Sexing young chicks

[itsjustme]

I talked to the guy that I got my pair from and he couldn't remember which pen mine come from. He has a pen with a purple hen and one with a cameo hen. He said he thinks mine looks more like a cameo but it was hard to say judging by my horrible pics. If it did come from a cameo pen and is in fact cameo my adults also have white in their background. I don't know why I thought it impossible for them to throw anything but ibs? Guineas are the same way. So Dylansmom are you saying it wouldn't be possible that my hen is split cameo? My male would have to be if that's what the chick is? Also if I kept her and bred her back to my male would they produce mostly cameos? And could theypossibly produce a male? My guy said if I bred her to my male they could produce whites, cameos, piedbald cameos or possibly blue pieds. This true? Thank u all for your help. As u have guessed I am just learning. I got peacocks just as pets and didn't really intenend to breed them but my hen disappeared and come back with babies so :-/ also he said he thought the other 3 are males :-(

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These are the pics he went by. Someone please tell me he is wrong lol

 

[DylansMom]

I talked to the guy that I got my pair from and he couldn't remember which pen mine come from. He has a pen with a purple hen and one with a cameo hen. He said he thinks mine looks more like a cameo but it was hard to say judging by my horrible pics. If it did come from a cameo pen and is in fact cameo my adults also have white in their background. I don't know why I thought it impossible for them to throw anything but ibs? Guineas are the same way. So Dylansmom are you saying it wouldn't be possible that my hen is split cameo? My male would have to be if that's what the chick is? Also if I kept her and bred her back to my male would they produce mostly cameos? And could theypossibly produce a male? My guy said if I bred her to my male they could produce whites, cameos, piedbald cameos or possibly blue pieds. This true? Thank u all for your help. As u have guessed I am just learning. I got peacocks just as pets and didn't really intenend to breed them but my hen disappeared and come back with babies so :-/ also he said he thought the other 3 are males :-(

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These are the pics he went by. Someone please tell me he is wrong lol

If you could get some pics of the 3 IBs together it might help, also less blurry pics would be good. I know how hard it is because the little suckers are constantly moving, but at this age we are basing the sexing on striping and primary wing color so sharp clear pics are very helpful. Now that I went back and enlarged the pics of the lighter one I will have to agree with q8 and KKB, that looks like a purple hen more than a cameo, cameos are really tan not so red.


The 2 chicks in the front here are both purple hens, the one in the foreground is carrying white or pied genes, hence that white wing feathering. Purple is also a sex-linked color, so everything I stated in the post about the Cameos will hold true for Purples as well. Hen's cannot be split to Purple only males, and yes if you kept a male from her(I do think your's is a her) it would be split to Purple. Breed it back to mom and you should get all purple hens and the male chicks will be Purple or IB split to Purple. On paper I think percentage would be somewhere around 75% Purple and 25% IB split Purple, but it seldom works out exactly as it is supposed to. Hens cannot be split to any of the sex-linked colors, the closest you get is something like a "Peach" which occurs when the colors Cameo and Purple actually blend together instead of one trumping the other.
As for white genes, they are actually different from Pied genes, you cannot get Pieds from plain Whites bred to colored birds, someone must be carrying Pied genes to produce Pied offspring. Are any of your chicks showing white feathers anywhere on them? A bird that is carrying white genes is called split white usually they will show white flights and perhaps a small white patch on their throat.


' This is a Black Shoulder split to white, see the white flights on the wings, he also has a tiny patch of white on his throat, maybe 3 feathers worth. Two split White birds will produce Whites, split Whites, and colored birds without White, but no Pieds. So if the gentleman you got them from has only split whites you could get whites, but to get Pieds they need the Pied gene. Pieds will usually have white flights and a white throat as well, but they will have irregular splotches of white on other parts of their body as well. A Visually Pied bird will be carrying 1 Pied gene and 1 White gene, a bird carrying 2 copies of Pied will look almost identical to a split white, making it very hard to tell which is which unless you breed them and see what you get.


This is a Pied above carrying 1 Pied gene and 1 White gene.




