# West of England tumblers with crests



## Mell (Sep 13, 2017)

Hi this is my first time posting. I have recently started breeding west of England tumblers and have noticed that one of my pairs are producing birds that have crests. Just curious if this is common in this breed?


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

No, they should not have a crest. There must be something else was mixed in at sometime and is showing up.
Here is the standard for the breed:
http://www.nwoetc.com/standard.htm


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## FredaH (Apr 5, 2016)

That little darling may not be breed standard but how adorable is it? WET are my favourite breed, they are so lovely and solid looking, strong and majestic. I'd love to see how this baby turns out.


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## Mell (Sep 13, 2017)

He is very cute and has massive muffs on his feet. I will put a photo up when he's bigger.


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## Mell (Sep 13, 2017)

This is an older bird from the same pair. He has a slight crest on his head


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

They are cute.


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## cwebster (Dec 11, 2010)

Love their feet!


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## Matt M (Mar 2, 2011)

Hello, I have bred Wests most of my life and active member of the National West of England Tumbler Club. As mentioned, West of England Tumblers should not have crests and cannot be shown under the breed standard, but they have some of the most variety of colors available in any breed and in order to obtain such a wide array of color options there have been other breeds mixed in at some point in the past, some of them were crested. Looking at your pics show the youngsters with a type of "peak crest" similar to a Russian Tumbler and my guess is somewhere in the parentage of your birds was a cross mating to a Russian Tumbler.

Crest is a recessive gene, meaning it is possible for a bird to "carry" the gene for crest without showing it, but if bred to another bird that is also hiding the crest gene then there is a chance that a baby from that pairing could inherit the hidden crest gene from each parent and develop the crest. When that happens it can leave you scratching your head and wondering where it came from 

Because you got a baby with a crest you now know that both parents are carrying (hiding) the recessive crest gene. They may be closely related in some way (brother/sister, or close cousins, etc). Matings of closely related birds are done all the time in show pigeons and racing homers to "lock in" certain desirable traits of a superior bird, but closely related matings also have a tendency to pop up any recessive genes that the birds may hide, and some of those genes like crest in a West of England are unwanted.

I would recommend finding other West of England mates in a compatible color that are unrelated to yours and you will then be free of crested babies for a while, at least until you begin to mate closely related birds together. It is possible to breed the gene out of the birds in future generations but the only 100% way to ensure one of your non-crested birds is not hiding crest is to mate it to a crested bird for a few sets of babies and keep track of the results.

For now you can just enjoy your "crested West" and not worry about it not being true to the standard description for the breed, or if you want to get in contact with someone in your area who has Wests that you could mix with yours then I would be happy to help locate some. Good luck!!


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

Matt M said:


> Hello, I have bred Wests most of my life and active member of the National West of England Tumbler Club. As mentioned, West of England Tumblers should not have crests and cannot be shown under the breed standard, but they have some of the most variety of colors available in any breed and in order to obtain such a wide array of color options there have been other breeds mixed in at some point in the past, some of them were crested. Looking at your pics show the youngsters with a type of "peak crest" similar to a Russian Tumbler and my guess is somewhere in the parentage of your birds was a cross mating to a Russian Tumbler.
> 
> Crest is a recessive gene, meaning it is possible for a bird to "carry" the gene for crest without showing it, but if bred to another bird that is also hiding the crest gene then there is a chance that a baby from that pairing could inherit the hidden crest gene from each parent and develop the crest. When that happens it can leave you scratching your head and wondering where it came from
> 
> ...



Well that was helpful. Thank you Matt for a very informative post.


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## Mell (Sep 13, 2017)

Matt M thank you very much for your reply and all that information! ? it's very helpful and good to have a better understanding of what is going on. The funny thing is it seems to only be one bird out of each pair that is born producing a crest. I will post a photo of the other one with no crest. I think the head crests look cool but I might think about showing birds in the future so I think I will be interested in finding some new birds in my area to breed from. I'm based in New Zealand though in the Waikato and it's quite hard to come by west of England's around here.


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## Mell (Sep 13, 2017)

This is the brother or sister of the one with the head crest


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## Jay3 (May 4, 2008)

They're all very cute.


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