Peafowl Genetics for Dummies (in other words us)

[connerhills]

George, or anyone for that matter, do you have a cameo silver pied male?

No, I sure don't. All I have is a 75% Spalding cameo male and a few hens. I thought about breeding this year to a silver pied hen. ?? thanks George

 

[Dany12]

Inbreeding can cause a mutation?

 

[Yoda]

I agree with George. The genetics of those birds are not the same. The first bird is not silver pied. I see a couple of colored eyes. I see some green saddle feathers.

I do agree the first bird is poorly labeled. It is obviously at least split white eye. Given the whole "saddle must be silver to be silver pied" requirement, it cannot be silver pied. If I now understand silver pied correctly it is most likely a split silver pied bird. The single white eye marker is the silver pied white eye allele as opposed to the plain white eye allele.

I am now confused, I thought a bird is either white eye or not. I did not know they can be split to white eye?

 

[AugeredIn]

A bird can have one white eye gene or a pair of white eye genes.

 

[Yoda]

I never heard of a bird "split to" white eye, I always was told they either are white eye or not but no one ever siad "split to" white eye so I will ask one more time to be sure can a bird be split to white eye like AugeredIn stated?

 

[Rosa moschata]

The White Eye mutation is incompletely dominant. When a peacock has one copy of the gene, roughly half of the ocelli in his train will be white, the other half "normal." When a peacock has two copies of the gene, all ocelli in his train are white. Because "split to" is usually referring to recessive mutations which "can't be seen" in heterozygous animals (i.e. having only one copy of the mutation), often the term factor is used for incompletely dominant mutations. Thus peas with one copy of White Eye would be referred to as Single Factor White Eye, and peas with two copies as Double Factor White Eye.

 

[zazouse]

One of my pied peas has train feathers like this on almost all his feathers , do you think he has one copy or two of the white eyed gene?

 

[AugeredIn]

One.

And to add to Rosa's commentary, a single white eyed gene (..or split white eye or single factor) can have anywhere from ZERO white eyes up to maybe 50% white eyes but usually much less than half in my experience. Our spalding bronze that has single white eye gene had ZERO white eyes last year and maybe three or four this year.

 

[AugeredIn]

Zazouse, what were the parents of that bird? Are there any other white spots besides the throat?

 

[casportpony]

Looks like he has a white spot in front of his left leg.

-Kathy