Need help identifying this chick.

[Garden Peas]

Thats the million dollar questions right there!

I used to think you could "create" them. Now I think you need to have a bird from a silver pied breeding to get silver pieds. We have played with this and it seems possible to have Pied White Eye birds that do not throw silver pieds. We have them.

So if those are the "million dollar questions" -- then what you've written is at least a $500,000 answer

I went back and re-read a bunch of old stuff I had seen over the past few years, including this thread:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/571197/inheritance-of-silver-pied

And also some stuff on the UPA forum.

If I am putting it together correctly, I think the summation would be that it not only requires WE from silver pied breedings to get silver pied chicks, but also, that BOTH WE genes in the offspring must come from silver pied ancestors... which also supports your theory that there is a variant WE gene in the SP birds.

In the old BYC thread that's linked above, there is a description of trying to get SP chicks by breeding an SP bird to homozygous WE birds... with NO SP chicks resulting. We know those chicks got two WE genes, since both the SP parent and the double factor WE parent necessarily pass one WE gene to the offspring. But the chicks were not SP... which means that even though they got a "special" WE gene from one parent, when added to the "ordinary" WE gene from the other parent, no SP chicks

Now it could be possible, if only one "special" WE gene is needed, then the SP parent passed an "ordinary" WE gene, not the "special" one. But statistically, half the P+W+2WE chicks would have that one "special" WE gene, so at least some SP chicks (if that's all it took) should have turned up eventually. But they didn't. And in doing more reading, it seems like they don't. So that makes it seem much more likely that in order to have SP chicks, there must be two copies of the "special" WE gene.

So your pied WE birds that don't produce SP chicks would have to have "ordinary" WE genes, not "special" ones... (Wait, all Peas are special

) Or (shudder, too complicated), there could be some other tagalong gene that only gets inherited from silver pieds, and which happens to show up with the WE from SP ancestors... eeek.

I'm curious... those pied WE birds with two WE genes... how diluted (silvered) are the feathers compared to an SP bird?

You know, this still could be explained with a crossover in the white/pied/WE genes back when SP first showed up, and the descendants are carrying the crossed-over genes still... But thinking about that makes me realize I need waaaay more coffee...

 

[KsKingBee]

A breeder was telling me that people will contact him and complain that the birds he sells do not all breed true to color. He asks what they do with the IB looking chicks and they say that they get rid of them and only keep the colored ones. He tells them that is the problem, those plain looking birds are carrying the genes they are looking for in their breeding program. Genetics wasted...

 

[Garden Peas]

You can lead a horse to water...

 

[AugeredIn]

......

If I am putting it together correctly, I think the summation would be that it not only requires WE from silver pied breedings to get silver pied chicks, but also, that BOTH WE genes in the offspring must come from silver pied ancestors... which also supports your theory that there is a variant WE gene in the SP birds.

In the old BYC thread that's linked above, there is a description of trying to get SP chicks by breeding an SP bird to homozygous WE birds... with NO SP chicks resulting. We know those chicks got two WE genes, since both the SP parent and the double factor WE parent necessarily pass one WE gene to the offspring. But the chicks were not SP... which means that even though they got a "special" WE gene from one parent, when added to the "ordinary" WE gene from the other parent, no SP chicks

Now it could be possible, if only one "special" WE gene is needed, then the SP parent passed an "ordinary" WE gene, not the "special" one. But statistically, half the P+W+2WE chicks would have that one "special" WE gene, so at least some SP chicks (if that's all it took) should have turned up eventually. But they didn't. And in doing more reading, it seems like they don't. So that makes it seem much more likely that in order to have SP chicks, there must be two copies of the "special" WE gene.

So your pied WE birds that don't produce SP chicks would have to have "ordinary" WE genes, not "special" ones... (Wait, all Peas are special

) Or (shudder, too complicated), there could be some other tagalong gene that only gets inherited from silver pieds, and which happens to show up with the WE from SP ancestors... eeek.

I'm curious... those pied WE birds with two WE genes... how diluted (silvered) are the feathers compared to an SP bird?

