Cream Legbar
The Cream Legbar male has cream neck hackles which are sparsely barred. The saddle hackles are cream barred with dark grey and are tipped with cream. The back and shoulders are mostly cream barred with dark grey. The wings are dark grey and faintly barred, with the wing coverts grey barred and tipped with cream. The breast and tail are barred dark grey while the sickles are paler. The crest is cream and grey.
The neck hackles of the female Cream Legbar are cream, softly barred grey. The breast is salmon and clearly, while the body is silver-grey with indistinct broad soft barring. The wings are silver-grey, while the tail is also silver-grey with indistinct soft barring. The crest is cream and grey. They lay blue to blue-green eggs.
The Legbar is a rare British auto-sexing chicken breed. It was created in the early twentieth century by Reginald Crundall Punnett and Michael Pease at the Genetical Institute of Cambridge University. It was created by cross-breeding Barred Plymouth Rock chicken, Leghorns, Cambars, and in the case of Cream Legbars, Araucanas. The Araucana blood in the Cream Legbar is reflected in its crest and blue to blue-green eggs.
*Our Cream Legbars are of Greenfire/Feather Lover’s lines.
Cream Legbar History
The Legbar was the second auto-sexing chicken breed created by Prof. Punnett and M. Pease at the Genetical Institute in Cambridge, after the Cambar, which was created in 1929 by crossing Barred Plymouth Rock with Gold Campine.
The aim was to create an auto-sexing utility breed with a focus on egg laying, where male and female day old chicks could easily be sexed by their color. To achieve this Punnet and Pease used a crossing program with excellent egg layers, the Leghorn and the Barred Plymouth Rock. The Barred Plymouth Rock was used to introduce the sex-linked barring gene into the Leghorn. By crossing Brown Leghorn and Barred Plymouth Rock the Gold Legbar was created and standardized in 1945. The Silver Legbar followed in 1951. It had been created by crossing the Gold Legbar with White Leghorn and Silver Cambar. The Cream Legbar were standardized in 1958 but nearly died out in the 1970’s as blue eggs were not in demand. They were created by crossing Gold Legbar with White Leghorn and creme-colored Araucana chicken. The Araucanas introduced the dilute creme gene as well as the crest and the blue eggs into this variety.