Peaches, what color art thee?

[Susan Skylark]

This is Peaches (5 weeks old), my son wanted Pineapple but that's a mouthful, I have no idea what color this is. EB base and I think some white but I'm still trying to figure out what this beige color is. The bird may carry Roux and or Fee as well. The mother was this color but never threw another chick of the same hue. The sibling from the same hatch (separated hen to collect eggs and incubated separately) is a pearl (Italian fee) with hints of the beige color bleeding through but that may also be just the regular fawn/italian leaking through the heterozygous fee. I'm pretty sure it isn't roux/fee, I've bred plenty of scarlet fee EB birds, all are brown/orange/red tones not apricot! It could be ginger fee, I plan on doing more breeding to figure this out. It isn't blau/silver/andalusion of any stripe. It may also be an Italian carrier. If it is ginger, that means I have a male that throws it (or had, I culled 2 since this one hatched!) which would be cool and save me a bit of breeding, if I get some similar colored chicks in future hatches it is very likely ginger (sex linked recessive, a carrier male can throw females that show the color). I did cull the original hen due to age and am tickled to have a successor of the same color. I contacted the breeder and they don't know either, apparently there is German Pastel in the source flock (a multi-genetic color strain that produces birds of a certain phenotype when bred together) so it could be anything! Any other ideas?

 

[Finchbreeder]

Certainly looks cinnamon - and sex linked recessive would explain the shortage of them.
Remember that the older hens sons will be carriers of the gene if this is the case.
The easiest way to confirm would be to put one of the older hens sons over Peaches.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Cinnamon have red eyes, I hatched one in some thieving otter shipped eggs, sold her because she was more delicate and I’m not interested in the color. I plan on breeding this bird to both figure out the color and because I love it but I also have an American pansy line I’d like to expand but I only keep 20 adults! Roux, ginger and cinnamon are all sex linked recessive and I know I might have a carrier male but I may have already culled him for temperament before I knew who it was. I plan on keeping the brother to this bird too. I’ll keep you posted!

 

[Finchbreeder]

Best of luck in replicating her colour. Keeping brother and trying him over a mix of hens will show if he is a carrier - eventually. Recessive sex linked genes are facinating and frustrating. They can show up in the 1st or last season of a birds breeding or every season. Like playing the Lotto.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Peaches is a boy, he just started crowing, will save me 3 generations of breeding, if sex linked recessive his daughters will be this color first generation!

 

[catesquire]

Oh that's awesome! Good luck!

 

[Finchbreeder]

Well that was considerate of him.
So some sort of recessive that mum and dad must both have been carrying is a possibility.

 

[Susan Skylark]

I was able to contact the breeder, they said there was some German pastel in the source flock, which I don’t have a clue about, and apparently the interwebs doesn’t know much more but from what I can find, it is apparently a multi gene color collection rather than a single gene, and fee is part of it, possibly white, and nobody knows what else. But comparing pictures, this guy is pretty close, as is the mother and some other birds (different shade or color but same ‘cloudy’ effect) that I’ve been wondering about, but it also explains why I’ve never had another similar colored bird even with hatching a ton of eggs out of this line, this is the only one that is the same color but since it is multi genetic it is pretty slim odds of replicating it, unlike a single gene. Very interesting but I don’t think we’ll ever figure out quail color genetics!