# Yet another question from the guy who just isn't getting the genetics of color



## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

Last year MoE tried to set me straight and even provided me a link to a sex linked color chart. But apparently the birds are smarter than me. Luckily I have you folks. 

I know that with a red hen and non-red cock, all reds produced will be cocks. Any blues, hens.

I now have a red cock and a blue hen paired and laying. I would assume that I would get the inverse (all red offspring are hens) but I am getting used to being wrong!

So with this new pair is there anything I can regarding sex based on color?

Thanks.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

It will depend on your cock. If your ash red cock is split for blue (showing the flecks on the body) then 50% of the hens will be ash red while the other 50% will still be blue. All cocks would be blue. So yes in that case your reds you get will be hens but not all hens will be red. 

On the other hand, if you have an ash red cock that is pure ash red, not split for blue or brown (not showing flecking) then all your young will be ash red birds. The cocks although will be split for blue and show flecking most likely.


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## sev3ns0uls (Jul 2, 2011)

umm i think the chart and what other suggesting are only 80% right of the time. honestly you will never know what you get. 

I have an audusian cock X with a lemon pie hen and i got 2 hens from it. One of them is pie audusian resemble the father and the other is pie lemon lacing resemble the mother. Yep both are hens no cock.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

I would like to see the birds but no one ever said you always get a cock and hen. When it comes to what I said above its a statistical average.


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## sev3ns0uls (Jul 2, 2011)

Print Tippler said:


> I would like to see the birds but no one ever said you always get a cock and hen. When it comes to what I said above its a statistical average.


i dont mean you specifically. Sorry if you misunderstood that. What i meant is the information other people provided in this forum. Yes we all very well agree on not ever clutch will land on a cock and hen. 
What i was saying is the color off spring will turn out to be. off spring cock will have color appearance similar to mother and off spring hen will be similar to dad. 

like i was saying, I had a clutch that are both hens and one of them look like mother but its a hen not a cock. so sometime you will never know what you will get. 

Yes blue hen and red cock will produce red hens and blue cock carrying red. 

BUT sometime that theory can be wrong. 

-Both off springs can be both red.
-both can be blue.
-both are cock, one is red and one is blue.
-both are hens, one is red and one is blue.

go here

http://www.pigeons.biz/forums/f41/i-need-more-knowledge-about-color-genetic-58064.html


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

As i have been told and repeat to everyone who listens:


me said:


> If it laid an egg it is a hen. If it hasn't laid an egg it might be a hen.


I'll try to get some pics tomorrow.


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

sev3ns0uls said:


> i dont mean you specifically. Sorry if you misunderstood that. What i meant is the information other people provided in this forum. Yes we all very well agree on not ever clutch will land on a cock and hen.
> What i was saying is the color off spring will turn out to be. off spring cock will have color appearance similar to mother and off spring hen will be similar to dad.
> 
> I had a clutch that are both hens and one of them look like mother but its a hen not a cock.


So far we seem to get mostly hen/hen and cock/cock off spring from all our pairs. All the birds are from local racers and they seem to have the same matched sex nest mates. I figure it's better this way as I don't have to worry too much about close breeding. 

A note that might make it seem more normal is that we are racing homers. As near as I can tell there is a pretty diverse gene pool yet highly bred for behavior and performance. Or we could just have freaky birds.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

sev3ns0uls said:


> What i was saying is the color off spring will turn out to be. off spring cock will have color appearance similar to mother and off spring hen will be similar to dad.
> 
> like i was saying, I had a clutch that are both hens and one of them look like mother but its a hen not a cock. so sometime you will never know what you will get.
> 
> ...


The whole cock, daughter, mother, son looking alike is only in some cases. What I said above wasnt a theory. Given the birds fit what is said above that is the stats. If you are breeding an ash red (mealy) cock to a blue based hen you will can not get everything you said. If the cock is not split for another color he wil only produce ash red offsprings. If he is split for another color then the hen will be that other color 50% of the time and the cocks will only be blue. Assuming in both cases a blue hen. You can have an ash red cock split for blue paired to an ash red hen and get blue hens 50% of the time. Given proper information the expectations and limitation can be known.


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## sev3ns0uls (Jul 2, 2011)

Print Tippler said:


> The whole cock, daughter, mother, son looking alike is only in some cases. What I said above wasnt a theory. Given the birds fit what is said above that is the stats. If you are breeding an ash red (mealy) cock to a blue based hen you will can not get everything you said. If the cock is not split for another color he wil only produce ash red offsprings. If he is split for another color then the hen will be that other color 50% of the time and the cocks will only be blue. Assuming in both cases a blue hen. You can have an ash red cock split for blue paired to an ash red hen and get blue hens 50% of the time. Given proper information the expectations and limitation can be known.


yes i truely agree with you. the points i made is for no hidden color gene and that both parents are just give full red cock full blue hen.


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## NZ Pigeon (Nov 12, 2011)

Jaysen said:


> Last year MoE tried to set me straight and even provided me a link to a sex linked color chart. But apparently the birds are smarter than me. Luckily I have you folks.
> 
> I know that with a red hen and non-red cock, all reds produced will be cocks. Any blues, hens.
> 
> ...





Print Tippler said:


> It will depend on your cock. If your ash red cock is split for blue (showing the flecks on the body) then 50% of the hens will be ash red while the other 50% will still be blue. *All cocks would be blue*. So yes in that case your reds you get will be hens but not all hens will be red.
> 
> On the other hand, if you have an ash red cock that is pure ash red, not split for blue or brown (not showing flecking) then all your young will be ash red birds. *The cocks although will be split for blue and show flecking most likely*.


