Solid neck vs pearled neck pattern?

[rollyard]

What kind of neck pattern do your Guineas have? Anyone noticed any relationship between the neck pattern in their Guineas & keet down pattern?

Solid neck (no pearling)

Pearled neck pattern

 

[PeepsCA]

Whoa... I don't think any of my birds have pearled necks

Now I'm gonna have to go out and look at all 125+ birds to make sure, lol.
Do pure wild Guineas in their native habitats have pearled necks? Can't say I've ever noticed

Very handsome Pied there rollyard!

 

[rollyard]

If you could check all 125+ of your birds I would be ever so grateful Peeps, please don't go to any trouble though

Do you remember the keets in This Link we looked @ a while ago? Although a little confusing (well it is for me) it to me suggests that the solid pattern keets are now extinct in that region, & that they had the fully pearled neck in adult plumage. No mention is made about their being pied patterned though that I have seen. Very limited info I have been able to find on "Grigia dissimile", but a search last night did produce a little better info from following site Reference & translated in italics below:-

"GREY GUINEA FOWL DISSIMILAR
This is a mutation that affected the domestic guinea fowl. The breeding work done later at the Experimental Station of Poultry by Prof. AMTaibel of Rovigo was to create a new breed of guinea fowl, which was finally determined in 1949 as widely reported in a paper of the same. These subjects were referred to as "guinea Dissimilar", very close to Grey in ABA as an adult (black feathers of the neck with fine white instead of violet staining and no staining), but very different in ABA of chick (dark brown evenly without longitudinal black streak in the upper parts, while the lower parts including cheeks and tips of the wings, the feather is white (Arduin M., 1991). of the pheasant, unfortunately, we have little information that allow only the summary description of the plumage.
Dissimilar guinea fowl is currently believed to be completely gone."

I think all of the pearled neck birds I have bred here have been pied, but limited birds produced last season from two pairings: 1/ Two solid necked pattern birds I am pretty sure (let them go before realising but have pics) produced all solid neck patterned birds. They were I believe striped pattern in keet down, & none were pied (couple of white flight feathers maybe) in adult plumage. 2/ The male from pairing one mated to a new introduced pearl neck patterned pied female (still have her) when old female lost to predation; they produced all pearled neck pattern keets & all were pied, but I cannot remember what keet down pattern was, & only have pics of them a little older which are difficult to see

Maybe your findings could shed more light?

Edited; forgot to answer your question about wild guineas, & answer is I don't know but will try to establish via some searches. Maybe it has to do with wild birds from different regions in Africa, ie, different varieties??

Edited again to ask a dumb question; does anyone know what the "ABA" stands for in above quote?

 

[PeepsCA]

Ok I didn't check all 125 birds (cuz I got lazy, lol)... but I did check out about half of them

None of the Pearl Greys in my orginal flock have pearled necks, and none of my unrelated Browns have pearled necks either. The only Pearl Greys that I am keeping or still have to sell are all Pied (from this year's hatches)... and to my surprise I do have a few with pearled necks

I noticed I have a couple of Pied Lavenders with pearls all the way up the back of their necks too. How odd... and shame on me for not paying closer attention, I probably would never have noticed if you hadn't brought it to my attention, lol. As far as which type of down pattern they had as keets... I didn't keep track of who was who or what (oops), but I definitely had a LOT of TBs this past hatching season... so now I am wondering if there is a relation too.

I'm gonna go out and look at my light colored and Pied breeding flock to see if any of them have Pearled necks, because some of them were definitely TBs as keets. If any of them do have pearled necks, I should be able to look back thru all of their keet pics from April/2010 and see if any were TBs or not

ETA:
Ok in that flock I was able to see 3 or 4 fully pearled (and Pied) birds that do have the pearling visible most of the way up the back of their necks, but there's only 2 that I can positively ID that were TBs when they were keets... a very Pied Lavender, and a slightly Pied Cinnamon Hen (so Pied again is a common factor)... But... that Pied Cinnamon Hen had 3 almost identical, same age sister keets that were TBs as well when I bought that batch... but the other 3 Hens do not have the pearling visible on their necks, lol

I can post a couple pics if you wanna see them...

So I'd have to say in my flocks, being TB patterned as a keet doesn't play a factor in presence of the neck pearling when they mature, but maybe just being Pied does

Do you have any regular Pearl Greys (that are not Pied) that have pearling on their necks rollyard? I don't, (and never did, that I know of)... I sold all of my regular Pearl Greys while they were young keets and still feathering out.

