Porcelain? Buff? What color are these guineas?

[Debbienmousey]

We have pearl, white, and lavender guineas, and I've been breeding & raising them for about 4-5 years now. We hatch about 30-60ish a year, but never before have I hatched and raised any that look like this yet. We have chickens as well and normally let them share in the hatching part. Normally we just get the usual colors, pearl, white, lavender, pearl pied, and lavender pied, but once or twice we have gotten an off-white colored keet with very light tan markings on the head. Sadly the rare one or two keets we've hatched with this color have always ended up dying for one reason or another. This year my blue Silkie hen hatched about 11 keets in June. Some pearl, lavender, and about 3-4 whites. After a couple days of their hatching I noticed it looked like 2 of the whites might have light tan on their heads and backs. I was tempted to bring them inside for safer keeping but since everything was going well out there I decided to leave them with the hen. Anyway, they grew up to look like normal white guineas and I kinda forgot about them(hehe). That is until August when I noticed the three whitish-tanish pearled guineas in my grow-out pen. My initial thought was Buff Dundottes, but since I'm not very good at genetics yet I wasn't sure if this was possible. Throughout probably the past month or two they have lost a lot of their tan coloring and are mainly white/off white with pearling all over. Here are some pics of them in August and some from today.

In August:

Here is the hen, at about 2 months old. She looked very tanish then, it's not just the shadow.


Close-up





Today:

Cock. They're almost 6 or 7 months old now.


Cock. Can you see the dots?


Cock


The hen. She really isn't blueish at all, that's mostly the shadow. Perhaps a bit smokey, but not really.


Hen


Hen

Besides the pearling they also have darker necks than the white guineas. Sorry the pics from today are so far away, my cameras zoom is pretty much broken and the usually friendly and curious birds were not being friendly, lol. The other pics are from when I was borrowing my friends Canon. Sorry if I posted too many pictures also

. Sooo..What color do you think they are?

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

Unsure on color, but they are just gorgeous!! Whites, do have some polka-dots if I'm not mistaken.?

~Aspen

 

[GuineaLady93]

We have pearl, white, and lavender guineas, and I've been breeding & raising them for about 4-5 years now. We hatch about 30-60ish a year, but never before have I hatched and raised any that look like this yet. We have chickens as well and normally let them share in the hatching part. Normally we just get the usual colors, pearl, white, lavender, pearl pied, and lavender pied, but once or twice we have gotten an off-white colored keet with very light tan markings on the head. Sadly the rare one or two keets we've hatched with this color have always ended up dying for one reason or another. This year my blue Silkie hen hatched about 11 keets in June. Some pearl, lavender, and about 3-4 whites. After a couple days of their hatching I noticed it looked like 2 of the whites might have light tan on their heads and backs. I was tempted to bring them inside for safer keeping but since everything was going well out there I decided to leave them with the hen. Anyway, they grew up to look like normal white guineas and I kinda forgot about them(hehe). That is until August when I noticed the three whitish-tanish pearled guineas in my grow-out pen. My initial thought was Buff Dundottes, but since I'm not very good at genetics yet I wasn't sure if this was possible. Throughout probably the past month or two they have lost a lot of their tan coloring and are mainly white/off white with pearling all over. Here are some pics of them in August and some from today.

In August:

Here is the hen, at about 2 months old. She looked very tanish then, it's not just the shadow.


Close-up





Today:

Cock. They're almost 6 or 7 months old now.


Cock. Can you see the dots?


Cock


The hen. She really isn't blueish at all, that's mostly the shadow. Perhaps a bit smokey, but not really.


Hen


Hen

Besides the pearling they also have darker necks than the white guineas. Sorry the pics from today are so far away, my cameras zoom is pretty much broken and the usually friendly and curious birds were not being friendly, lol. The other pics are from when I was borrowing my friends Canon. Sorry if I posted too many pictures also

. Sooo..What color do you think they are?

Not sure if it is just the shadow but picture 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10 look like Pied Porcelians to me, but not 100%.
Pictures: 5, 6, and 7 look to be Buff Dundotte.
Sorry that I can't tell for sure...it's hard for me to see it...
Ashley

 

[GuineaLady93]

Unsure on color, but they are just gorgeous!! Whites, do have some polka-dots if I'm not mistaken.?

