# Producing black young from a blue pairing?



## ace in the hole

There is a question that has come up in the "*Homing and Racing Pigeon*" section. could someone with pigeon genetics knowledge please give us a solid answer. It is in the thread *ANY GOOD BLACK FAMILY?*

Thank You,

Mark/*Ace*


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## Chuck K

Ace 

I saw the post in the Racing forum and answered the question. 

For those here. You can never produce black from a blue pigeon. You can produce some that appear black from t-pattern birds, but if you look close the tail will still show the terminal tail bar.

Blue checks and blue bars will never produce a spread youngster. Spread is dominant, and if the parents carry it they show it. Combinations of spread with ash red can hide the fact that the bird is carrying spread. A lot of the appearance of an ash red carrying spread depends on the bird's pattern. Barless being very light silver to t-pattern often appearing to be red velvet.
Spread in ash red birds does not always hide the pattern. I have seen spread ash red bars that show the bars even with the spread gene. These birds usually carry some factor for bronze. the bar will appear slightly washed out because is being produced by the bronze not the ash red.


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## bigislerollers

Chuck K said:


> You can never produce black from a blue pigeon.


In theory this is true.

But..... it only applies if the birds are bred in individual pens and are NOT bred in an open loft.


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## ace in the hole

Thank you

Mark


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## Chuck K

bigislerollers said:


> In theory this is true.
> 
> But..... it only applies if the birds are bred in individual pens and are NOT bred in an open loft.


True, but if they are producing blacks from a blue hen, the sire is not a blue pigeon. Any black produced is the result of the hen being bred by a black or spread ash bird in the loft.

The expression, 'Momma's baby daddy's maybe' is never more accurate than when you are breeding from an open loft. I have seen studies listed that suggest that obvious infidelity in sex-linked matings where the infidelity could be proven was as high as 17% in some open loft settings.

When someone tells me they produced a black pigeon from two blue pigeons in an individual breeding pen. I know one of two things occurred. One the hen was bred before it was locked into the individual pen with the desired sire, or two the breeder doesn't know how to identify spread and one of the pair is not a blue pigeon or the young is not a true black (spread) pigeon.

A lot of T-pattern check blues will be almost black in appearance, but a close look will reveal the T-Pattern bird shows the black terminal tail bar.


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## re lee

You will find what 95 percent of ressesive red race birds Carry and show the blue. BUT are still called resessive red. And you will find most blacks in race birds carry the blue But are still called black. Same with yellows. BUT inrace birds they are not in the show pen here points are given for color. So The birds can becalled red yellow black. And if the person HAs to clean up these birds. they would probably have to breed on a cross line base. Meaning go out side The breed line to increase color. OR inbreed and do selection based on defined color. But sometimes just leaving well enough alone is good enough. As when we get to set on one thing we miss the other. Same with white. Which is not really a color It masks several colors cross the color line and boom out comes a bird you did not know was there far as color. To me Black was produced from closed T pattern birds The old color thought was light check . blue check, dark check and black check. As the t pattern closed up. We do not really know when Black or many other colors popped up Very long ago. And a mutation from unkown reasons Set the base for many a new color.. BUT many wanted even better color. And some breeds get played with alot. And color gets set and people are happy. A standard get set for that color also. And it becomes the base. QUALITY over color Is the real desire. So settle for a bird that is GOOD and color may be hurting some But at least you have a good bird. As color is a MASK. But QUALITY is the goal. A person can Use any color from a Quality bird to improve the line. And mask that color to the desired Wnat or need. Well enough to over time. BUT it takes time.


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## Chuck K

re lee said:


> QUALITY over color Is the real desire. So settle for a bird that is GOOD and color may be hurting some But at least you have a good bird. As color is a MASK. But QUALITY is the goal. A person can Use any color from a Quality bird to improve the line. And mask that color to the desired Wnat or need. Well enough to over time. BUT it takes time.


re lee,

This piece could have been written by a roller guy. 

Color breeding can bring down the performance of any performance breed. still it is not impossible to get the colors you desire in the color quality you desire and keep the performance you desire. It just takes a great deal more work and time to get there.

I understand that the racing pigeon breeders describe the very dark blue checks as black. Many of them have very different terms to identify the birds that the terms color breeders use which leads to a lot fo the confusion.

The racing enthusiast term I have heard used for t-pattern birds is black velvets or red velvets. Those birds are not black. Black (spread) is not one of the alternatives to the pattern. The pattern series is barless, bar, check, t-pattern check in order of dominance with t-pattern being the most dominant. True black (Spread) is not a part of the pattern series. It is a dominant alternative gene that changes the expression of blue, ash red, and brown. The only alternative to Spread is the wild type (non-spread) gene. Recessive red and recessive white will hide the presence of spread. The weak expression of recessive red found in many performance breeds can allow the blue or Spread to show through in the rump, and the ends of the flights and tail feathers.

