Creating new colors?

[KsKingBee]

I am going to add a fourth one:

4. Scour all over the place for a strange looking peafowl that someone has and try to buy that bird and its close relatives.

I think that is how some peafowl varieties have been created. Someone didn't know that they had a new variety and someone else who knew more about peafowl came along, was amazed at this new variety, and bought it and then they worked on the new variety or they sold it to someone who could work on it.

I am guessing you might need a lot of pens to hold back birds to work on breeding a new variety with.
Also you need to keep really good records.
I don't know if you have read any of the "History of..." articles on Legg's website, but they might be of interest to you since he talks about the history of certain varieties being created.

I really enjoyed reading his histories, more than that I really enjoyed spending an entire afternoon with him at his place hearing about and viewing his project birds and new colors. A couple of them he will be releasing the news to the public in the not too distant future. One particular story about how and where he 'found' a new color was very interesting, sorry, he swore me to secrecy, I shouldn't say any more.

 

[MinxFox]

Oooh I see.

Sometimes I wonder if people find new varieties at zoos.

 

[Birdrain92]

I wonder what would happen if you bred every color and pattern mutation into an Indian peacock at least once, and every color and pattern to a Spalding. I'm just curious on what it would look like. Maybe try to create conditions for the peafowl needing to change their color or something that would change their color and try to breed it in. Though I have no idea what you could do to make that. Or hope for the mutation.