Is this split white or white eye?

[Ahavati]

This male is about 3 - 3.5 months. He has white flight feathers but also has a patch of white on his shoulder which throws me off. That patch of white on the shoulder isn't pied is it? I have a pied female the same age and she has a lot more white as well as on the head. I know the white flight feathers mean split to white, but how do you know if they have white eye? He has no white on the opposite side and I don't see any on the head, just on the throat a little.

Also, the other 4 in the pen with these two are about a month older, they are picking on these two pulling feathers out of their chest. I do not have a separate place to put the two smaller ones, we just have the brooder. We're working on their big pen the next two weeks and should be done.Any thoughts on what to do to discourage this feather picking?

 

[KsKingBee]

Split to either White or Pied is indistinguishable from each other. In this case, with the patch of white above, I would guess split to Pied or maybe Pied. There is no evidence of White Eye or it would have a silverish overall appearance and some white tips on the back feather tips. Also on topic, Dark Pied does not have to have any white on them at all although they can hide some white secondaries hidden in the wing.

 

[Ahavati]

I had been looking it up and saw something that talked about white on the wing being related to white eye, that's good to know about the silverish color. I wasn't sure how much extra white they had to have to be considered pied. I personally like the loud pied which I believe the hen is as she has a lot of white on her.

He has some thin white on those back feathers, I need to catch him and look at them...do you think those would be white feathers later?

 

[KsKingBee]

Perhaps a pic of the two birds you are talking about, I don't know what you are referencing. Although 'Loud Pied' is not a genetic term it is seldom used as a description of a heavily white Pied usually carrying WE.

Accepted patterns are Wild Type, Black Shoulder, Brown Wing, White, Pied, Silver Pied, White Eye, and Dark Pied. White carries two White genes, Pied carries one White gene and one Pied gene, Dark Pied has two Pied genes, and Silver Pied has one White, one Pied, and two White Eye genes. White Eye needs two genes to express as does Black Shoulder. One WE gene is called split and only some of the eyes will have white in them. A bird that has two WE genes will have a full train of white dots in the eyes.