# What are the "hot" colors right now?



## Kastle Loft (May 7, 2008)

I realize I may get 100 different answers here, but I'm curious to see where the majority falls.

The whole genetics thing fascinates me, despite the fact that it makes my head spin. Currently I'm breeding homers for racing, not for color, so it's not terrible important to me, but I still enjoy learning about it.

So here is the question: For the people out there that are breeding for color (I guess I'm asking for homers specifically), what's the trend right now? In other words, what are people buying? What's in demand? I guess many people do it for personal preference, but surely there is a market. Any time there is demand, there naturally follows a supply of some kind.

I'll phrase it another way: If you were a commercial breeder (let's equate it to a Ganus Family loft of color  ), what would you be breeding to sell?


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

My favorite color is probably indigo ("chocolate"), even though there are a lot of others that come in close seconds. So I'd probably be breeding a lot of indigo and andalusian into my homers. Which...is what I'm already doing  But not purposely. Two of my breeders are indigo, and one of my old birds (which I allow to breed one clutch before OB season) is an andalusian.

I think it would be great to have some winning ash-yellows and ecru (extreme dilute, lemon). Or any of the other not-so-common stuff. As you can see, I just love color  But some are more easily bred for racing than others. For example, dominant opal and indigo are both dominant, and not that uncommon in homers. But when you get into recessive traits and those that are more rare, it'll take you a lot longer to build up a good team of that color.

Edit: I forgot all about barless! Those make some pretty birds  And the good news is Dennis Kuhn is already in the process of creating some good racing ones. One day I think it would be neat to create a barless indigo dilute. Not necessarily in homers or racers, just birds in general. It'd be a solid light colored blue.


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## Matt Bell (May 5, 2010)

Jack Barkel has some lemons that you are talking about and he claims they are great racers, I don't know personally as I have never had any of them but they are pretty. For me myself, I love almonds, grizzles and a nice red check. But thats just my personal preference.


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## atvracinjason (Mar 4, 2010)

I like grizzles...the favorite of all my friends is one of my squeekers, he looks like a bald eagle...check him out on my pets page


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## g0ldenb0y55 (Dec 23, 2008)

Silver bareless is my ultimate favorite, then comes yellow bars, silver/red bars, and splash white flights.


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## Crazy Pete (Nov 13, 2008)

There really are no hot colors if you are sending to a one loft race the say not to send silvers reds or birds with white flights as they can not take the rigors of the tough training and the races. Look at your own birds half way through training the light color and white flights will be a lot more beat up than your blue bar or blue check. Witch is too bad cause I really like the White Bandit or the blue griz birds.
Dave


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## Guest (Oct 30, 2010)

I like the grizzles too and would love to have a small flock of almonds as well


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

If that was true about ash-red birds, then a whole lot of the Sions who raced 500-700 mile races would not be ash-reds.


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## ptras (Jun 29, 2010)

MaryOfExeter said:


> My favorite color is probably indigo ("chocolate")...


I have a Chocolate cock that is mated to an Almond hen. Now, if I could just get some caramel in there, I could raise baby Turtles.


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## ptras (Jun 29, 2010)

MaryOfExeter said:


> If that was true about ash-red birds, then a whole lot of the Sions who raced 500-700 mile races would not be ash-reds.


What qualifies a color as ash-red or dilute red? I have a pair of young birds whose dad is a red saddle, and whose mom is a black & white baldhead. The babies are both saddles, but one is a lighter color red than the dad, and the other is bluish gray.


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## Crazy Pete (Nov 13, 2008)

They dont go that far in one loft races
Dave


And my 2 year old silver sion hen would not have won the 500 mi race. : )


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

I know they don't go that far, but I just figured if a bird's feathers could handle that, it could probably handle the shorter stuff too 

Ash-red is one of the basic colors, so it either is ash-red, or it isn't. But the thing is, they can vary as much as blues do (well, more than blues really). Think of a blue t-pattern bird - aka "velvet" or "dark check". The wings may look solid black even though it is just a blue bird. Same thing goes for ash-reds. The velvets can look a lot like recessive reds with that deep solid color on their wings, and yet some ash-red bars are so lightly colored, that people call them silver. But they are still ash-reds either way 
Dilute ash-red is ash-yellow. It has a creamy yellow color that is easy to tell apart from the red.
Do you have any pictures of the red saddle?

Also, LOL about the Turtles  If only you could breed some of those!


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## george simon (Feb 28, 2006)

*INDIGO is my color and also black spread if you mate a black spread to indigo you get ANDALUSIAN that makes 3colors and if I mate Indigo to Indigo I get some RED MIMICS,these look like reds but infact are realy a blue based bird, so that makes 4colors, Becky I will send you one of my red MIMIC INDIGOS some day I will send you one of my red mimic Indigos. Right now I am working on some color projects using the red mimics* GEORGE


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

That would be great! I always thought the red mimics looked neat. I don't believe I've ever had one. Making one from what I have now would require inbreeding, so I think I'll just wait  

Add some splash to an indigo bird and you'll get a patriotic pidge


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## Crazy Pete (Nov 13, 2008)

Sorry dstephenson said hot colors and Ganus so I just assumed he was thinking one loft races. The sun city million, and a few others say not to send reds or white flightrd birds the feathers are too soft and cant take the stress. I have some reds that do very well but the feathers do get beat up some. Even a little more in young birds.
Dave


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## PigeonX (Oct 17, 2010)

I really like solid black homers, and dark solid reds those are my favs


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## Kastle Loft (May 7, 2008)

Crazy Pete said:


> Sorry dstephenson said hot colors and Ganus so I just assumed he was thinking one loft races. The sun city million, and a few others say not to send reds or white flightrd birds the feathers are too soft and cant take the stress. I have some reds that do very well but the feathers do get beat up some. Even a little more in young birds.
> Dave


Yeah, I was just using Ganus as a reference to commercial breeding - but in this case I was thinking along the lines of a commercial breeder of colors. But it's still interesting to hear people's experience with the racing performance of color birds.

Interestingly, our club's one-loft avg. speed series just wrapped up and a grizzle, down from Bandit, won the whole thing. A dark check WF splash took second. Blue bar third, a blue check was fourth and fifth, and a silver was sixth (I bought the silver at the auction - it's also down from Bandit). We had a lot of siver's (red bars) do well all through the races. They were short though - the longest was 200 miles.

And I agree with the white feather quality issue. My birds with white flights show their wear by the end of the season. I can't tell that it affects performance - just don't have enough data yet from my loft. But I will say my grizzles do best for me but it's probably because they have come from better birds.


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