The Welbar :
Welbar's first started hatching out in 1942 from crosses of Welsummers and Barred Plymouth Rocks giving a barred version of the Welsummer which is auto sexing. At the time of writing there is only a Gold Welbar version but I know that there are people looking to recreate the Silver version as well.
The Welbar chicks are easy to distinguish on hatching with clear markings. These birds were bred for utility so if egg numbers start falling then fresh blood needs to be put back into them to increase the eggs laid. The only problem with trying to increase the egg numbers of this breed is that Welsummers are generally poor layers and a lot of people use the darkest egg laying Welsummers who happen to generally lay the poorest amount of eggs. Welsummers need to be picked for their egg laying ability rather than the colour of the egg so please pick the utility of the strain before picking the egg colour because although you can get a strain of Welbar's to lay exceedingly dark eggs by doing this you will reduce the amount of eggs laid and therefore they will become as well known as the Welsummer for being poor layers, which is not what the breed was developed for.
The birds also used to be know as pretty good table birds with the cocks reaching 6 ½ to 7lbs so therefore the autosexing advantage is doubled as you will know from day one how many boys you want to raise for the freezer rather then having to grow on Welsummers, feeding them all until they reach an age where you can distinguish between the sexes and then having to cull them because you have 80% boys so there really is every advantage to breeding Welbar's - good eggs layers of pretty brown eggs and they make good table birds.
A bantam Welbar was also developed and is being brought back again and I am hoping that these will also gain in popularity as the word gets around about how lovely these birds are
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