Both have been wrong when I first posted about combining colors -- claiming it's impossible -- and about how Peach came about, so the possibility for them to be wrong again exists. In other posts, Deerman said that split to Pied and split to White were the birds you couldn't tell apart -- not the ones homozygous for Pied.
And I can also be wrong. However, when I look at pictures of "Pied" peafowl from many sources on the internet, I keep seeing one type of presentation that seems rather consistent among some -- big throat patch, white wings, some white on the belly, and no white in random asymmetrical patches. The Dark Pied is described as having a white throat and some white on the wings. I took this to mean that birds split to Pied show very tiny white throat patches and perhaps a white feather or two on the wings, while birds homozygous for Pied have larger amounts of white in these areas (but not across the back or in the tail). It suggests that this symmetrical pattern of white found almost identically among different birds is the result of an identical genotype. The behavior of the incompletely dominant White mutation being random in its "erasing" of pigment would interfere with this consistent appearance, so it doesn't seem likely that the mutation is present among those birds.
If others claim that birds homozygous for Pied are the ones with the tiny amount of white on the throat and wings, then perhaps there are two versions of the Pied gene -- one more pronounced in expression than the other. This may account for differences between "Loud Pied" and "Regular Pied" -- the former have a copy of the "stronger" Pied and a copy of White, while the latter have a copy of the "weaker" Pied and a copy of White. The test would be looking at offspring from one of the birds I'm calling "Dark Pied" and assume to be homozygous for Pied (whether it's the one and only version, or a possible "stronger" version) bred with a White. If all the offspring come out Pied, then we know that the birds I call "Dark Pied" are homozygous for Pied. If any White offspring result, then we know that I was incorrect. If Zazouse hatches eggs from her White hens paired with what I'm calling a "Dark Pied" peacock, we'll find out.