You know, this still could be explained with a crossover in the white/pied/WE genes back when SP first showed up, and the descendants are carrying the crossed-over genes still... But thinking about that makes me realize I need waaaay more coffee...

I think you are summing up the possibilities correctly except the tag along part. I think there is regular WE and silver pied WE.

I do think there are a couple of other things going on here though that bear throwing in. I think there are some mutations and/or crossover that occurs more frequently than you would other wise expect. I think silver pied WE is one of them. I think that breeding white and WE birds together occasionally throws the silver pied mutation and much more often than the one in a million chance. I think the same holds true for crossover in the sex linked color combinations. Can't prove that yet but will know a lot more after this season.

 

[AugeredIn]

I'm curious... those pied WE birds with two WE genes... how diluted (silvered) are the feathers compared to an SP bird?

Not so much in comparison.

 

[Garden Peas]

I think you are summing up the possibilities correctly except the tag along part. I think there is regular WE and silver pied WE.

I do think there are a couple of other things going on here though that bear throwing in. I think there are some mutations and/or crossover that occurs more frequently than you would other wise expect. I think silver pied WE is one of them. I think that breeding white and WE birds together occasionally throws the silver pied mutation and much more often than the one in a million chance. I think the same holds true for crossover in the sex linked color combinations. Can't prove that yet but will know a lot more after this season.

A crossover between two or more of the leucistic genes would definitely explain the results... And crossover could certainly recur -- that's a simpler explanation than a one-time mutation. Simple explanations are good

I don't know enough about leucistic genes in general, or about the gene loci in peas... Do genes have to be alleles to "crossover"?

So in the sex-linked colors, do purple and cameo link up to the same site? And then "crossover" to peach? There was that good post by Rosa Moschata about crossover genes...

We think white and pied are alleles, but WE is not an allele with white and pied, since birds can obviously have 2 WE genes in addition to 1 white and 1 pied or 2 white or 2 pied.... If some gene or genes in the white birds from silver pied ancestors is crossed over... I'm trying to understand the mechanics of that, since WE theoretically is acting at a different location, isn't it?

I've been puzzling over WE and exactly how it works. White and pied each seem to act only one way... pied suppresses patches of color, white suppresses all color. But WE seems to act two ways, #1 by diluting color (Is this the only "dilution" gene in peas?) and #2 by selectively suppressing color in the ocelli. It also results in some scattered white feathers in certain locations, just as white and pied can result in some white feathers in specific locations (not the same places as WE though).

The "variant" WE (for lack of a better term) seems to be like a supercharged version of the regular WE -- it increases the dilution and further restricts the color more than a loud pied combination of W/P genes does, so that usually there are only small patches of color on the bird and a great deal of silvering/dilution. So it's not really acting differently as much as it is acting MORE.

Now I need to have more coffee and think about what that means in terms of the possible genetics

 

[Garden Peas]

One more question, @AugeredIn , have you worked with "progressive pied" and is there something similar in WE genes?

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

I think that breeding white and WE birds together occasionally throws the silver pied mutation and much more often than the one in a million chance. I think the same holds true for crossover in the sex linked color combinations. Can't prove that yet but will know a lot more after this season.

I have mentioned this before somewhere here, This season i got three bronze silver pied chicks from a bronze split white father and bronze white eye mother, the father could be carrying white eye gene but he isn't showing any white eyes in his train.

This is the hen:


And this is the male, as you can see he don't have any white eyes yet.

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

And here are their chicks:

 

[Garden Peas]

I have mentioned this before somewhere here, This season i got three bronze silver pied chicks from a bronze split white father and bronze white eye mother, the father could be carrying white eye gene but he isn't showing any white eyes in his train.

This is the hen:


And this is the male, as you can see he don't have any white eyes yet.

I guess he would have to be carrying a WE gene -- and one of them must also be carrying a pied gene... If you are sure the father is split white, then it would have to be the mother, since otherwise with one W and one P, dad would be visibly pied, not just showing a tiny throat patch, I think... Lucky you with those gorgeous chicks

You really hit the jackpot on that one, genetically... Was it a huge surprise?