# Getting tail all one color



## TipplerBeni (Sep 30, 2007)

I have had a line of birds that are excellent fliers but they aren't show birds because they have a foul tail. One or two white feathers in tail how so I breed that out or is it impossible


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Breed them to birds with solid colored tails. Then select the best from their babies to mate back to solid tails.


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## Pigeonmumbler (Jun 6, 2010)

Hello Beni, there is a breed of tippler called Lovatts that sometime have a white feather or two in the tail, you mainly see this in Solid reds or yellows... But I dont know if they recognize the Lovatt strain with this broken color pattern in the tail in shows...!


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## loftkeeper (Sep 21, 2010)

In Show Birds They Have Standrds To Breed To. If You Are Flying Them And Want To Show Them Enter As Flying Birds. Because Color Should Have No Merit Just The Preformence.


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## TipplerBeni (Sep 30, 2007)

I see. an pigeon mumbler i know about the lovatt line they are lovats. I just want to take away the tail. I will have to see our club regconizes the difference between the flying an show tippler


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Old thread (yes yes i know). I have the same thing, some red mottles i got have the one or two fowl tail feathers. I got some red mottles from another person with all red tails. Had two black mottles both with fowl tails, one only had one white feather and the cock had a few. They produced one solid black tail and one with one white feather. So i wonder if i would get solid tails more often if one bird is already solid?


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Like I said before, the best way to go about it would just be to breed them to the most solid colored tailed birds you have and selectively breed for more color in the tails. Much easier if showing is your only concern. But if flying ability is important too, then it'll be a little more tough to make sure it conforms to both color and ability at once.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Oh, i was just wondering if the outcome would be 50/50 or if solid tail would happen more often. For now my i prefer good looking birds. I talked to someone who flew tipplers in new york and then moved down here to phoenix. He said its really hard to get any good time. I think he said like 5 hours is good in the winter. I will have to fly my birds for sometime, and fly them in small kits untill i can see who are the best. Until then its just "show quality" thought i would never show.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

I'm not sure how it's inherited or if it's just a random part of the piebald gene. I think whitetail is recessive. I don't know if that gene causes this and perhaps you just have to work with it to perfect it, OR if whitetail always makes a solid white tail. I have the same question with the whiteflight gene.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Hmm, are you talking about all the flights being white or a mixture? Or white flights on a blue bird. I'm probably going to be getting some white flight birds in a couple weeks but they are mostly white birds. I think red. Is so wonder if the mix flight feathers are recessive or not. Mixing birds with all black flights with birds with black and white flights. I was happy to see an all black tail come out of my two. I was wondering if stuff like that can moult white? I thought white flights were an expression of piebald genes. That piebald genes would express itself in a splash or white flights or are these two not related? I wanted some blue bars white flights. After I breed a red perfect tail to a fowl tail I'll report on what happens.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Yeah I'm talking about solid white flights on a colored bird. Where all the primaries are white. One theory I have is that the WF birds with only a few white feathers in the wings, may have a WF gene, but perhaps the "switch" was turned off early before the rest of the feathers could turn white. Same with birds with only a few white tail feathers. The other theory is that its just the result of piebald with those birds. Because usually, if they only have a couple white feathers in the wing/tail, they are also pied/splashed elsewhere on the body. Then there's the birds with no pied marks anywhere else on the body, but who have solid white flights or a solid white tail. Or it could be a little more complex than just one gene, like saddle.


Apparently, there are multiple "white genes", which include white flight, white tail, baldhead, recessive white, and pied, mentioned separately. But we don't know much about the variations of white. Just like we don't know a whole lot about the types of bronze either.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Interesting stuff, my mostly white mottles which you thought had piebald probably did. Maybe it's a balancing act of adding pie to whiten the bird up but keeping the flights and tail solid. Guess some things you just have to breed to find out. I saw a picture of that white tail on angelfire awhile ago, that not very common is it? If that blue bar grizzle with sooty and maybe dirty is a hen I got the go ahead to breed it to the blue bar. Given the bird being a hen how does sooty and dirty get inherited?


