# Surprise red squeaker!



## rfboyer (Jun 18, 2009)

I've been asked to have my homer pairs foster and raise satinette/homer cross squeakers for a friend who keeps them as pets. Here's the first one; already flying a little and able to eat seeds alone, though papa is still feeding him. "Woohoo, I can balance on the roof of the grit pot!" Teena, his foster mother, just laid more eggs (and so did the satinette hen), so Teena & Big Bar get to raise another round of fosters instead of sitting on dummy eggs. 

The "back story" -- there are 3 "satinettes" that used to be droppers and still live with the "young birds" (from '06 and '07 that apparently were trained but not raced). These have each taken a homer mate, but attempt to keep a "communal" nest with all the 3 pairs piling on. The lot of them are flighty, and either don't sit their eggs, or the eggs get broken in scuffles. 

All of these are all-white short-beaked birds; one is surely a hen, because I've caught her laying eggs. I think one of the others is a cock, and the third a hen, but I'm not entirely sure. The known hen has muffed feet, but no frills, crest, etc. The others have "plain" feet, and one of them has a crest. The homer mate of the hen is either a "black" spread, a blue check, or a blue bar (I'm not sure who goes with whom, since they just all pile up in the same place, and I haven't seen them actually mating. They all preen & nuzzle each other when doing the "nesting" thing. I have no idea why the satinettes didn't pair up among themselves, but...

The question is (finally!): Where did the red on the squeaker come from? None of the homers among them, or even in the whole coop, is showing any red. And where did the saddle pattern come from? Pics attached... first one is from 2 weeks ago; the others were taken today. (sorry they are so pixellated; file size limits are, well, limiting.  )


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## Symbro (Oct 28, 2005)

do you have indigos? (bronze/rust)
if you breed two indigo's together... this is likely a pseudo red. Normally you could look at the rump to see if it is blue... but being a saddle, his rump is white... lol... no help what so ever!


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## rfboyer (Jun 18, 2009)

No bronze or rust birds in the coop, all the homers are blues of some kind -- bar, check, velvet, and a few spread. Could it be recessive red? The squeaker doesn't have any of the typical "indigo flecks" -- at least, not yet. Is it likely that the spread (black) cock is the father, since it seems that spread pattern can "hide" other colors & patterns? Or have I misunderstood what I've been reading? 

I'm wondering how the little guy got the saddle, though I understand that saddle is a typical pattern for satinettes, but all of the ones here are completely white...


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## Henk69 (Feb 25, 2010)

The red could be under the all white satinettes.
But why the saddle, since that is documented as recessive!
The one with the colorface looks like heterozygous baldhead.
Baldhead crossed to swallowpattern is said to produce almost white birds (source Frank Mosca).

Your results are consistent with those two mutations being on separate genes/loci and enabling each other. Without the "baldhead" gene the swallow(like) pattern should not show. Interesting stuff.

Are these white satinettes common, and how were they made?


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## Symbro (Oct 28, 2005)

spread can hide pattern... but not color.
"indigo flecks" i am assuming you are talking about a red split blue. (showing red but carrying blue also) this will often be a red bird with spots of blue on its tail feathers and flights.

HAHAHA sorry it took me a second... you have "white" birds?
recessive white is possible... but most likely you have birds that are red ash, grizzle,pied, white flights, saddle and a bunch of other things added in to try to get rid of any colored feathers.


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## Symbro (Oct 28, 2005)

"but a homozygous grizzle ash red is almost pure white, with perhaps a few very light red feathers visible upon close inspection. Such whites can usually be distinguished from other genetic combinations because they will have orange eyes rather than the "bull" eyes of many whites."


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## george simon (Feb 28, 2006)

*Well this is very intresting.First off the red is coming from the Satinette, however I believe the Satinette is in fact a SERAPHIM,therefor the red is not Indigo but is in fact recessive red,which is in the gene pool of the Seraphim.Young Seraphim are flecked with red and lose the flecking in the first molt making the bird all white. If the young birds pictured here lose some or all the red that will prove the red to be recessive red.I have raised Seraphim. *GEORGE


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## rfboyer (Jun 18, 2009)

Wow, I'm overwhelmed by all the different suggestions about the colors!
This little one is growing up fast; today flew into the aviary without prompting and has chosen a perch. 

