Pansy Fee Breeding Group

[Jedwards]

Hello Everyone!

I recently hatched a mix of SSC and Pansy Fee from Myshire Farm. They really take care with packaging and have great customer relations. Anyways, I really like the Pansy Fee, from what I can tell I ended up with what looks like 6 Pansy fee hens and about 7 roos. I also had some falb fee, sparkly, and a bunch of grau fee, which I'm thinking came from the Pansy Fee eggs rather than the SSC?. I plan on keeping 12 of them together to continue breeding and had some questions about how true they will breed and what my best options would be to keep as far as the colorations in the males.

In the pic below, I think the 2 in front looking at the camera are hens, with the 2 males behind them on the left and right (with another hen in the far back middle). Two of the males that hatched out have 'red' heads like the one on the right and there are about 5 like the one on the left which do not have a red head, but no speckled chest either. Which do you think would be best color variation of males to keep?

I plan on keeping 2 males to 10 hens in their breeding cage. I didn't have enough females so there are also 2 SSC hens, a falb fee hen, and a grau fee hen. I was hesitant to put a grau fee male in because I read that it is dominant and I'd prefer to hatch out pansys. Unfortunately all 3 sparklys were males. It would have been neat to throw a sparkly hen in there too though.

Thanks!

Edit: So stumbling through Myshire videos, could the 2 males with reddish heads be pearl males? since they cross pearl males with female pansy fee for best results?

 

[FloorCandy]

I’ve seen from experience that range patterns such as your grau fee can cross with Italian and create what looks like pansy among other variations of speckles. Range is incompletely dominant so it’s not as cut and dry as hs biology would lead you to believe. I’m not certain how pansy compares in dominance. Range crossed with wild like falb fee will be not quite range and not quite wild patterned in most cases. In mixed groups you’ll often see birds with faint wild markings, or chicks born with wild stripes and range eyebrows.

The SSC is interesting in that it is also incompletely dominant, but as a color not a pattern, so you get many variations depending on what you mix it with. However, crossing silver to silver can (25% chance I believe) result in birds carrying 2 copies of silver. Double silvers have a higher egg mortality rate, those that do hatch often have eye and limb deformities, they’re blind, and thin feathered. The best success rate with SSC would be putting your SSC hens with a non SSC roo, or put a bunch of non SSC hens with a SSC roo.

 

[Jedwards]

I’ve seen from experience that range patterns such as your grau fee can cross with Italian and create what looks like pansy among other variations of speckles. Range is incompletely dominant so it’s not as cut and dry as hs biology would lead you to believe. I’m not certain how pansy compares in dominance. Range crossed with wild like falb fee will be not quite range and not quite wild patterned in most cases. In mixed groups you’ll often see birds with faint wild markings, or chicks born with wild stripes and range eyebrows.

The SSC is interesting in that it is also incompletely dominant, but as a color not a pattern, so you get many variations depending on what you mix it with. However, crossing silver to silver can (25% chance I believe) result in birds carrying 2 copies of silver. Double silvers have a higher egg mortality rate, those that do hatch often have eye and limb deformities, they’re blind, and thin feathered. The best success rate with SSC would be putting your SSC hens with a non SSC roo, or put a bunch of non SSC hens with a SSC roo.

Thanks for the reply! I have plenty of grau fee males and some spare female Italians, so I may try that, just to play around. I suppose I would need to then introduce the fee gene with those offspring, to get more of a pansy fee?

 

[FloorCandy]

Thanks for the reply! I have plenty of grau fee males and some spare female Italians, so I may try that, just to play around. I suppose I would need to then introduce the fee gene with those offspring, to get more of a pansy fee?

Fee is also incompletely dominant. Birds carrying single fee will often have reddish brown around the neck and upper back, if a male Fee carries roux, you’ll often see red patches around the head and neck. It often, especially the head, fades a bit as the bird matures. For that crisp pansy Fee look you will probably want to aim for double fees. So you can cross the fees you get back to the parent to get some double fees.

 

[Jedwards]

Fee is also incompletely dominant. Birds carrying single fee will often have reddish brown around the neck and upper back, if a male Fee carries roux, you’ll often see red patches around the head and neck. It often, especially the head, fades a bit as the bird matures. For that crisp pansy Fee look you will probably want to aim for double fees. So you can cross the fees you get back to the parent to get some double fees.

Thank you for the info! I have a back up project now, or one I can do in comparison to the group of pansy fee hens I have now. I have a small group of pastels I am going to try to maintain to keep the fee gene.