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## rudolph.est (May 14, 2009)

Print Tippler said:


> Given the bird being a hen how does sooty and dirty get inherited?


Dirty and sooty are both autosomal dominant genes. This means that the inheritance is not sex linked at all, the gender of the parent carrying these genes is not important at all. Also, it means that only a single copy of the gene is necessary for the gene to express.

Assuming the hen has a single copy of sooty (heterozygous) and a single copy of dirty, and the cock is wilt type (not sooty or dirty). You should get:
1/4 dirty and sooty
1/4 diry
1/4 sooty
1/4 wild type squabs from the mating.

You should be able to see the dirty at hatching since the squabs hatch quite dark. Sooty on the other hand, you will have to wait until the babies have feathered out. Also, sooty is difficult to distinguish on dark check and T-pattern birds, so you might miss them altogether, until you breed a blue bar sooty. Similarly the effects of grizzle can hide sooty markings (especially on barred birds), so keeping track of sooty can be quite hard.

Read more about the darkening modifiers here (Ron Huntley's site)


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

thanks, i thought my bird showed it alright, maybe because its dirty? If it was grizzle without dirty it wouldn't be that well? I don't know or not if dirty is there, you two think its could be there, so were just have to see. It could just be sooty.

Here that picture again


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

My sooty grizzles show it just fine for the most part.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

you should picture it, i would like to see


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Okay  Let me find some pictures. If not, I'll take some. Here's a strawberry (sooty ash-red) that I had. Not grizzled but still pretty!


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

thats a good looking bird, I like the strawberries.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

This hen was sooty. Hard to tell on a lot of her feathers but some of them were clear.








Here's one of her babies.









Another strawberry. This one I still have as a breeder.









Strawberry grizzle. Not the best picture


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

I thought you said yours were whiter, that one looks pretty dark to me.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Nevermind, this one is a sooty grizzle the best I can tell. It's sister is also sooty. As well as the dad and the mom.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

I need to get a picture of the sister to the strawberry grizzle.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Those are all very nice, i liked your first strawberry the most. Yeah i wonder if this check has sooty or not









Silvers are very strange, from what ive seen, they have these lighter brownish feathers for awhile till they moult. My two silver bars have a lot, but im pretty sure it will all come out, they are young.

I dug up this old picture of when i first got my silver bar grizzles, one barely had a had bars but now it differently darkened up









here it is later, im pretty sure this is the one, its lighter than the other one


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Here that silver bleaching i was talking about. The pictures didnt turn out so good.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Probably the same as the bronze color in a lot of blues as babies. Except dilute turns bronze that brown color.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Alright thanks I didnt know about that. I've only raised some archangels, AAA, and all those mottles. Still learning a lot. Good thing I found out about dilutes not having as much hair or "down". That would have surprised me having 8 silvers and one yellow, I'm sure I'll have a lot more dilutes in the future. I like silvers a lot but I like BB more than silver, checks and velvets are fine and Silver bar grizzle, but I think this blue bar grizzle might be my favorite, although I like reds a lot, just don't have a red which is exactly what I'm looking for. I want to see more of your birds. I think your holding out on everybody.


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## rudolph.est (May 14, 2009)

I definitely agree that your bird is dirty sooty bar (or light check) grizzle. It is fairly obvious that there is sooty on the wing shield.

My blue bar grizzles show much less color in the shield though, and there were some sooty among them.

Becky's last sooty bar grizzle is much like my sooty grizzles, but the white parts are somewhat lighter, and the sooty less well defined, maybe I have het smokey or undergrizzle or something else in there too. My blue bars have all been as light as Becky's silvers (almost pure white) with dark well defined bars. Similar to the blue bar grizzle on Ron Huntley's website. I always mate blue bar grizzle to blue bar, so the other modifiers should be worked out of my grizzle stock so I can have pure blue bar grizzles without any other modifiers.

