One question I struggled with early on was understanding the blue egg gene and what O/O actually meant.
The blue egg gene
The blue egg gene is called oocyan and is often written as O.
At Sunny Acres, all of our breeding Cream Legbar hens and roosters have been DNA tested and are O/O. After DNA testing our birds, we chose to breed only O/O × O/O matings. This means that all chicks produced from our breeding pens will also be O/O, having two copies of the blue egg gene.
The importance of DNA testing
Before I started DNA testing my birds, many Cream Legbar breeders had a mix of O/O and O/o birds without knowing which birds carried one or two copies of the blue egg gene. Both lay blue eggs, but there is an important difference.
An O/O bird passes the blue egg gene to every chick.
An O/o bird passes the blue egg gene to around half of its chicks, on average.
DNA testing has made a big difference to us. It has allowed us to identify birds with two copies of the blue egg gene and build the line we were aiming for.
If you’re looking to start or improve your own Cream Legbars, one question worth asking is whether the breeding birds have been DNA tested for the blue egg gene. It’s a question I wish I’d known to ask when I first started.
Breeding Cream Legbars
Cream Legbars are loved for much more than their blue eggs. They have lovely cream and grey barred plumage, a distinctive crest and are one of the few breeds where males and females can often be identified at hatch.
When selecting birds to breed from, we look for:
- Good health and vigour.
- A neat, well-shaped crest.
- Clear cream colouring.
- Even barring.
- Consistent egg production.
- Good blue egg colour.
Another question I struggled with was whether darker blue eggs produced daughters would also lay darker blue eggs.
Not necessarily. Selecting hens that lay darker blue eggs can help over time, but egg colour is influenced by several genes, not just the blue egg gene. That’s why egg colour is improved over each generation.
Each new generation teaches me something, and that’s part of the fun. I love sharing what I’m learning along the way.
Happy farming,
Karon
