What colors do you think I should get.

[SuperPeacockman]

Quote:
I am concerned in my current flock I think it is the 6th or 7th generation from the same original stock

If you ordered the original flock from a hatchery (not a breeder) most likely they were not related at all or were not very closely related. If you aren't having any hatching problems (low hatch rates, birth defects, early deaths) then they are not inbred.

Some of the keets born last year had different patterns on their faces, few lines than normal and so on. I think this is a result of inbreeding.

 

[shelleyd2008]

Quote:
Not-white guineas

 

[AquaEyes]

Quote:
White does not make pied, pied makes pied. There is some suggestion that guineas, like peafowl, need 1 gene of white and 1 gene of pied to look pied. A 'pinto' is just a pied bird that has come from a long line of pied-to-pied breeding resulting in an overly pied bird. It happens with tuxedo coturnix as well. When breeding tux-to-tux eventually you end up with an almost completely white bird.

I've read other sources that say that "white" in guinea fowl is an incomplete dominant mutation -- one copy gives white patches, two copies gives all-white. I didn't know that there was a separate pied gene, but heterozygotes for white will "look" like pied, in that they have white patches. Since I really don't like the pied pattern in birds (any species, but that's just my preference), I never paid much attention to them, other than learning that in some species, "white" works as an incomplete dominant. I like the look of white birds, but I don't like the disruption of the overall "pattern" of a bird with random white patches. So from what I've read, I decided to avoid white in guinea fowl and peafowl because I wouldn't like what the "split-white" birds would look like. Interesting...I'll have to read some more. Have you bred white X non-white in guinea fowl? Do you have pictures of how they look, as compared to pied?

 

[SuperPeacockman]

Quote:
White does not make pied, pied makes pied. There is some suggestion that guineas, like peafowl, need 1 gene of white and 1 gene of pied to look pied. A 'pinto' is just a pied bird that has come from a long line of pied-to-pied breeding resulting in an overly pied bird. It happens with tuxedo coturnix as well. When breeding tux-to-tux eventually you end up with an almost completely white bird.

I've read other sources that say that "white" in guinea fowl is an incomplete dominant mutation -- one copy gives white patches, two copies gives all-white. I didn't know that there was a separate pied gene, but heterozygotes for white will "look" like pied, in that they have white patches. Since I really don't like the pied pattern in birds (any species, but that's just my preference), I never paid much attention to them, other than learning that in some species, "white" works as an incomplete dominant. I like the look of white birds, but I don't like the disruption of the overall "pattern" of a bird with random white patches. So from what I've read, I decided to avoid white in guinea fowl and peafowl because I wouldn't like what the "split-white" birds would look like. Interesting...I'll have to read some more. Have you bred white X non-white in guinea fowl? Do you have pictures of how they look, as compared to pied?

Oh! Are you getting peafowl?

 

[AquaEyes]

Not for a few years. I'm graduating from my "second-time-around" at college next year, then taking a year off, then starting 5-6 years of grad school, then securing employment, then moving to south Florida, THEN thinking about getting poultry. Until then, I'm just doing it in my head.