I believe that dirty (or some other modifier) is necessary to have so much blue in the wing shield of a blue bar grizzle, but I have not had the space and time to perform such tests as yet. I need pure breeding grizzles and dirty and sooty strains first anyway. But looking at grizzle Vienna tumblers, that is what I see.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

thanks, your only saying light check on my first because it has the sooty right? Its genetically a bar right? I don't like using confusing terms like that, i wouldn't call sooty pencil or a lavander, silver. Makes everything a big mess. So whats your opinion on that silver check grizzle. Do you it carries sooty? The beak is between black and flesh. Its flesh which is darkend a bit,


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## rudolph.est (May 14, 2009)

Sorry, didn't mean to confuse with a non-genetic term. Your bird is definitely a blue bar, not check. I should really learn to stay away from inaccurate comments like that ;-)

You are right about the sun bleaching of dilute silvers, I have a couple, and they have he same light feathers, which moult out darker again. Browns and dilute browns show he same bleaching but to a much higher degree, and they also bleach much faster. 

As to your dilute blue bar grizzle: I cannot see any darkened parts in the centre of the shield feathers, so I would assume that there is no sooty in this bird, but as I said before, I believe sooty doesn't always show up so well in birds that have grizzle without the help of other darkening modifiers. Sooty does not change the beak colour much as far as I know (the dark flesh is the natural beak colour of dilute blues, I think some people call the colour 'horn', which is an apt description according to me). If the beak is darker than expected, he bird might be some kind of dirty. Also the grizzle is not very well expressed, looking at the flights. Probably an effect of dirty or sooty, or it could even be undergrizzle.

The problem with the darkening modifiers is that their phenotypes are not quite as similar as for instance indigo or spread. There seems to be a couple of different kinds of dirty (or different expressions), some are much darker than others, some become lighter with the first moult some don't. Similarly sooty effects can be variable. Becky is lucky that all her sooty birds look so alike in expression, the feathers being dark at the centre, but sooty does not always express so perfectly. 

My final point is that the only way to be sure about anything is to do breeding tests by mating to a wild type (blue bar - no sooty, dirty, grizzle) and inbreeding / line-breeding offspring. I have often had many pleasant and unpleasant surprises when doing so. This way you will see the dirty, sooty, grizzle, dilute and whatever else separate and give you a better idea what the genetics of your flock is.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

alright, thanks. I think you were talking about the silver check grizzle but said the BB grizzle, but i got you. well, too bad i don't have more blue bars, i might be getting more from a local tippler flyer who has some BB white flights. The one blue bar i have i plan to mate with the BB grizzle. From what i see he looks normal.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

He's beautiful!  He looks to be dirty and possibly even sooty. Some of my sooty blue bars have those lines in the light feathers between the bars. Similar to the lines you'll find in the middle of the feathers in the shield to give it a light checked look.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

ah, i really thought he could be dirty, he was darker than most i see online. He looks to be less dirty than most right? Most dirty BB i see are really grey, this inst bad at all. I typed up a PM and was going to ask you about him but then i decided he looked normal enough. I guess not haha. Well if he is already dirty and sooty then i guess the grizzle would be a perfect mate. Now i hope i sexed them right, just finishing up my pairing boxes today, made them 3x2 and 2 feet high. My brother wanted to make them huge, but its good, just for pairing then tossing them in my breeding loft.

ADD: so i guess this is a lighter dirty, cause when i looked at this http://www.angelfire.com/ga/huntleyloft/smokey.html The dirty there is a lot dark, i guess mine is more inbetween. So i had decided it wasn't dirty, just a little darker than normal


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

some better photos, this bird is by far the least tame bird i have ever dealt with. he is a 2010 bird. As you can see there some black specs in him and one black strip kinda down the 10th flight.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Yep, I'd say he's sooty. Probably only heterozygous.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

alright, neat. So your sure on the dirty also?


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