Need help identifying this chick.

[Garden Peas]

Which color is that pretty silver pied cock?

He is an opal silver pied... my miracle chick

Pealover130 calls him "Quicksilver"

 

[Garden Peas]

I just realized that in this photo (is this the same male?) you can see lots of white mottling on the male's back from the WE genes.

 

[DylansMom]

I just realized that in this photo (is this the same male?) you can see lots of white mottling on the male's back from the WE genes.

Don't count on that mottling coming from WE. He is a Cameo, Cameo is one of those colors that fade like Purple. New feathers are much darker than old feathers causing a mottled appearance. This is one of my Purple hens she has no WE genes that I know of.


That fading sure makes her look WE though doesn't it? And both of my Purple girls look like this.

 

[Garden Peas]

Don't count on that mottling coming from WE. He is a Cameo, Cameo is one of those colors that fade like Purple. New feathers are much darker than old feathers causing a mottled appearance. This is one of my Purple hens she has no WE genes that I know of.


That fading sure makes her look WE though doesn't it? And both of my Purple girls look like this.

Interesting, I'm glad you posted that photo. She really does look very mottled there, though it looks more like a lighter version of the same color rather than white, maybe? Photos and the lighting in them are SOOO hard, they just change tremendously with light angles. And then we are photographing these iridescent birds

whose color changes from every angle and reflection. We must be nuts to even try

So Othman had posted some photos of his pair that he says are cameo BS pied WE, asking for thoughts on how to breed more white into the offspring. The top photo is the male and the second is the hen. I think the other hen in the top photo is unrelated to his question. Then he posted some more photos, which are below.

So this is the second set of photos from Othman of his hen. But later on, I noticed the male in the middle photo had the mottling on his back. I think the bird in the third (bottom) photo is unrelated to the discussion.

Not sure if we could consider that she has a white throat patch

But you can see in the first picture that she has some whites on her wing.

When I looked at it carefully, it seemed to me that the mottling was picking up the light from the bright front wall and it was making the white "pop" into the camera more intensely because of the reflective angle, so the white (if it is white) really shows up in that photo. It does seem like white photographs differently if the angles are right. But no,

I'm not even certain it's the same male as in the first set of photos... Othman has many beautiful birds!

Anyway, you can see subtle differences in the tones/shades of the light colors, for example the white flights on the hen. On my monitor, it seems as though the mottling is more white, or lighter at least, than the other light parts of the male bird.

But you are right about the cameo fading... we will have to see what Othman can tell us?

Love that purple hen!

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Yes the darker birds are spalding cameos and not related to this conversation, the cameo bs pied w/e male is the same in all these pictures, i don't have any other cameo pied male.


Now i need to go back and read the pervious posts

 

[Garden Peas]

You will need a full litre of coffee to get through the ones I wrote

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Anyway, here's why I'm asking. You were wondering how to increase the white in the offspring. I have some thoughts... hoping @AugeredIn will not laugh too hard

The birds are both reportedly cameo BS pied white-eyed. Now just talking about the leucistic genes (not the cameo, not the BS genes) in these birds...

Starting with the male bird:

WE genes will give white eyes in the train, as you know, even if only one gene is present, but sometimes that will only result in a few white eyes. So if his train is "mostly" white eyed, then let's assume for the sake of argument that he is carrying 2 WE genes.

[At this point, we can have a long discussion about whether there is a variant WE gene that results in silver pied birds when it occurs with the correct other genes, which we could call a WEsp gene, or whether such a variant doesn't really exist...] But in this case, since the male doesn't seem to have much silvering if any, let's assume he doesn't have two of them, and maybe doesn't have any of those variant WE genes, if they do exist. He does, however, have to have some kind of WE gene that is causing the white eyes in his train, and most likely has two of them.

We also know that having WE genes seems to increase the amount of white on birds, not just the white eyes in the train.

When we see a "pied" bird (phenotype), we don't know for absolute certain what genes that bird is carrying, unlike a "white" bird, which we know MUST have two white genes. We know that in general, a bird with two pied (P) genes will usually only have a few white feathers ("dark pied") and the more visibly pied birds ("loud pied") are thought to have a white gene combined with a pied gene.

Silver pied birds are thought to have a white gene, a pied gene, and two WE genes, probably a variant WEsp gene but there continues to be some debate about that.

The darkest birds have only one pied gene or only one white gene, which can show up as only one white primary wing feather, a white chin patch, or with no visible white at all, just completely hidden.

