# Colour combination breeding possibilities?



## CraftyPossum (Sep 4, 2013)

Hi,

I am looking at purchasing some new pigeons (all Fantails - From an interstate breeder as I live in rural Queensland) but would like to get some ideas how to achieve the colours I am after. 
And yes, I know that there are likely to be some throwbacks to other colours and such depending on the individual birds background but I am after a general opinion based on the *known* information. I also understand that breeding projects can take years or even generations but as I have limited options with sourcing stock I can only work with what I can get my hands on and most breeders in OZ don't seem to be interested in shipping their birds.

*Question 1.*
Two of the birds I am looking at are Black Silky BUT what I would really like to achieve is white silky. My understanding is that Silky is a dominant gene, so if I were to mix a black silky with an ash spread (not silky) that carries recessive white what linebreeding/inbreeding combinations would _most likely_ result in a White Silky?

*Question 2.*
If I were to get Ash Red Saddles but actually want to achieve Black Saddles, (my understanding is that red is typically a dominant gene?) if I crossed the ash saddle with black spread is is likely that it would throw a black saddle squab (what colour combinations are likely)? If not, what linebreeding/inbreeding combinations would _most likely_ result in black saddle?

*Question 3.*
Is powder/milky a dominant gene? If I were to say, cross a powder silver with a regular blue, would I be likely to get any powder blue? What about crossing a powder silver to an ash red?


----------



## Henk69 (Feb 25, 2010)

@q1: best interbreed the F1. If you get your white silky, backcross to fantail for type, interbreed the offspring again, etc...

@q2: take a black male over an ash red female . All female offspring should be black/blue based.


----------



## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

For the first question, you have two options. You can mate two of the F1 kids together (one silky and one non-silky), or you can take of the silky kids back on the recessive white carrying parent.

For the second question, I agree with Henk. If the ash-red saddles you have access to are all homozygous ash-reds, then using a black cockbird on an ash-red hen would be the only way to get blue/black offspring in the first generation. A **** ash-red cockbird on a black hen would give you all ash-red kids, with the sons carrying blue. Anyhoo, let's say you put that black cockbird with the ash-red saddle hen. I would take the best looking F1 black hen and mate it to the best looking spread ash-red brother. When I say best looking, I mean as far as white goes. They may have varying amounts of white. Obviously you want to use the ones that look most like saddles. From this pair you will get blacks (again, varying white but you should be getting some much better looking saddles) in both sexes. I would mate the best looking black saddles/pieds to good unrelated ash-red saddles. And then go from there, selecting for the best saddle marks. You may have generations of only ash-reds depending on what the parents are, but you will end up with more blacks in time and will not have to inbreed. If you don't mind inbreeding, you could just mate the third generation kids together and then start keeping only the blacks to breed from.

Milky is recessive and not sex-linked.


----------

