The Legbar is perhaps the most famous of the auto-sexing breeds. They lay a beautiful blue egg and are a friendly bird. Opal legbars are a fairly new project variety. They are essentially the lavender version of the cream legbar. The light lavender feathering is overlayed over a base of cream patterning. 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 opal and cream hens. Your hatching eggs may hatch chicks that are opal or cream. Opal is recessive. Cream birds will all be split to opal, meaning, even though they don't express opal, they will carry recessive opal and if bred back to another legbar that carries or is opal, 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 is linked to the shred gene. The shred gene causes 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 and 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.
 
The auto-sexing characteristics of the legbar allow you to easily sex chicks at hatch. Females will be a darker shade of brown or lavender 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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