was quite some time later that I finally began to investigate the breed & understand that what cream legbar should look like was a far cry from what mine actually looked like.

Cream Legbars are classy & elegant hens with cream capes and salmon coloured chests. They bring a splash of colour to any flock. Cream Legbars are very hardy and excellent foragers yet they are very friendly and inquisitive birds, always busy looking for morsals and they can be tamed quite easily. They are equally as good in Poultry shows as they are layers. I have found the cockerels to be non aggressive and very good flock leaders

Those cream legbars were sold to breeders where they would not be bred & I eventually sourced some correct eggs from show winning stock in order to begin again with cream legbar.

It has become more and more obvious to me that not only are correctly coloured cream legbar of the breed hard to find, but also there seem to be too many cream legbar expert who actually know what the breed should look like. Ebay, Facebook, online shop, offline shop, etc are selling and being sold birds that are at best poorly coloured cream legbar examples and in many cases, simply a blue egg laying hybrid not cream legbar. We would like more breeders to become aware of what a cream legbar is supposed to look like so that they can make an informed decision when collecting cream legbar.

Breed Standard

Origin: British

Classification: Light

Egg Colour: Blue, Green or Olive

General Characteristics:

Male

Carriage : Very sprightly and alert, with no suggestion of stiltiness.

Type: Body wedge shaped, wide at the shoulders and narrowing slightly to root of tail. Back long, flat and sloping slightly to the tail. Breast prominent, and breast bone straight. Wings large, carried tightly and well tucked up. Tail moderately full at an angle of 45 degrees from the line of the back.

Head: Fine. Beak stout, point clear of the front of the comb. Eyes prominent. Comb single, perfectly straight and erect, large but not overgrown, deeply and evenly serrated (5 to 7 spikes broad at the base), extending well beyond back of the head and following, without touching, the line of the head, free from ‘thumb marks’ or side spikes. Face smooth. Ear-lobes well developed, pendent, smooth and free from folds, equally matched in size and shape. Wattles long and thin.

Neck: Long and profusely covered with feathers.

Legs and Feet: Legs moderately long. Shanks strong, round and free of feathers. Flat shins objectionable. Toes, four, long, straight and well spread.

Plumage: Of silky texture, free from coarse or excessive feather.

Handling: Firm with abundance of muscle.

Female

The general characteristics are similar to those of the male, allowing for the natural sexual differences, except that the comb may be erect or falling gracefully over either side of the face without obstructing the eyesight, and the tail should be carried closely and not at such a high angle.

Male: Neck hackles cream, sparsely barred. Saddle hackles cream, barred with dark grey, tipped with cream. Back and shoulders cream with dark grey barring, some chestnut permissible. Wings, primaries dark grey, faintly barred, some white permissible; secondaries dark grey more clearly marked; coverts grey barred, tips cream, some chestnut smudges permissible. Breast evenly barred dark grey, well defined outline. Tail evenly barred grey, sickles being paler, some white feather permissible. Crest cream and grey, some chestnut permissible.

Female: Neck hackles cream, softly barred grey. Breast salmon, well defined in outline. Body silver grey, with rather indistinct broad soft barring. Wings, primaries grey-peppered; secondaries very faintly barred; coverts silver grey. Tail silver grey, faintly barred. Crest cream and grey, some chestnut permissible.

In both sexes: Beak yellow. Eyes orange or red. Comb, face, and wattles red. Ear-lobes pure opaque, white or cream, slight pink markings not unduly to handicap an otherwise good male. Legs and feet yellow.

Weights Male 2. 70-3. 40 kg (6-7 lb) Female 2-2. 70 kg (4-6 lb)

Serious defects: Male's comb twisted or falling over, Ear-lobes wholly red. Any white in face. Legs other than orange, yellow or light willow. Squirrel tail.

Disqualifications: Side sprigs on comb. Eye pupil other than round and clearly defined. Crooked breast. Wry tail. Any bodily deformity.

Scale of points: Type 30 Colour 20 Head 20 Legs 10 Condition 10 Weight 10

We are breeding pure Cream Legbar which meet the breed standard. We sell our birds and we are happy to take orders for both hatching eggs & cream legbar.

Beware of inferior copies from unscrupulous traders (birds or hatching eggs)!

Correctly coloured cream legbar only from us! Why? Too many UK & USA breeders are selling wrong cream legbar not only; Gold Legbar under the name of Cream Legbar, hybrid legbar crossed with mixed cream legbar for more eggs or more money from buyers. Now a days most of the breeders are removing chestnuts from cock /rooster legbar so they will show pure cream legbar! in ebay and online and various shows. Another US base group is saying "approved a motion to put together a Gold /non-dilute variety of the cream legbar, etc. Another person is selling cream legbar crossed with Ancona Bantams etc. under the name of cream legbar in Scotland. We advice not to buy any hatching eggs if someone is breeding cream legbar crossed with Ancona Bantams or other breeds. We collected all documentary evidence.