Would this be a nice new variety?

[MinxFox]

Well Alto has had a few double eye feathers. Last year he had 2 and the year before that he had four of them. This year I noticed Peep has a double eye feather. He might have more but I only saw one. If a peacock had a train covered in double eyes would this be a desirable bird? I am not sure I would want to breed for this but I was wondering if there would be a large interest for double eye feathered peafowl. Of course since they only have just a few double eye feathers you would have to breed for them to have most or all of the train feathers to be double eyed.
Here is a photo of Alto's double eye feather from one of his previous years:


Here is a photo I took yesterday of Peep's double eye. Notice how Peep's doesn't have the blackish blue inside at all.


I think someone on this site said they have seen this before, but when I talked to Josh about it, he had no idea what I was talking about. This makes me wonder if Peep's dad is actually Alto...I thought his dad was my pied peacock Dragon who was in the same pen as Alto. Alto was only 2 but maybe even at two he was able to mate with some of the peahens even though Dragon had a nice full train.

 

[clinton9]

But about peahens ??? What if you cannot tell peahens fathered by a peacock with double eyes on train feathers, from peahens fathered by normal peacock ???

Only way is you could look for peafowl breeders that have peacocks with seaval double eyed train feathers, and buy the daughters, fathered by peacocks with double eyes on train feathers and breed the peahens with your own peacocks with double eyes on train feathers, but you need to tag / mark the peahens to see which were daughters of peacock with double eyes on train feathers.

Then breed the peacocks with seaval double eyes on train feathers, and choose the young peacock with with more double eyes on train feathers for breeding.

I posted the photo of displaying peacock with double eyes on train feathers few years ago, so you have to look for it.

 

[Trefoil]

Alto has a more intricate "eye", is it because of age? Are they different colors ( Alto & Peeps )? I think its attractive and would take many years, if possible at all, to come up with a pea that had all double eyes. I'm still drooling over the pictures you posted about the farm event. Do you have any recent pics of Alto and Peeps?

 

[zazouse]

I haven't seen any double eyes on any of my males and i have a bunch getting a train or simi train, you might have something special there, it would be intresting to see how a big eye feather would look like.

 

[frenchblackcopper]

MinxFox,I believe you do have something unique. I personally have not seen double eyed feathers on any of my males,but then again I havn't really looked that close.O did pick up all the males train feathers this fall and looked at every one of them tho.I do have a unique IB hen that I have not seen anywhere else either,she has white fringes all around her neck feathers and behind her neck on top of her back,just as a pied hen would have.She DOES NOT have white flights that I can see,but her head is all white.I'm also not going to say she is one of a kind either,because I do not know that for sure.
Her white could increase every year,but she probably will be a fluke of nature as the progressive white bronze birds.I personally have spoken to Clifton Nicholson about that one bronze peacock he had that eventually turned almost completely white,and he says it was a one time thing.
I do not have a IB male that compares to this hen.She could be a diffrent type of blue pied.I'm keeping this hen as an experment to breed but at this point,don't know who to breed her to.If any of the offspring of your double eyed males shows the same trait,your in luck and could continually keep breeding double eyed birds to each other.But just as in pieds or birds carrying one copy of white,they do not necessarily show that trait. You may get peachicks that will not phenotypically show the double eyes,but very well may carry that trait genotypically.

 

[MinxFox]

But about peahens ??? What if you cannot tell peahens fathered by a peacock with double eyes on train feathers, from peahens fathered by normal peacock ???

Only way is you could look for peafowl breeders that have peacocks with seaval double eyed train feathers, and buy the daughters, fathered by peacocks with double eyes on train feathers and breed the peahens with your own peacocks with double eyes on train feathers, but you need to tag / mark the peahens to see which were daughters of peacock with double eyes on train feathers.

Then breed the peacocks with seaval double eyes on train feathers, and choose the young peacock with with more double eyes on train feathers for breeding.

I posted the photo of displaying peacock with double eyes on train feathers few years ago, so you have to look for it.

