The Legbar is perhaps the most famous of the auto-sexing breeds. Originally, we had an all cream legbar flock. In 2025, we added the Opal Legbars. Opal legbars are a fairly new project variety. They are essentially the lavender version of the cream legbar. The recessive lavender gene (called Self-Blue), dilutes feathering to a light purplish grey. You can still see the barring pattern underneath. Both hens and roosters have a crest on the top of their heads that sometimes causes the comb to flop over. Our breeding pens are set up with opal roosters over 75% cream hens and 25% opal hens. Your hatching eggs will hatch mostly cream-split-to-opal with about 1/4 being full opal. All cream colored birds will be split-to-opal, meaning, even though they don't express the lavender, they do carry one copy of the recessive lavender gene. If bred back to an opal or another split-to-opal bird, they will produce opal offspring. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KEEP CREAMS in your opal flock. Just like in other breeds, the lavender (self-blue) gene can cause feathering to rip, tear, and shred. Breeding opal to opal over multiple generations will also increase the frequency of the shred gene in your flock. This leads to poor feather condition, fragile birds, and is suspected to cause increased chick mortality during incubation, resulting in low hatch rates and/or weak chicks. You must breed back to creams to maintain genetic health and feather condition. No opal legbar female chicks will be available in 2026 until later in the season as we hatch to grow our flock first. All pullet chicks ordered will be cream split-to-opal. Hatching eggs will have a 25% chance of hatching a fully opal chick either male or female. Our original cream flock laid the bluest of the blue eggs. However, with the addition of the Opal, we have noticed that the egg color has shifted slightly leading some birds to lay a slightly green-tinted or turquoise egg. Still beautiful but not fully blue. Keep this in mind when ordering this breed. It is normal for project varieties.
 
The auto-sexing characteristics of the legbar allow you to easily sex chicks at hatch. Females will be a darker shade of brown or grey with distinct dark brown wild type "chipmunk" stripes down their backs all the way to the top of their heads. Males will be a lighter shade of gold or lavender with diffuse stripping down the back ending at the neck. Males will usually have an obvious yellow spot on the top of their head while females may or may not show a small faint head spot. For more information on how to sex your chicks from our autosexing and sex-linked breeds, download the Ellison Family Homestead Autosexing/Sex-Linked Chick Guide.
Purpose: Eggs
Type: Imported, Auto-sexing
Egg Color: Blue
Egg Production/Year: 250
Egg Size: Large
Adult size: Rooster: 6lbs, Hen: 5lbs
 
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