# How to make colors



## Crab_Shrapnel (Jan 17, 2010)

Okay, I have two beautiful homers, A heterozygus red check hen and a homozygus blue bar cock. Now, what all colors will be possible with these birds as starters. What I mean is, What colors could I breed with which member of which next generation, etc.


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

F1 kids will be:
100% Red check cocks split for blue and split for bar
100% Blue check hens split for bar

Depending on if you inbreed or if you bring in other colors, there's different outcomes.

Mate one of the F1 sons back to mom and you get:
25% Red check cocks
25% Red check hens
25% Red check cocks split for blue
25% Blue check hens
Any of those babies can also be split for bar.

Mate a F1 son to a sister and you get:
25% Red cocks split for blue
25% Blue cocks
25% Red hens
25% Blue hens
Any of these could be pure checks, pure bars, or checks split for bar

Put an F1 daughter to the dad and you get:
50% Blue checks split for bar in either sex
50% Blue bars in either sex


Can't really tell you what else you could get until you bring in other birds, so you don't have to inbreed.


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## Crab_Shrapnel (Jan 17, 2010)

Lets say I mate an F1 cock with a white hen. What would result?


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

You never know until you try it. Anything could be hiding under white


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## Crab_Shrapnel (Jan 17, 2010)

So, white is like a genetic wild card? Awesome!


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## Crazy Pete (Nov 13, 2008)

The red sire has opel.
Dave


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## Crab_Shrapnel (Jan 17, 2010)

I love opal!


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

Dominant or recessive opal?


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## Crazy Pete (Nov 13, 2008)

Recessive, I've raised 1 young from him that had opel.


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## Crab_Shrapnel (Jan 17, 2010)

How could I get another opal baby?


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

So both of her parents had opal in them then?
Edit: Nevermind, saw you said from _him_, not necessarily with the same hen that gave you Crab Shrapnel's bird.




Two ways to get opal babies. There's a good chance your hen is carrying recessive opal. If she is, then her babies will have a chance of carrying it as well. To get a bird who actually SHOWS this kind of opal, then it will need two copies of it. So both of its parents will need to be carrying (or showing) it.

Or, you can get a dominant opal bird, and breed it to any of yours. You'll get about half Dom opals and half regular birds. Try to avoid mating two Dom opals together. Some of their babies to die in the shell or soon after hatching, but of the remaining, most of them should be Dom opals and a few should be regular colored.


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## amumtaz (Jun 13, 2007)

*Hemizygous*



Crab_Shrapnel said:


> Okay, I have two beautiful homers, A heterozygus red check hen and a homozygus blue bar cock. Now, what all colors will be possible with these birds as starters. What I mean is, What colors could I breed with which member of which next generation, etc.


*Correction. We cannot refer the colors of hens as heterozygous. The term hererozygous is used when two alleles are different. Hens carry one color and one empty allele for their color, therefore should be referred as “Hemizygous”. Hemizygous gene has no allelic counterpart or is present as only a single copy instead of the usual two copies in a diploid cell or organism. *


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## Crab_Shrapnel (Jan 17, 2010)

amumtaz said:


> *Correction. We cannot refer the colors of hens as heterozygous. The term hererozygous is used when two alleles are different. Hens carry one color and one empty allele for their color, therefore should be referred as “Hemizygous”. Hemizygous gene has no allelic counterpart or is present as only a single copy instead of the usual two copies in a diploid cell or organism. *


oh, sorry, the only thing I knowabout genetics is from biology class


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## jbangelfish (Mar 22, 2008)

*This depends as well*

Not sure what was meant by heterozygous red check hen but a hen can be hetero for check and hetero for bar, as well as a number of other factors.

Hens can be heterozygous for any of the autosomal recessives, just like cocks can.

Base color of course is different and they can only have one. Same with intense, pale, dilute and so on.

Bill


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## MaryOfExeter (Sep 30, 2007)

I had to go all over the place, but found the info on these two birds in another thread, when I made my first post. If I remember right, they said the blue bar cockbird's parents with both blue bars, and the red check hen's parents were both red checks. Then the opal came into play and threw in yet another part to the punnett square 

So when they said heterozygous red check hen, it probably came from the fact that hens can only have one base color gene. And of course normally when someone says something only has one copy of a gene, you automatically think het. Unfortunately, I don't think they taught us about hemizygous genes in biology here either, so I can understand that 

I do remember in biology them teaching us the example of 'checkered chickens', which bothered me pretty bad. The example pictures were always the barred and cuckoo chickens...saying something about black chicken x white chicken can give you 'black and white checkered chickens'  (Which is a lie because white in chickens is like (recessive) white in pigeons - you never know what you'll get! Mottled I believe is a recessive gene in chickens, and barred/cuckoo is another gene as well) I don't remember what kind of inheritance they told us it was called....incomplete dominance? Co-dominance? It's been too long!


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## amumtaz (Jun 13, 2007)

So when they said heterozygous red check hen, it probably came from the fact that hens can only have one base color gene. And of course normally when someone says something only has one copy of a gene, you automatically think het. Unfortunately, I don't think they taught us about hemizygous genes in biology here either, so I can understand that 

I do remember in biology them teaching us the example of 'checkered chickens', which bothered me pretty bad. The example pictures were always the barred and cuckoo chickens...saying something about black chicken x white chicken can give you 'black and white checkered chickens'  (Which is a lie because white in chickens is like (recessive) white in pigeons - you never know what you'll get! Mottled I believe is a recessive gene in chickens, and barred/cuckoo is another gene as well) I don't remember what kind of inheritance they told us it was called....incomplete dominance? Co-dominance? It's been too long! [/QUOTE]

A hen can be heterozygous for anything other than feather color. Female pigeons carry one feather color (ash red, Blue, Brown, etc) and one empty allele for color. Hemizygous gene has no allelic counterpart or is present as only a single copy instead of the usual two copies in a diploid cell or organism. In other words, a gene wherein one of its pair is deleted is a hemizygous gene. In another example, most of the genes of the X chromosome and Y chromosome in human males are hemizygous since males have only one X chromosome (and one Y chromosome) (unlike females that have two X chromosomes).

Incomplete recessive or partial dominant example would be feather on the feet. If you cross a pigeon with feathered feet (some people calls them boots) with non-feathered feet, you would get something in between. Pigeons with feather in their feet but not as long, or spread on the feet like the parent. 


http://mumtazticloft.com/PigeonGenetics.asp


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