~Aspen

The Whites don't have any pearling. They are pure white.
Just wanted to let you know!

 

[PeepsCA]

I agree with Ash, the Hen looks like a Pied Porcelain, I kept a Hen from one of my last yr's hatches that looks very similar to her. And the cock looks like a Pied Buff Dundotte to me. Buff Dundotte cocks can be pretty light colored almost a creamy off white, but is still a tan based bird. I say he's also Pied because think I'm seeing a splash of white on his chest and white wing feathers (unless it's just the lighting).

 

[Debbienmousey]

Thanks guys! I hadn't even thought that they might be Pied before, but now that you guys mention it I definitely see it. Sorry again about the lighting and such in the pictures. My guineas are usually always very friendly and photogenic, don't know what was up with them yesterday. I'll see if I can get some better pictures tomorrow.

So just to make sure I understand this 100%, if he is Pied that means he'll have some feathers with no pearling, right? Also, I was planning on keeping these 3 guineas separate from the others during breeding season(there is a third one, I'm pretty sure it's a cock though, and it looks exactly like the cock pictured), in hopes that they would reproduce these colors. What colors should a Porcelain x Buff Dundotte breeding give? Or would it be better for me to breed them with the Pearl, Lavender, or White instead?

 

[PeepsCA]

Thanks guys! I hadn't even thought that they might be Pied before, but now that you guys mention it I definitely see it. Sorry again about the lighting and such in the pictures. My guineas are usually always very friendly and photogenic, don't know what was up with them yesterday. I'll see if I can get some better pictures tomorrow.

So just to make sure I understand this 100%, if he is Pied that means he'll have some feathers with no pearling, right? Also, I was planning on keeping these 3 guineas separate from the others during breeding season(there is a third one, I'm pretty sure it's a cock though, and it looks exactly like the cock pictured), in hopes that they would reproduce these colors. What colors should a Porcelain x Buff Dundotte breeding give? Or would it be better for me to breed them with the Pearl, Lavender, or White instead?

Pied refers to having areas of pure white feathers, that have no pearling. Usually on the chest and wing feathers. They can have different degrees of Pied... some can be really heavily Pied, some can be just slightly Pied. Pied is usually fairly dominant, so it tends to show up quite a bit in my flocks, on any color (except white), and darker colors are very dominant, especially the Pearl Grey. I also get a lot of pure Whites out of my Pied flock.

To get more of these colors it will take a gene of those colors from both parents to produce keets of these colors (the color genes have to pair up, one from each parent). It's hard to say what your hatches will be, Porcelains can carry a lot of hidden genes, and they carry both the blue and the tan genes, and depending what the Buff Dundotte is carrying... assorted colors could show up. You could get lots of Buff Dundottes, more Porcelains, or you could even end up with a lot of Pied Pearl Greys if either bird is split to Pearl Grey or they both have that in their genetic background. And you may end up with a lot of pure Whites.There are a lot of variables that can effect what hatches out of pairs or trios... and it's hard to narrow it down unless you know the complete genetic background of each bird. Most of the time it's a crapshoot, lol.



I tend to edit a lot of my posts, sometimes several times because I've typoed a bunch... (I even had to edit this!) lol

 

[critters]

Pretty guineas! enjoyed your pics....

 

[StevenW.]

No idea on color.. I'm just going to go with Peeps and Guinealady! But they are sure are pretty!

 

[Debbienmousey]

Critters, Steven, thank you .

Peeps, okay thanks. I knew a little about Pieds before, and now I know even more . I looked more closely at the two cocks today and they are both Pied for sure. We have many Pearl Grey and Lavender that are Pied. We tend to get more solid Pearl Grey hens then cocks though, the cocks are almost always Pied. That's probably just coincidence, but I think it's kind of neat.

As for the colors, I guess I'll just have to wait 'til the hen starts laying then to see what I get, lol. Do you think I should add another hen or two? Or would that just probably decrease/not help my chances of getting more Buff Dundottes/Porcelains? I'm still learning a lot about genetics in general, and specifically trying to learn about chickens right now - I want to breed Silkies - but I guess guineas are a bit different than chickens. I've noticed that you never get a mixed color like you do with chickens. Oh well, I still can't wait for spring. I really love the Buff Dundotte guineas, hope I'll get some more of those Thanks again!