Aww dang I didn't think about the peahens...That would be extremely hard to keep track of. Sure I could give them a leg band but still once you sell them it could be confusing for others. I found the topic you showed that photo in, but the image is no longer available. I will see if I saved it somewhere...

Alto has a more intricate "eye", is it because of age? Are they different colors ( Alto & Peeps )? I think its attractive and would take many years, if possible at all, to come up with a pea that had all double eyes. I'm still drooling over the pictures you posted about the farm event. Do you have any recent pics of Alto and Peeps?

I am not sure if it is because of age...In the old topic I posted the link to earlier in this post, you can see that some of Alto's feathers were not quite double eye feathers, but they were strange looking. In fact one of them had only one dark blue dot on one side, and on the other side it was just the light blue. I need to bring the good camera over to my Grandma's to get good photos of my peas. It is time that I show more photos of my peas again. I will try and get Peep to display for me and see if he has another double eye on the other side. From what I saw in Alto, he would have one double eye on one side and the other would be in the same place on the opposite side.

Alto is India Blue & Peep is split to white I think. I am not sure if he is split to white or pied. All I know is that his orange wing feathers are lightly white frosted and when he lowers his right wing to preen he has about a 1in. patch of white downy.

MinxFox,I believe you do have something unique. I personally have not seen double eyed feathers on any of my males,but then again I havn't really looked that close.O did pick up all the males train feathers this fall and looked at every one of them tho.I do have a unique IB hen that I have not seen anywhere else either,she has white fringes all around her neck feathers and behind her neck on top of her back,just as a pied hen would have.She DOES NOT have white flights that I can see,but her head is all white.I'm also not going to say she is one of a kind either,because I do not know that for sure.
Her white could increase every year,but she probably will be a fluke of nature as the progressive white bronze birds.I personally have spoken to Clifton Nicholson about that one bronze peacock he had that eventually turned almost completely white,and he says it was a one time thing.
I do not have a IB male that compares to this hen.She could be a diffrent type of blue pied.I'm keeping this hen as an experment to breed but at this point,don't know who to breed her to.If any of the offspring of your double eyed males shows the same trait,your in luck and could continually keep breeding double eyed birds to each other.But just as in pieds or birds carrying one copy of white,they do not necessarily show that trait. You may get peachicks that will not phenotypically show the double eyes,but very well may carry that trait genotypically.

I don't know if I will try and make this a new variety but if I get offspring with this trait I might see if anyone wants to work with them. I do have a young peacock that will be two this year. His dad is Alto and his mom is Damsel (my pied peahen).


This year I threw out a lot of train feathers because it rained so much most of them got ruined. I did find a double eye feather from Alto in the house so I should go take of a photo of it.

 

[MinxFox]

I found a bundle of peacock feathers from this year's summer so actually I had 3 double eye feathers that I could find...One is not really a double eye but it is different.


This one is more like a half eye.

Another double eye. The right center is bigger than the left.


Here are all three of them.

 

[Arbor]

I personally have spoken to Clifton Nicholson about that one bronze peacock he had that eventually turned almost completely white,and he says it was a one time thing.

A gentleman in NY state has birds that are third or fourth generation from this bronze bird, and has had the same outcome. Even hens turn white, while his male at about age 8, went blind. He still has a couple birds I think. It seems its definitely a genetic thing, but perhaps more emphasized when inbreeding or line breeding.

As for the double eye feather, I too have seen it occur, but have not witnessed it to occur more than once on a bird. Maybe some line breeding is necessary in order to see if the numbers of these feathers can be increased on the bird?

 

[BYC-user-174785]

My blackshoulder peacock had I believe two double eyed train feathers. I think I have a blurry picture of one. I know I have one of those feathers somewhere because I remember anxiously waiting for him to molt it, and of course it was broken...

Arbor, he still has his breeding hen, a young male (turning two I think) that just started showing that trait, and even more impressive is a peachick is already showing white. None of mine from those exhibit it, so maybe they carry the progressive pied. Louden Farms is working with them, so it would be interesting to get their take on this.

 

[casportpony]

Very cool, never seen that before!

-Kathy