Odd results from a cross.PIC ADDED

[taraann81]

added!~Hi all!

I have a few 18 week old Royal palm crossed with Belts...they were an accident and will be going to freezer camp eventually.

I just thought it was strange that the resulting poults from that cross are MUCH MUCH darker than a royal palm. With my lack of understanding of genetics, I just assumed that they would be mostly white birds with probably less black in them than the palms given the the belts are pure white.

One is a bourbon red cross, the poult I was talking about is black and white (not the reddish one). Pic iss poor but I took one and camera died.

 

[OmaBird]

All white birds have hidden genes. If they are brown eyed they are nomaly black based. If the are blue eyed they are nomaly bronzed based. They can also carry alot of other genes. The Palms are Blackwinged bronzed based. Blackwing bronze is recessive to black based and bronze based in that order. If you have pictures I could tell you more.

 

[Lagerdogger]

I assume you mean each bird is 80% black, not 80% of the birds are black.

If you have black-based white birds, the important genes are the black based (BB) and the white genes (cc), so the genetic makeup can be written as BBcc. They probably don't have any narragansett genes. These birds would be black, except that the double recessive white gene overrides the black.

The Royal palm is black-winged bronze (b1b1), with two palm genes (cgcg) and two narragansett genes (ngng)

All of the offspring of this cross would be Bb1 ccg Ngng, where the c gene is recessive white, the cg is recessive palm, the Ng is not narragansett (one of the "hidden" genes mentioned by Omabird), and the ng is narragansett.

Since black-based is the dominant base color over black-winged bronze, these birds want to be black, just as your white birds did. However, now there is no longer a double recessive white to make them white. One of the white genes has been replaced with a palm gene. Black now gets to dominate. However, birds with single palm genes and single narragansett genes can sometimes express partial traits, often referred to as dilution. So you have black birds that are diluted with palm and narragansett genes, which is probably taking away some of the black.

Of course, if your beltsville whites were not entirely pure to begin with, all sorts of other things could be happening as well.

It is interesting that the white from royal palms and the white from beltsville whites arise from entirely different sets of genes, and that combining the two different sources of white does not create white birds. There are many combinations of color genes that will not produce colors of birds that are intuitive.

 

[taraann81]

 

[OmaBird]

Your picture looks a little like I am seeing a gray aka Palm gene. I would like to see more pictures to be sure. Oregon grey is what gives royal palm there color. Here is some of my own line of OG. The first one has a Ng gene. The second one does not have a Ng gene.

Tail Veiw.

 

[taraann81]

I will get new batteries and take some better pics! Thanks to you and Lagerdogger for all the info. I find genetics fascinating albeit extremely confusing!