The second in our series of conversations about Cream Legbars, the increasingly popular blue egg laying chicken.

This is a really illuminating conversation with the experienced British Cream Legbar breeder Emma Middleton.

Emma knows more than anyone I’ve been able to find about the origins of the breed and more importantly the genetics behind the various traits that make this such a challenging and, as Emma says, “uniquely frustrating” bird to breed.

Emma’s been able to answer questions I’ve had about Cream Legbars for a long time including exactly where the cream gene came from.

She clears up, too, some major misinformation circulating in Australia about how to properly select for and breed this variety including what colour chick down is correct:

Over eight generations, Emma created Cream Legbars from scratch using the exact breeds that the variety’s creators, geneticists Reginald Punnett and Michael Pease did at Cambridge University in the early 1930s.

She’s also crossed pure Cream Legbars back to Brown Leghorns to improve the bloodline.

Emma explains in detail how to tell whether you actually have a Cream Legbar, as distinct from a Gold Legbar. Not to mention the confusion that silver can cause.

Other topics include:

• Where Emma sourced her genetic information about Cream Legbars
• The problems in trying to fix faults in Cream Legbars by bringing in other people’s lines
• How many generations it took to get back to cream after outcrossing to Brown Leghorns
• The test mating process
• How long she’s found you can run a closed flock without encountering inbreeding depression
• Her experience with small egg size in Cream Legbars
• The lack of a fixed genetic base in most lines of Cream Legbars in its home country of the UK
• How many birds Emma typically bred per generation
• How she created cream, gold and silver Legbars from scratch using other breeds
• The exact steps she took in each generation
• How to tell a Cream Legbar from a Gold and a Silver, based on both chick down and adult feathering
• The significance of gold smudges in the wing triangle as a telltale sign of a bird that is not cream
• The role of autosomal red in Cream Legbars, male (chestnut) and female (salmon breast)
• Crest size
• Yellow leg colour

Horse breeding and chicken breeding may seem like completely different endeavours but it turns out they have quite a bit in common… and of course they’re underpinned by the same genetic principles.

With more than 50 years' experience raising foals, esteemed Australian stock horse breeder Jeanette Gower knows a thing or two about genetics and its practical application.

I was keen to find out and find out what the horse breeding experience can teach us about how to approach poultry.

In this conversation I pick Jeanette's brain on everything from inbreeding and inbreeding depression to outcrossing and hybrid vigour.

Jeanette writes a fantastic blog on Substack which is where you can also find more information on her books about horse breeding.

Be sure to like and follow the show to find out when new episodes drop. And, if you like what you hear, leave us a review on your podcast app.

Worms are often the chief suspect when a backyard chicken gets sick.

But how often are they to blame?

This is the starting point for my conversation with poultry vet Grant Richards who has spent his 40-year career in chickens and chicken health.

Grant sits at the helm of Parasite Diagnostic Services where you can send poultry manure for worm testing so you might think he’d be talking up the dangers posed by intestinal worms. But his perspective is a lot more nuanced than that.

We discuss:

— How often worms are the culprit for sickness in backyard chickens

— The importance of testing for worm loads before de-worming a chicken

— Whether you should worm on a schedule

— What is a healthy worm burden in a chicken

— How chickens become “bombproof” against intestinal worms

— The necessity of exposure to worms in order for a chicken to develop natural resistance

— Understanding the parasite life cycle

— How chickens get worms and the role of intermediate hosts

— Why the mobile chicken tractor set-up is helpful in avoiding issues with worms

— How often to move your flock to fresh ground to avoid parasite problems

— How sun, rain, frost and grass length affect parasite survival in the environment

— How long to rest the ground before rotating your flock back there

— Whether baby chicks can hatch with worms

— The critical age for roundworm build-up in a chicken

— Why not to google your bird’s symptoms

— How long post-hatch it takes for a chick’s immune system to ‘fire up’

— Grant's take on diatomaceous earth

— Whether you or your dogs can catch worms from your chickens

— Whether Dr Richards thinks you should vaccinate your chickens

— Whether it makes sense to cull your flock if mycoplasma is detected

— The use of ivermectin-containing pour-on sheep and cattle drenches to control lice and worms in chickens