The Black Pigeon Project – My Journey to Build a Family of Black Racing Pigeons

[king]

Back to the genetics thing - where does the black splashes come from in the reds? I have a heavily black splashed red cock at stock -so much so that some of his flights and tail feathers are completely black. Does this come from the black/blue gene in its ancestors?

Yes Dave. A red cock can carry both the red gene and the blue/black gene. The red is the dominant colour so the cock shows predominantly the red but has splashes of black showing he is carrying that gene. The colour gene is linked to the sex gene through the x & Y chromosome. Hence the male carries 2 colour genes and the female only carries one colour. So a hen that carries the red gene has to be red.
The hen doesn’t pass a colour gene to her daughter’s as the colour gene for the hen only comes from the cock. So all her daughters will be the colour of the cock. Her sons will all be reds, but her mate is a blue they will carry the black splashes.
You can get red cocks without the black splashes if from a red hen and a red cock who passes on his red gene along with the hen. In this instance all his offspring will be reds regardless of what colour he is paired too.

Cock who carries red & blue gene paired to hen who carries red gene.
Will produce red sons (with or without black splashes) and red or blue daughters.
Cock who just carries the blue gene x2 paired to a red hen.
Will produce red sons with black splashes and blue daughters.

Hope this makes sense Dave.

100% correct Andy. And some heavily black splashed Red cocks will every year gain more splashes. And some can eventually look like they are becoming blues if they live to a good age.

[Diamond Dave]

Hey Joey, I hope you don't think we've hijacked your post and still very much looking forward to your writing.
The subject has created a lot of initial interest with much of it being related to your project so it's all worth while.