 

[rollyard]

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Ok then, guess I can forgive you this time

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Without checking through old threads, I think I remember you saying that you never bred any TB patterned keets from your original flocks Peeps? Only striped pattern from them I think?

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Well, the next question I was going to ask was, do you remember the down pattern in your birds with full neck pearling, but I knew that would be an unreasonable ask, even for the Queen of Guinea knowledge

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Fingers crossed

I have had another quick look @ my birds this morning & do have two pied birds, not what I would call full pied, neither of which are Pearl Greys, & they do have the solid neck pattern. I have been thinking that the gene for solid neck pattern is a recessive, while that for pearled neck pattern is a complete dominant because I produced all pearled neck patterned birds from solid neck male cross pearl neck patterned female. I am also thinking that solid keet down pattern (TB) birds develop into the pearled neck pattern adults (as per that Italian link)? One of my pens (Lavender male x Silver female) where both breeding birds have the solid neck pattern have produced all Lavender (five in total so far) keets that have fully striped down, & this would be in keeping with adult birds being pure for a recessive factor that produces both the solid neck pattern in adults & striped pattern in keet down? Sort of a calculated hunch that could well be wrong!

Will try to get some pics up of them a little later. Thanks for your help PeepsCA

PS, your birds look beautiful.

Edited to add, others have been here before us, but no conclusion I don't think? Link

 

[rollyard]

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Yes, noted that pied pattern continues to be linked to TB pattern. So, you can link some of the pearl neck patterned adult birds to TB keet down pattern!

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And you can also link some solid neck patterned adult birds to TB keet down pattern!

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The only non-pied Pearl Grey birds I had (sold them because I prefer the neck pearling & pied birds) did have the solid neck pattern (so no pearled neck pattern). Most of the pied birds I have now have the neck pearling, but can't remember what they were like in keet down as no photos until a little older (see below)

. I do have @ least two pied birds (Silver & Lavender) that do not have the pearled neck pattern, both bought in so don't know what keet pattern was? Back to the drawing board I guess!

Can you tell what pattern these may have been going by top of head (sorry about poor pics)? Selected the best couple of photos I think

And a little treat for your kind help, these hatched a few days ago; just look @ those TBs

And to think I thought we never had them here! Will try to keep track of them, but will be difficult. The three striped non-pied looking Lavender keets out of the solid neck patterned Lavender male x solid neck patterned Silver female birds, & only male has a splat of white on breast, female nothing I don't think.

Plus, some ? wild non-pied birds with full neck pearling Here & Here & Here

 

[PeepsCA]

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That's correct, I never once hatched a TB, from 2 different flocks in previous years... but as a side note, there were never any Pieds in either of those flocks either.


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LOL, you're funny. As I mentioned previously, I'm a little on the lazy side, lol... I did not keep detailed records or band any of the TB keets that I hatched this past season, (other than banding a leg on specific colored keets I planned to keep). I only have a few pics of the breeding flock (that produced all the TBs) showing which were TB keets when I bought them to compare with how they look as adults now. I ended up selling several of them because I had multiples of a certain color or too many males, so I can only confirm that 2 of them were TB keets and now have pearled necks. But, not all the TB keets have pearled necks now, lol. I edited the previous reply with a little more info about this...


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To keep it simple for myself I call those "Slightly Pied", lol.

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Yah, it would seem to be complete dominant in that case, (a not so common complete dominant tho). Or maybe since it's not that common, it is recessive and your male was carrying it? Was your female Pied at all? I'm still wondering if Pied plays a role in this or not. I have a couple more young fully pearled (not Pied) birds from this year's hatches I will have to look at more closely (Buff Dundottes, so they were just buff blurs running by me as I was trying to focus on necks looking for pearls earlier, lol).

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That makes sense, unless it's not related to TB at all and the neck pearling could actually be a hidden recessive... which may account for why I hatched so many TB keets, but have only a few pearled necked breeders that were TBs as keets? This is getting deep... lol

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Yes pls post pics! I'd love to see more pics of your birds! And thanks for the compliment on mine. They are well fed, and spoiled, they better look good, lol

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Yes, I've seen that before, but I don't think there was ever any follow up on it. Barbara posts here too, so maybe she will see this and do some more digging. She's excellent at finding info when most of us just hit dead ends.

