Need help identifying this chick.

[Peafowlssssssss]

What do you know about the bird's parents and grandparents? Do you have any of the bird's siblings?

I know nothing about them, I just purchased them this summer as a breeding pair, both are cameo black shoulder pied white eyed, and haven't gotten any chicks from them yet, both just have a few amount of white.

 

[Garden Peas]

Can you post photos of them?

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Sure.

 

[Garden Peas]

Sure.

Okay, I see a white throat patch on the male and some pied patterning on his body. I can't see his tail -- does he have ALL white eyes, or only some?

I can't tell if the hen has a white throat patch or not, and from this one photo, I don't see any white on her. Can you tell us if she has any white on her at all? If so, where is it? Is there any frosting on her, and are there any white blotchy feathers on her back?

How old are they? Did you mention it already and I just forgot?

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

Okay, I see a white throat patch on the male and some pied patterning on his body. I can't see his tail -- does he have ALL white eyes, or only some?

I can't tell if the hen has a white throat patch or not, and from this one photo, I don't see any white on her. Can you tell us if she has any white on her at all? If so, where is it? Is there any frosting on her, and are there any white blotchy feathers on her back?

How old are they? Did you mention it already and I just forgot?

Most of his tail has white eyes, we need to wait until he gets his full train this year, I haven't seen his full train yet, the hen is harder to tell because of her lighter color, she has some white feathers on her wing but I can see them only in person, hard to recognize them in the pictures. Not sure if she has a white throat patch or not, but even if she had, it will not be like the male of course, and i'm not sure if she has any whites on her back or not, it's hard to tell.

They are breeding age, haven't asked about their exact age, but I would say they are older than 3 years.

 

[Garden Peas]

Most of his tail has white eyes, we need to wait until he gets his full train this year, I haven't seen his full train yet, the hen is harder to tell because of lighter color, she has some white feathers on her wing but I can see them in person, hard to recognize them in the pictures. Not sure if she has a white throat patch or not, but even if she had, it will not be like the male of course, and i can't if has any whites on her back or not, it's hard to tell.

They are breeding age, haven't asked about their exact age, but I would say they are older than 3 years.

You may be able to tell if the hen has a white throat patch by looking at the dark area -- the kinda collar looking area -- below her head, under her chin.

Here's two photos of my BS hen... from the side/back (lower photo) you see the dark ring around her neck, just like your hen. From the front (top photo) you can see that the dark ring is interrupted under her chin. She has a patch of much whiter feathers below her chin and extending down the front of her throat, breaking that dark ring in that area.

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

You may be able to tell if the hen has a white throat patch by looking at the dark area -- the kinda collar looking area -- below her head, under her chin.

Here's two photos of my BS hen... from the side/back (lower photo) you see the dark ring around her neck, just like your hen. From the front (top photo) you can see that the dark ring is interrupted under her chin. She has a patch of much whiter feathers below her chin and extending down the front of her throat, breaking that dark ring in that area.

Mine doesn't have that many whites on her throat like yours, maybe she has just a tiny white spots, let me check for more photos. Which color is that pretty silver pied cock?

 

[Peafowlssssssss]

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.

 

[Garden Peas]

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.

 

[Garden Peas]

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.

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!