@Henk69 -- I had the impression that the saddle pattern is also typical of satinettes, perhaps moreso than the all white... all the pics are the same bird, over time. I have no idea about the provenance of the satinettes; they are birds that Lou Arcuri got for use as "dropper" birds. (He says he only used them as droppers briefly, before working out a plan that got the homers to trap faster, but kept them instead of giving them away.) Their age is unknown to me; they are unbanded. From recent observation of the satinette hen, it's likely that the father of the squeaker is the spread homer cock, rather than either the BB or BC (also part of their pijie hippie commune).
My pair of homers that fostered this one is sitting on the next round of eggs from this hen, so I'll update with the results. (The white hen is sweet but a complete ditz, and her mate, the spread cock, is a bull-in-the-china-shop, but seems to treat her well -- they just don't sit the eggs diligently).

@Symbro -- One of my birds is an ash red T-pattern cock (Rusty, in my album) with indigo flecks on his flights & tail, but he's in a different coop than the parents of this squeaker. I have no idea how the white birds came to be white; I'm told they are satinettes... but don't know much about the breed. Until Lou told me the white ones are satinettes, I had thought satinettes always had the saddle pattern. There are some splash pattern BB & BC homers, but none completely white in this flock. Not even any I'd recognize as "grizzle" from the pics I've seen posted here. All the satinettes have "bull" eyes.

@George -- The hen that I think is the squeaker's mother could easily be a Seraphim; she has the muffed feet and head/body shape of the Seraphim birds in pics on the 'net, but no frills at all. I guess we'll have to wait to find out whether this little one keeps his red saddle or not when he moults. I'm still trying to reconcile the conceptual disconnect that something called indigo puts red on a bird... I love the dappled look of the shades of red, it would be a shame for him to lose it (IMO - red is my favorite pij color) but he will be Bert's bird when he's weaned, and I'm sure Bert is hoping he will turn white!


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## Symbro (Oct 28, 2005)

look closely at your whites... see if you can find any "flaws"

side note: the flecking will only be found in cocks since the cocks can carry two color genes. if you look at your breeding records of any of these red ash with flecks. you should see 50/50 red and blue hens offspring. 

(with the exception of some weird marks i have found on a few hens, but it looks different, bigger marks mainly on a couple outer tail feathers)


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## rfboyer (Jun 18, 2009)

Symbro said:


> look closely at your whites... see if you can find any "flaws"


I'm not sure what "flaws" would be; the whites are all completely white, though they don't have the frilliness except for the little crest on one of the "gender uncertain" birds and the muffed feet on the hen. 


> side note: the flecking will only be found in cocks since the cocks can carry two color genes. if you look at your breeding records of any of these red ash with flecks. you should see 50/50 red and blue hens offspring.
> 
> (with the exception of some weird marks i have found on a few hens, but it looks different, bigger marks mainly on a couple outer tail feathers)


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[slight threadjack; links to pix of the birds in question ]
This sounds like the "indigo" flecks on my red cock are from his father, then. 
His parents are an ash red hen and a blue velvet (T-check) cock. Their other offspring, so far, are two BC hens, late hatches from last year, and two squeakers that only hatched last Monday. All "oops" babies (the latest round I was out of town for a few weeks and the eggs didn't get swapped for wood ones by my helper)  I adopted this family late last fall, and will have to check with Lou to find out about their heritage. The red hen was probably a late hatch (possibly oops too) from '07, if her band # is any indication... I'll see if I can find out what other offspring the cock may have had; his band is '99 (a friend said, "yeah, he looks like an old bird" and I said "but apparently he still fills eggs!" fwiw, the red hen vigorously fends off attentions from the other cocks...) 

... and I thought the genetics of cat colors and patterns were complicated!


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## Symbro (Oct 28, 2005)

sorry when i said flaws, i meant any "slightly" red coloring.

as for our side note...
yep... hens always pass their color gene to their male offspring. Female offspring get the "hen" gene from their mommies. this "hen" gene does not carry color.

so bird in question got a red gene from his sire, and a blue gene from his dam. many times (not always) the blue flecks will appear on the red bird.

since the dam gives the "hen" gene... then female offspring get their color from their sires. blue cocks will always produce blue hen offspring, red cocks with flecks (should) produce fifty/fifty red and blue hens, a red cock who has produced many (only) red hens most likely carries two red genes. 

and my favorite idea here is sexing by color. In the one case of a blue cock paired to a red hen... ALL red offspring are cocks and ALL blue offspring are hens. (and all cock offspring carry red and blue gene)

*okay its five thirty am... i hope this made sense. and i should go to bed and stop babbling*


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## ezemaxima (Jan 12, 2008)

Symbro said:


> and my favorite idea here is sexing by color. In the one case of a blue cock paired to a red hen... ALL red offspring are cocks and ALL blue offspring are hens. (and all cock offspring carry red and blue gene)


Symbro,

I have a red cock paired to a blue check hen and all i got from them are red check cocks sometimes with white on top of the head.


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