This bird above is a dark Pied who I believe carries 2 copies of Pied, white wing feather and throat latch, as well as a speck of white here and there.

Hope this helps, and that I've got this all correct, I'm not a genetics expert by any means and if I've got anything wrong here, someone will correct me before long.

 

[itsjustme]

I love learning new things. but I want to be sure I have this correct. If my male is split cameo or split purple then any of the male ib baby's will be also? And if I breed a baby back to mom they will be mostly purples or cameos with some being ib split cameo or purple? What if I breed the lighter colored chick back to dad? Can I do that? And will the results be the same as above? My guy did ask about the white on the wings but none of the babys have it. So does that mean they can not be carrying the white gene? He said breeding the baby back to the dad if its cameo could produce cameo, pied cameo, white or blue pied. That isn't true? Kind of a bummer :-/ lol and hens can not be split anything? So they can not carry other color genes? Another question and sorry i ask so many. If my adult male is split purple or cameo I can breed him to any other color and get purple or cameo right? If I breed to a white will the male offspring be purple split white? And yes the pics are horrible the lil boogers don't sit still and my lighting stinks. I will try again soon. Thank you again for all the info. And you have some beautiful birds!

 

[DylansMom]

Okay bear with me while I try to answer everything for you. If your male is split to a sex-linked color like Purple(or Cameo) his color genes are 1 IB and 1 Purple, IB is dominant and that is why he looks IB not Purple. If he is bred to an IB hen her genes are 1 IB and 1 IB ( she is not split) male offspring will get a gene from each parent so it could be IB/IB, P/IB,IB/IB or P/IB so 50% of the male offspring will be IB and 50% will be IB split Purple( because IB is dominant and will always hide the Purple which is recessive). Female offspring only have to have 1 copy of a sex linked gene to display that color, so from dad they could get IB or P and from mom IB or IB so 75% of the female offspring will be IB and 25% will be Purple(or Cameo). If you breed a purple hen back to her father who is split purple I think you will get 75% Purple males and 25% IB males that are split Purple. Ratio should be the same for females 75% Purple and 25% IB. Now, as I said, I'm not an expert we'll have to see if one of the members who is comes along and corrects me.

Now on to the white and pied questions. It is possible for chicks to completely hide the fact that they are carrying white or pied genes. Sometimes you will have 2 birds that show no white feathers at all and suddenly they produce a white chick, this can only happen if both parents were carrying white genes, so we know it doesn't always show. If the baby's parents are carrying hidden white or pied genes then what he said is true, you just have no way of knowing if they are carrying them until you breed them a couple of times. Frustrating isn't it!

Hens cannot be split to sex-linked colors, they can be split to non-sex-linked colors like bronze or opal. It has to do with the location on the DNA strand. Where the gene for the sex-linked colors is located there is only space for 1 gene, non-sex-linked colors are located at a different place where there are the normal 2 spaces for a gene from each parent. This is a very simplified explanation here so everyone needs to pardon me for the use of Laymen's terms.
If your male is split to Purple or Cameo, and you breed him to any color hen(other than Purple or Cameo) the male offspring will be IB and IB split Purple(no actual Purple males) the female offspring will have about a 25% chance of being Purple.

Now......... white is a whole different ballgame, it is not really a color nor is it a pattern. It is different and it actually just blocks the birds color pigment from being distributed to the feathers. They actually have color pigment under all that white unlike an albino animal which lacks the pigment. Because of this you can have whites that are actually IB under the white, or Purple under the white, or Bronze under the white, etc..... So it would depend on what the hen you bred to was under her white, if she was IB under the white you would get the same color outcome( males would be IB split to white and IB split to Purple and split to White, females would be IB split to white or Purple split to white) and yes they can have more than 1 split. Birds can be split for color, also for pattern and also to white.
I hope this helps and that I have given you the correct info here. Thanks so much for the compliment I will pass it along to the boys!