The black pigeon posted in the related thread on the Racing Homer forum is a true black. It did not come from blue pigeons. Blue pigeons do not carry the Spread gene. Spread is dominant to non-spread, and will always show in some form in the parent birds. Identifying that form in ash red, and brown birds can be difficult sometimes, and occasionally even blue pigeons with true Spread can be hard to identify for folks that don't know color genetics. Those birds are usually barred birds that show the bar beneath the spread, but even in those birds if you look close the terminal tail bar is not present. The Spread gene will almost always cover the tail bar.

The roller hen in the picture below is a true black (Spread) pigeon. This picture is not the best to see it, but if you look closely the terminal tail bar is missing. It has been covered by the Spread factor. The wing bars show through, and she would be considered of poor quality for a show bird. She is not a show bird.


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## tmaas

First two pics are of a spread bar pattern young bird. Second two are of a non spread dark check young bird.


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## Chuck K

tmaas,

Those four pictures are perfect examples of why folks have such a hard time identifying true blacks. Blue pigeons with the spread factor can look extremely close to blacks. 

If you didn't have the picture at the bottom with the tail spread it would be close to impossible to tell that the bird was not a black but is actually a dark t-pattern. I think the most difficult of these birds to see are the ones that have a bronze factor and some of the color modifying genes like sooty and dirty.

The same could almost be said for the black bird in the two top picks. A lot of folks will see the black bar and not realize it is a spread pigeon.


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## ArcherPigeons

bigislerollers said:


> In theory this is true.
> 
> But..... it only applies if the birds are bred in individual pens and are NOT bred in an open loft.


Not only in theory, in reality.

If you breed in an open loft and two blues "produce" a black, you have infidelity. 

Two blues have not bred a black, a blue and a black bred the black and it was merely raised by the two blues.


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## Crazy Pete

I'm glad I'm old school black with a tail bar or with out still looks black to me.
Dave


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## Chuck K

Crazy Pete said:


> I'm glad I'm old school black with a tail bar or with out still looks black to me.
> Dave




Being able to sometimes identify paternity is about the only benefit to knowing some genetics for a breed that competes. 

With blue bar pigeons being so predominant in the racing sport the knowledge can be about useless. The only true way to be certain that a youngster came out of a particular pair of birds is to lock them in an individual breeding pen and throw away the first round of eggs if the hen had been housed with other cocks and that first round was lain within the first couple of weeks of isolating her. 

However, there are times that having a knowledge of genetics is valuable, like when that fellow is selling you that ash red check or black that he bred off two blue bar racing champions.


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## Crazy Pete

So if the have part of a 3rd row of bars they are not a true BB?
Dave


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## ArcherPigeons

Chuck K said:


> However, there are times that having a knowledge of genetics is valuable, like when that fellow is selling you that ash red check or black that he bred off two blue bar racing champions.


This is it.

Studies have shown that if you don't breed in individual pens, 15-25% of your young will be illegitimate. It would be terrible if your champion was bred this way and you couldn't replicate him!


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## tmaas

Crazy Pete said:


> So if the have part of a 3rd row of bars they are not a true BB?
> Dave


An indication of a third bar says the bird is either borderline light check or sooty only expressing itself slightly.


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## Crazy Pete

So if you breed BB to BB the young should only be BB, now if one of them has the 3rd bar does that change the out come?
Dave


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## tmaas

Crazy Pete said:


> So if you breed BB to BB the young should only be BB, now if one of them has the 3rd bar does that change the out come?
> Dave


If the bb's have unexpressed sooty in them then their offspring can express it in the appearance of a third bar, when in actuality the "third bar" has nothing to do with the pattern, since the sooty gene is not on the pattern chromosome.

Here is a pic of a sooty barless homer to help explain. This bird had obvious barless expression on juvenile plumage and moulted into its sooty expression, which is typical of sooty.


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## ArcherPigeons

That Barless is amazing... you'd swear he was a light check!


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## Chuck K

Young birds carrying sooty will sometimes appear to have that third bar and the rest of the shield will be clean, but as they moult in their adult feathering the sooty spots appear in rest of the shield. The racing homer folks describe these birds as penciled.


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## CBL

tmaas said:


> First two pics are of a spread bat pattern young bird. Second two are of a non spread dark check young bird.


VERY interesting comparison and now I have to go to loft and see if the black I have just bred IS a black or not, and the black appeariing baby (9 days old) is really gonna be black or not. The dad was given to me by fellow racer as black and I bred him to grizzle hen. Thanks.


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