How do I breed a Silver Pied peafowl?

[Henk69]

White eyed is dominant? or do you need 2 copies most of the time?

Sounds like a mystery recessive ingredient.
Only the backcross would give homozygotes.

But why? You have the pied effect and you have the white eyed effect. Why would they suppress each other without this ingredient.
Just thinking aloud...

 

[Kev]

Yes white eyed is dominant. Cross of white eyed with wild type will give white eyed offspring. Just how white eyed the offspring are varies from bird to bird though.. some show it weakly, some don't look any different from homozygous birds. Not sex linked either, results are same if the parent was male or female.

It's(silver pied) very much a mystery to me too.. I have not set the thinking into stone yet, so far it really does look like there is something else unknown involved for silver pied.

Some breeders charge extra for whites out of their silver pieds. As if those whites are genetically different from other whites. Somehow. But this is not very reliable if they cannot tell exactly why or without proof? I asked one why those whites were extra, the reply was "because they have the silver pied gene".. still ambiguous.

 

[crystalchik]

Thank you all so much, this is actually helping me out a lot!

Though Im not as advanced as you are on here about genetics, but it seems like you need silver pied on both sides to get silver pied. Like that silver pied male to the hen split to silver pied. Guess Im not getting silver pieds any time soon. And the silver pied female that literally walked into my yard probably wouldnt have done me any good either if i needed a male that was at least spilt to silver pied.

It seems like this silver pied gene is one in itself...I thought it was just a dilution of the pied or white-eyed pied gene with white, seems I was clearly mistaken. Do you think one of the birds would have to be dominant silver pied in order to get it, or should the two recessive genes eventually work together?

By the way, I checked out that website...I understand it, but what is a dark pied?

 

[konopswj]

I know this is an old topic, but has anyone found further information on it?

Has this been further discussed in the Peafowl section that anyone knows of?

Thanks,
Walter

 

[Kev]

Walter, I've tried to bring up the topic and get a discussion going a couple times over the years but so far they didn't really get anywhere. Early on, I was told by a couple breeders that silver pied bred with white eyes split white and whites pure for white eyed would give me silver pieds. Didn't happen with two unrelated silver pied males bred with my white eye stock.

Now the current response from breeders is to get silver pied, have to use birds from silver pied breeding. Tune has changed, but still haven't seen anything specific as to what's different about silver pied... some may say it's the white eyed but, read my above experience. If white eyed was really the only difference between silver pied and pied, then why did I not get any from silver pied with white eyed stock?

Wish I knew. I want to add, some of my original white eyed came direct from Ernie West, who discovered this mutation and others came from at least two different breeders. None of my white eyed had any pied breeding in them, but all of them happened to be split white. Anyways, their chicks looked like IB but with a faded look, much like blue jeans after years of washing. Chicks from silver pied crosses look very different to me even if the chick was out of cross with IB, they had almost totally yellow head/necks(not due to pied marking), much lighter wing feathers at hatch.. they looked so light to me I took pics and asked if they were cameo or purples. They ended up looking just slightly different from normal IB in feather color. I suspect that's a hint of sorts as to silver pied having something different..

crystalchik Dark pied as I originally understood it from UPA meant a bird genetically pure for pied. These birds typically don't have much white, some on the flights, maybe a white patch on chin and occasionally one or 2 white feather elsewhere. Often they look the same as split whites though. In recent years, I've started to see pied birds(not pure pied) with not that much white be described as dark pied. I'm not sure, perhaps the usage was with the mind that dark pied meant a pied with less white instead of 'loud pied' which are genetically half white half pied. 'Loud pied' can have little white to lots of white though... the terms originally referred to the genetics, not the visual appearance.

 

[konopswj]

Kev - Thanks for responding.

The white eyes you breed to create the IB'ish chicks with pale leucism (am I using the correct term?), were both male and female white eye? Do you think that because the males were split to white this caused this pale leucism?