Logan, You say All cocks would be blue - that is not quite right, ash red cock carrying blue with a blue hen would produce 50% blue and 50% red in hens and cocks.

An ash red cock split blue to a red hen pairing is partially sex linked in the aspect that any blues produced from the pair would be hens, So if you get a blue, Its a hen. 

So to answer the OP'ers question, your current pairing of an ash red cock to a blue hen is in no way sex linked regardless of whether the cockbird you have carries blue or not. If he does you will be able to identify some of the cocks by the dark flecks once they have feathered in,


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## NZ Pigeon (Nov 12, 2011)

sev3ns0uls said:


> i dont mean you specifically. Sorry if you misunderstood that. What i meant is the information other people provided in this forum. Yes we all very well agree on not ever clutch will land on a cock and hen.
> What i was saying is the color off spring will turn out to be. off spring cock will have color appearance similar to mother and off spring hen will be similar to dad.
> 
> like i was saying, I had a clutch that are both hens and one of them look like mother but its a hen not a cock. so sometime you will never know what you will get.
> ...


Blue cocks cannot carry ash red, Ash Red is dominant so if the cock bird had ash red and blue in its genes it would be ash red carrying blue.


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## Print Tippler (May 18, 2011)

Well it's nice to know some of what I type gets read, your right.


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## rudolph.est (May 14, 2009)

Jaysen said:


> Last year MoE tried to set me straight and even provided me a link to a sex linked color chart. But apparently the birds are smarter than me. Luckily I have you folks.
> 
> I know that with a red hen and non-red cock, all reds produced will be cocks. Any blues, hens.
> 
> ...


I think the reason you are having trouble is by trying to learn the outcome of every possible mating off by heart, or reading it off some table.

The easiest way is to understand the 'mechanics' of genetics. Once you have the basics down ( like chromosomes, genes, alleles, dominant, recessive and sex-linkage), it becomes easier and easier to figure out the relationships on you own using punnet squares.

In this specific case, we have (I assume) an ash-red cock split for blue mated to a blue hen.

The cock has alleles B^A//B^+ and the hen B^+//- ( - denotes that females have only one sex chromosome, and cannot carry two copies of sex-linked genes - like color, and ^ denotes a superscript - since we cannot use pure html in these posts)

The punnet square is then 









This means that you will get:
Red cocks carrying blue and blue cocks (equally likely - 50% each)
Red hens and blue hens (equally likely - 50% each)

Also, this calculator is very useful if you don't want to calculate the punnet square yourself.


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

rudolph.est said:


> I think the reason you are having trouble is by trying to learn the outcome of every possible mating off by heart, or reading it off some table.
> 
> The easiest way is to understand the 'mechanics' of genetics. Once you have the basics down ( like chromosomes, genes, alleles, dominant, recessive and sex-linkage), it becomes easier and easier to figure out the relationships on you own using punnet squares.
> 
> ...


I have to be honest, the genetic patterns that you are using look like formulas that I need to solve. B^A is B raised to the Ath power in my world but B != a number, and A != a number. This is pretty much where my head explodes. 

The color thing for us is just a side effect that might help us know what hatched. The wife likes the reds so we have a few in the racing loft. 

I'll try to work that out again once I find all the pieces to my head.


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

Here is the picture of the cock and hen. There is no flecking in the cock (someone mentioned that) which I believe means he is red/red not red/blue.


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## NZ Pigeon (Nov 12, 2011)

He looks red/red from here, have you ever bred a blue hen from him?

Sometimes the flecking can be very hard to see. If you breed a blue from him he is split for blue, If he is not split for blue then all you will get is reds.

If you paired him to a red hen and he _is_ pure for red you will only ever breed red birds from them.


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

He is on load from another local racer. Did really well last year and we are getting the first shot to breed him. Which is the long way of saying this is his first year breeding. 

I do have a red hen but she is mated to a specific cock that seems to breed the most reliable flyers in our loft. I'm reluctant to break them just to try the reds together. I guess we'll see that hatches.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

People seem to automatically think it works in reverse but it doesn't  So it's okay, you aren't alone.

If your cockbird is pure ash-red, then all the offspring will be red and the cocks will carry blue. If he is split for blue, then you will get half and half in both sexes, with the red cocks carrying blue.

As for "you never know what you'll get", there's a very, very tiny chance that you may get a crossover, in which a bird doesn't follow the expected results. But cross overs are so unlikely that no one ever takes them into account when calculating potential offspring genotypes. For example, a cockbird that is carrying both dilute and reduced, who should produce either dilute hens or reduced hens, can produce...say, a regular blue bar hen...that is neither dilute or reduced. Assuming this is in a controlled environment, that daughter is the result of a crossover. A hen that is both reduced and dilute can also come from the same extremely rare crossover, as they are both on the same locus.


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## Jaysen (Jun 21, 2010)

MoE!

I'm glad to know I'm not the only slow one. I hope you won't be offended if I once again stare blankly at all the "dilute" and "reduced" in that. I know this is all important to genetics but right now the genetics that we are most interested in are "1800ypm" and "30 minutes ahead". The color thing is just a bonus. 

So I'm perfectly happy having cross overs. Odd freakisms seem to be par for the course with us.


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