 

[itsjustme]

I am not positive about the backgrounds of either one of my adults. The man i got them from has many different colors and im just assuming based on our conversations lately that he will pull eggs stick them in the bator and sell them as the color they appear to be as chicks. So my male could be either a purple or a cameo split because he doesn't remember which pen it come from. I don't expect him to after 2 years. Lol I am assuming that goes the same for my hen. I am guessing that she to could have come froma pen with either a purple hen or a pen with a cameo hen. And I misunderstood when he was talking about the white. He said his cameos have alot of white in their backgrounds. I had planned on selling the babies,( my bird guy thinks I should keep the light colored one and a male)what would you do? If I sell I want to be as honest as possible with the lady wanting them. So I want to be sure I got this again lol are my male chicks also split either purple or cameo? They COULD throw cameo or purple chicks? And the little odd ball purple or cameo chick(I think is hen) would she have to be bred to a pure purple or cameo to get that color? I am thinking it is nothing like guineas lol I just let guineas do their thing and not worry about colors lol also if I just keep a pair I think that leaves a pair that looks ib. Will they together be able to throw the purple or cameo?

 

[DylansMom]

I am not positive about the backgrounds of either one of my adults. The man i got them from has many different colors and im just assuming based on our conversations lately that he will pull eggs stick them in the bator and sell them as the color they appear to be as chicks. So my male could be either a purple or a cameo split because he doesn't remember which pen it come from. I don't expect him to after 2 years. Lol I am assuming that goes the same for my hen. I am guessing that she to could have come froma pen with either a purple hen or a pen with a cameo hen. And I misunderstood when he was talking about the white. He said his cameos have alot of white in their backgrounds. I had planned on selling the babies,( my bird guy thinks I should keep the light colored one and a male)what would you do? If I sell I want to be as honest as possible with the lady wanting them. So I want to be sure I got this again lol are my male chicks also split either purple or cameo? They COULD throw cameo or purple chicks? And the little odd ball purple or cameo chick(I think is hen) would she have to be bred to a pure purple or cameo to get that color? I am thinking it is nothing like guineas lol I just let guineas do their thing and not worry about colors lol also if I just keep a pair I think that leaves a pair that looks ib. Will they together be able to throw the purple or cameo?

If it were me, I would keep that little light one and see what it grows into. Purple and Cameo are both sex-linked so it pretty much has to be a hen. Once it is mature you will know if it's a Purple or a Cameo and that will tell you what the father is split to. If you breed her back to him you will get Males and Females in both IB and whatever color she is. The male will be happy with 2 hens and you will have a bigger variety for people to choose from. I wouldn't sell the chicks as breeding pairs though, you do not know how much of that happened in past generations and too much will start to cause genetic defects. Male chicks would be 50% straight IB and 50% split, but there is no way of knowing which is which until they breed. So you tell your buyers they are IB that may carry a recessive Purple gene. Your hen, if she looks IB consider her IB. She will/can not be split to either Purple or Cameo.

 

[Arbor]

. Hen's cannot be split to Purple only males, and yes if you kept a male from her(I do think your's is a her) it would be split to Purple. Breed it back to mom and you should get all purple hens and the male chicks will be Purple or IB split to Purple. On paper I think percentage would be somewhere around 75% Purple and 25% IB split Purple, but it seldom works out exactly as it is supposed to.

If your male is split to a sex-linked colour, it will also father Indian blue hens. Only a male that carries two copies of the sex-linked colour will produce all hens in that colour. The above breeding of split male to sex-linked hen would produce about 50% purple (male or female) and 25% Indian Blue hens and 25% IB split purple males.

 

[DylansMom]

If your male is split to a sex-linked colour, it will also father Indian blue hens. Only a male that carries two copies of the sex-linked colour will produce all hens in that colour. The above breeding of split male to sex-linked hen would produce about 50% purple (male or female) and 25% Indian Blue hens and 25% IB split purple males.

Thanks, I knew I wasn't likely to get that 100% correct.

 

[itsjustme]

I love this page! So I think I will keep the little light colored one and sell the others. Should I sell the males as split? Or are they not? Sorry if that was already answered..

 

[DylansMom]

I love this page! So I think I will keep the little light colored one and sell the others. Should I sell the males as split? Or are they not? Sorry if that was already answered..

Some are split......... some are not, no way to know which ones are. Sell them as IB that are possibly split to Purple(Cameo).