My pigeon is changing colors too!

NewPigeonOwner

In the Brooder
Jun 19, 2020
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This is the same bird. Photos are a month apart. Is it normal for pigeons to change colors as they get older? He is two months old. We went away for three days and I swear he almost looks like a different bird!!!
 
It is common for grizzles, and other tri-colored breeds to get more and more white as they age. So your bird is quite normal.

Tiger grizzles hatch out nearly solid colored, but then they molt and have up to 60% white in them. It's quite amazing!

I had one hatch out with a lot of white. Once it molted, it changed big time!

They came through in a weird order. But the bird with the most color is the same bird with its first molt in.

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It is common for grizzles, and other tri-colored breeds to get more and more white as they age. So your bird is quite normal.

Tiger grizzles hatch out nearly solid colored, but then they molt and have up to 60% white in them. It's quite amazing!

I had one hatch out with a lot of white. Once it molted, it changed big time!

They came through in a weird order. But the bird with the most color is the same bird with its first molt in.

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This is so interesting! I had no idea! The parents of the babies are mostly white so when we got two mostly brown (red) babies, I was surprised. And now this! The strange thing is that the dad also had much more color on his neck when we first got him back in June. Even the dad is getting whiter!
 
I have yellow tiger grizzle racing homers (sadly, they have the pied gene which makes them have white flights, which I prefer them not to have). But, I bred one youngster out of them this year (the other one didn't live past day three :( )

But, here he is
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Once he molts, I will post a picture of him so you guys can see the dramatic transformation of tiger grizzled pigeons.

Here are his parents, both are molted out, but, as you can't tell, the make has very little white in him. But, that is actually good, as it is better to have one with to much white (the hen) and one with to little white (the male) to produce the best looking tiger grizzles. Two perfect tiger grizzles likely aren't going to produce another perfect tiger grizzle.

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And while im at it,,, might as well tell yall what im working on now. I am breeding a spread black hen to the yellow tiger. Both babies will most likely be spread blacks. If that's the case, one of them will most likely be a hen. Both babies should carry the yellow tiger gene (not sure if the male is a hetero, or a homozygous bird yet) but, assuming the spread black hen that I will produce from this pair carries the tiger grizzled gene, next year I'll breed my first black tiger grizzle racing homer by pairing it to the yellow hen tiger grizzle. There color transformation is amazing! The babies start out almost jet black, but then molt into this:
 

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