I'm not sure what to think about the info on that Italian website about the Grigia dissimile being extinct...(the picture sure isn't accurate or of very good quality!). Maybe the Grigia dissimile are extinct in the flock or flocks that they were using for the study over there back then, and they just never pursued it any further? The TB markings and neck pearling sure seem to pop up an awful lot in other places! If I had the pen space I'd separate a few pairs of my 2010 breeders and try to figure this out a little further... but extra pen space is a rare commodity around here

 

[PeepsCA]

OMG you should not be showing me adorable keet pics!!!! I'm getting the hatching bug baaaaad already (doing a quick scan for eggs in each coop every day already lol) and I'm trying to keep a grip on it this year dangit, lol. WOW at all the TBs you hatched, and a Cinnamon TB too!!!

What a trip you hatched that many, especially after we discussed them so much not that long ago, lol. I'd say it's safe to say that TBs are definitely not rare in your flocks! Did any of them have a parent that has a pearled neck?

The head stripes on your older keets' heads look um... different, lol... obviously they have some white on the sides of their face that's erasing a set of narrow strips, but I'm seeing a set of narrow dark stripes with what looks like a lighter wider stripe in the middle, and that has me scratchin' my head over here... it's always dark in the middle with my keets, be it normal stripes or TB markings, lol. Unless maybe it's just a combination of the lighting and their head fuzz is getting a little thin on top making it appear lighter? I keep scrolling back down to look at them, lol... The center stripe doesn't appear to be wide enough to be TB, but I'd need better head shots to be able to tell for sure.

Hmmm, seeing those pics of the wild Guineas with the neck pearling makes me wonder if the all breeding stock that produces the pearled necks might just have a little more wild blood/genetics left in them, and haven't been so diluted down from all the years and years of breeding/inbreeding everywhere else that has domesticated them. Another head scratcher for sure. I think I remember reading somewhere that's why some lack the purple sheen, due to the amount of wild blood/genetics left in them... might have been on GFIA a year or so back, I can't remember for sure tho (I don't remember any mention of neck pearling tho).

 

[rollyard]

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So no pieds in first flocks, with no pied birds bred, & all striped pattern! I can't remember, but think you did have some stripe patterned birds develop into light pieds?

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Or lightly pied; yes, this is easier

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The male was non-pied solid neck pattern, the female pied pearl neck pattern. If alleles, & pearl neck pattern factor recessive (female has), & male pure for more dominant "not pearled" allele, then all progeny should have had solid neck pattern, but they didn't! Even if the male heterozygous then approx 50% of keets could still have had solid neck pattern, but they didn't! The hen would have had to be pure for the more recessive pearl neck pattern gene in this scenario for the pearl neck pattern to express! The reason I have thought the factor for pearl neck pattern to be dominant over solid neck pattern, & in this case autosomal because she has passed it onto her daughters also!

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This no longer appears to apply, @ least not in every instance. It could be that you have hatched lots of TB keets because whatever the cause is dominant, so only one dose required for it to influence phenotype.

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I know there are different varieties of wild Guineas, but don't know how they vary, if any, in plumage. The Italian link classes the TB pattern & pearled neck pattern as I interpret as the mutation, yet the wild birds in other links have the pearled neck pattern? I would have thought that would make the solid neck pattern less common, but possibly depends on what has been selected for regionally? I don't know, but I do know what you mean by limited pen space

Some pics as promised

Original pair with solid neck pattern (violet)

Some of their keets (excluding three introduced pied birds), all solid neck pattern

The pair that I bred the ten pied keets out of above (asked you to see if you could pick whether TB or not). The male same bird as in mating above (solid neck pattern), the female pied & pearl neck pattern

Silver pied male with solid neck pattern

Cinnamon pied male with pearl neck pattern

Lavender lightly pied male with solid neck pattern (please excuse cobwebs). This male & his solid neck patterned Silver mate have produced all striped pattern lavender keets so far

Cinnamon lightly pied hen with pearl neck pattern

Am tired after work now & not thinking too clearly, so may be some error, let me know

PS, glad you enjoyed keet photos, have some older birds also, & still lot to hatch. Don't know were I am going to put them all

And while I'm @ it, trying to work this out is driving me barney

That feels better now

 

[StevenW.]

You guys don't play fair!!

You should NOT be posting cute baby keets pictures! Makes me want to put more eggs in the incubator!
You got me thinking on the guinea neck patterns... Let me go look at my pictures real quick. Took some new ones on Sunday!