I am also gathering that after reading the page on silver pied on Legg's Peafowl page and this post, that it isn't as easy as combining the pied, white eye, and some white and getting the end result. The peafowl world is still missing what exactly creates these beautiful silver pied birds...

Your knowledge of this sort of thing with genetics and peafowl in general far surpasses mine, but I do appreciate you discussing this with me. I appreciate the silver pied look (obviously enough to ask all these questions) and recently bought a couple silver pied chicks. Just poking at this topic to further my understanding and see what might be in store for me in the future with breeding and understanding this color/pattern.

 

[Kev]

Konopswj-

It appeared separate from being split white, crosses of the originial white eyed with India Blue also produced the faded look, some included birds without any white feathers(in other words, not split white). Kept mostly only the females & sold majority of males before they were 2 yrs old, so could not really comment on average look of adult males.. the adult females from this grew up to have a silvery/sugar frosted look on their bodies. I don't recall if there was any visual sexual difference in the down lightness.. would have been interesting idea to follow up on, unfortunately have stopped this project- had to reduce my flock.

Crosses of silver pied to IB produced the very yellow and light feathered chicks- patterned pieds are genetically half white half pied, so the chicks came 50/50 for split white or split pied(no white in flights or chin). If one looked closely could see some chicks were slightly more yellow or less yellow.. did not keep track to see if it had anything to do with sex(I would doubt it though, but still an interesting idea). I didn't keep any males past one year, kept several females to breeder age, those did have subtle differences from IB and didn't look like the original white eyeds. Instead of an obvious silvery grey color with sugar frosted look the originals had, they mostly had a slightly lighter tan color to their bodies, some had the sugar frosting look but not that strong or were localized(usually on wings). A few hens had some grey coloring mixed in with this lighter tan color, usually on the wings.

Most birds from either crosses tended not to have that many random white feathers on the body, there were exceptions, with a very few having quite a good amount. This reminds me, the birds from silver pied crossed to white eye mostly did not have many random white feathers.. I have to go with females only for this observation- could not tell if the males would have many or few white eyes in their mature trains. Would have liked to keep some males, but due to limited room was not able to keep surplus males long enough for them to fully mature.

Good question as what to call it- is it leucism or?? Chicks from silver pied crosses would fit the bill but while the adults usually were discernible from 'pure' IB, they were not that screamingly different though... UPA(united peafowl assoc.) considers white eyed as one of the pattern mutations, along black shoulder and pied.

BTW interestingly white eyed appears possibly recessive in spaldings. Crosses produce birds that largely or totally look normal. I was confused by this enough to keep a male for breeding.. did a sibling F1 mating, this produced results across the spectrum of normal looking birds, birds with variable slightly visible white eye traits, and a few with 'complete' expression of white eyed(lots of silvery grey coloring on body along heavy sugar frosted look- suspect those are the homozygous ones but what the heck is going on with the others showing this trait much weaker...). I bred some of them with a pure green, the chicks were all normal in color- no evidence of white eyed traits.

 

[HHandbasket]

I think this thread is in the wrong category & should be listed under Peafowl.

 

[deerman]

Yes white from a pied mating and ones from silver pied mating are not the same....only good records will help here.

all silver pieds do need all three genes white,pied, and white eye. All silver pied are white eyes, but not all pied white eyes are silver pied.

If you want to breed silver pied , you must breed from silver pied or birds from silver pied matings, (silver pied,darkpied white eye, or white)

Dark pied white eye and white out of silver pied = 100% silver pied


Silver pied mutation happen some how with white eyes being breed to pied. But breeding a white eye to a pied doesn't produce silver pied in most case. that is were the mutation happen, but hard to make a mutation happen.

SO TO PRODUCE SILVER PIED START WITH SILVER PIEDS.

 

[connerhills]

Good advise Burt,,, I tried to breed one for years, finally just bought one, also a good silver pied will mature with a silver color on his back area.. I think Brad Legg told me that is how it got the name..I think I know, but not sure enough to state who it was that named them.. connerhills