Peafowl Genetics for Dummies (in other words us)

zazouse said:

Well thie peacock i posted above is now has his adult train and has a pied and 2 white in his harem so far, i might have to hatch some eggs after all this year.

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Hatch just from the White hens -- if they're all "traditional" Pied, then you will have confirmation that your male is Dark Pied.

pedda munnangi said:

Dark pied peafowl usually have a much smaller white throat patch and not as much white on wing feathers as well. He is possibly a simple pied male. The best way to know for sure is to breed with a white hen , together should produce all regular pied chicks.

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The problem is that many people with "split to Pied" or "split to White" birds inaccurately call them "Dark Pied." The term should be reserved for birds homozygous for the Pied gene, not simply birds with a few white feathers. Again, if there's no standardization of terms, confusion will continue.

But wouldn't homozygous mean that they would throw off pied offspring no matter what color they were bred to?

zazouse said:

But wouldn't homozygous mean that they would throw off pied offspring no matter what color they were bred to?

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No. If the other parent had no pattern or white genes, the chicks would be split pied.

Can someone explain in simple terms to me about breeding spaldings? What I want to know is say you have a Spalding that looks almost just like a pure green, and you breed it to another Spalding with similar looks. Just because they both look like a green, that doesn't mean all of the chicks will look like the parents correct? Could you get chicks from them that look like an India blue or if both parents are so green looking will the chicks all be either in the medium range to high range for green blood? Also, when people breed an India Blue to a green peafowl what are the offspring like?

MinxFox said:

Can someone explain in simple terms to me about breeding spaldings? What I want to know is say you have a Spalding that looks almost just like a pure green, and you breed it to another Spalding with similar looks. Just because they both look like a green, that doesn't mean all of the chicks will look like the parents correct? Could you get chicks from them that look like an India blue or if both parents are so green looking will the chicks all be either in the medium range to high range for green blood? Also, when people breed an India Blue to a green peafowl what are the offspring like?

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It is highly simplified but there is a huge gene pool that defines the "look" of either an IB or green bird. When you cross them, you get some of each pool you just don't know what or how much. They don't breed true. Some green genes are dominant and some IB genes are dominant and show up as soon as you cross them. For instance the shape of a male green birds neck feathers seems to be dominant and hard to get back out of spalding. The scallop is there at the first cross and almost forever. It is kind of pot luck. The really long leg trait on the other hand only shows up in really high percentage probability spaldings. To get the look you want you need to continue to breed back to true green birds. This is what Sid is doing at Texas Peafowl with some of his lines. You can see the bronzes he has been working on for some time. He has some really long legged bronze birds from outcrossing out to green every other generation or so and increasing the probability that the green genes show up.

Okay that makes since! I knew you would have a good explanation. By scallop do you mean the feather shape? Okay I figured the long leg gene was more difficult to get since I have noticed just what you said about how Sid is working hard to get birds with very long legs.

So if you took this spalding peacock (not mine, from Google Images):


and bred him to a pure green peahen, the offspring would be even nicer looking Spaldings than what he looks like, or there would still be the probability that you would have a few that did not look very high %? Does it matter which is the peacock and which is the peahen?

Rosa moschata said:

The problem is that many people with "split to Pied" or "split to White" birds inaccurately call them "Dark Pied." The term should be reserved for birds homozygous for the Pied gene, not simply birds with a few white feathers. Again, if there's no standardization of terms, confusion will continue.

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I was always told that a dark pied was a solid color bird with a small throat latch like this hen. She only has a small throat latch but no white flights but carries the pied gene and yes she is white eye as you can seen the white lacing in her feathers. She is actually my IB w/e split to charcoal. in the second picture is her with my Charcoal white eye and he is split to silver pied but the only white on him is the white eyes. These two produced IB, charcoal, Pied, white and last year a silver pied.

DylansMom said:

I have a pretty straightforward (and I'm sure easy) question for the genetics heavyweights here! I have a BS male who is split Cameo, mom is BS Cameo(oaten) and dad is straight BS as far as I know. If I breed my BS split Cameo male back to momma I know I can get some BS Cameos of both genders, if I cross him with a hen that is not Cameo, will I still have the possibility of getting Cameo hens? If so and the hen I use is BS they would have to be BS Cameos right? And if the hen used is IB(Barred Wing), they would have to be Cameo barred wing correct? Thanks much, I checked the genetics sticky for this but couldn't find this
exact answer.

As an afterthought, if I were to breed him to a silver pied hen, what could I possibly get from them?

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Just thought I would move this forward as I think it may have been overlooked?

Yoda said:

I was always told that a dark pied was a solid color bird with a small throat latch like this hen. She only has a small throat latch but no white flights but carries the pied gene and yes she is white eye as you can seen the white lacing in her feathers. She is actually my IB w/e split to charcoal. in the second picture is her with my Charcoal white eye and he is split to silver pied but the only white on him is the white eyes. These two produced IB, charcoal, Pied, white and last year a silver pied.

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Yoda said:

I was always told that a dark pied was a solid color bird with a small throat latch like this hen. She only has a small throat latch but no white flights but carries the pied gene and yes she is white eye as you can seen the white lacing in her feathers. She is actually my IB w/e split to charcoal. in the second picture is her with my Charcoal white eye and he is split to silver pied but the only white on him is the white eyes. These two produced IB, charcoal, Pied, white and last year a silver pied.

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This is what i was told also but yesterday i was told that that all my pieds may be dark pieds unless i breed them to whites and get all pieds from what i understand now, so i am going to hatch a few eggs from my pied and the white hens he is courting to see for sure.



possible dark pied hen below, i got pieds , whites and what i called dark pieds from this girl when she was bred to my split white male