So theoretically, the male bird would be thought to have one white gene paired with one pied gene (resulting in the pied appearance) and two WE genes, resulting in the white-eyed train. But you are right, he doesn't have lots and lots of white on him, despite the fact that he has two WE genes. So I am wondering (@AugeredIn , here's where I'm hoping you won't laugh) if it could be possible that he is missing either the W gene or the P gene? What if he has two pied genes plus two WE genes which are increasing the amount of white to more than we would normally see on a dark pied bird, but less than we would see on a W-P 2 WE bird?

You could test this by breeding him to a white hen... the white hen must have two white genes, and must pass one to her offspring. If the male has a white gene and a pied gene, which is what we would normally expect, then some of the babies should be white and some loud pied white-eyed (but probably with only one WE gene). If no white chicks ever turn up, then the male would not have a white gene. If you can find a white hen from a cameo breeding you will still get cameo chicks. (I'm going to set aside the sex-linked discussion here and focus on the white though.)

If by some chance the male IS missing the white gene (I dunno?), then adding a cameo (hidden color) white hen will add the white gene to your breeding and may increase the amount of white on your pied offspring. If you can come up with a white from a cameo silver pied breeding, it may also add the variant WEsp gene, assuming it exists, and will certainly bring at least a WE gene with it.

This is getting too long for one post... I will discuss the hen next.

I was looking for a white hen(and still looking) to pair with this male, i know only the hens will be cameo, but also getting india blue loud pied males will be great for me.

A white cameo hen will be awesome, but i don't think i can find any here, and i doubt some can guarantee his white hen is cameo, most people here don't keep records for their birds.

You can with a great idea, let see if i can find a white hen and then we will know if he carry the white gene or not, by the way this male came from Brad Legg's, and he listed it as a cameo bs pied w/e.

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

You will need a full litre of coffee to get through the ones I wrote

LOL, i just wake up so i'm still not using 100% of my brain skills

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Sorry, I've been typing

, didn't see your new photos. Yes, it looks to me as though she has a small white patch under her chin (at least I think so from the very top photo in which you can see the front of her neck a bit better. And yes, the white primaries really stand out. In the top photo, with the darker lighting, it almost looks like some mottling with some white feathers on the back of the hen, but I don't know if that's actually there or just an artifact of the lighting. But I think we would hope to see that on a bird carrying WE genes.

So what can we figure out about her? We know she has something causing the white throat patch and white primaries. That could be a white gene (but not two), a pied gene, or possibly even the WE gene(s). But I can't tell if she looks frosty (she is very light colored overall)... it's just guessing for me, so maybe @AugeredIn can help with what he sees, since I don't have that much experience with this. Nothing is jumping out at me to suggest she would be carrying the variant WE gene, but if she does have that mottling, then you can probably safely say that at a minimum she is carrying one or more WE genes. But since they also can cause white primaries and white chin patches, if she is WE, then I don't suppose there is any guarantee that she is carrying a white gene. (Okay, feeling very out of my depth here!)

Just like with the male, you could test breed her with a white bird and see whether any white chicks resulted from the breeding. That would tell you for sure that she did indeed carry a white gene.

If she doesn't have a white gene, then just like with the male, if you can find a way to add white genes, it might increase the amount of white in the offspring. And if you can find a white from a silver pied breeding, you can perhaps increase the white a lot? (Thinking AugeredIn has fallen off his chair laughing by now...)

Anyway, that's just what I've been kicking around since I saw the photos. They are very lovely, btw... love your pens too!

Thanks, well i don't have a white male now to pair her with, and don't have more pens to get a new white male, but i was thinking if they both carrying the white gene they could throw a white chick next summer, but the possibility of getting white chick are just 25% of their offspring, so that's will not be clear if they didn't produce many chicks.

By the way, I always think the same way when thinking about adding more whites to offspring, hope Augeredln still fine

 

[Garden Peas]

I was looking for a white hen(and still looking) to pair with this male, i know only the hens will be cameo, but also getting india blue loud pied males will be great for me.

A white cameo hen will be awesome, but i don't think i can find any here, and i doubt some can guarantee his white hen is cameo, most people here don't keep records for their birds.

You can with a great idea, let see if i can find a white hen and then we will know if he carry the white gene or not, by the way this male came from Brad Legg's, and he listed it as a cameo bs pied w/e.

So here's what I'm thinking... if you can find someone with cameo silver pied birds and get a hen chick -- either a white hen, so you have two W genes, or even a cameo SP hen chick, you will pick up the WE variant gene (if that's what it is), which should increase the white in the offspring. And it makes more sense to me to bring in one more hen rather than, as you say, expand the pens for another male. And whatever you get from the present hen you have is what you get... but I tend to thing of these things as very long-term projects

If @AugeredIn tried to wade through all that stuff I wrote, it probably induced a coma, and will require emergency coffee