Hello everyone! Our new little white babies are still here in their little
quarantine cage, but before we take a look at the rest of
the pigeons today I would like to just talk about the white colour. It is
something I had a lot of questions about, so let's pull one out and have a look.
I'll make a more in-depth genetics video on white in the future
but I would just like to take a few moments to talk about it today.
One question I get asked a lot is what happens when you cross
a white pigeon with any other colour? And that really isn't a question that
you can answer, and to understand why you need to understand what white
actually is. So when it comes to pigeons you need to understand that
there is no white colour. White is not a colour.
White is simply the absence of pigment. So what does that mean?
Well it means that although visually this pigeon is white
all of its normal genetics are still there. They're just covered over
by the coat of white. Obviously this is a young bird so I haven't been able to do
any breeding tests to tell categorically but the gene that's
causing this bird to be white is probably recessive white
and all that gene does is turns off pigment production.
So that means that underneath the coat of white this bird it could be a blue bar,
it could be black, it could be a blue checker,
it could be red, it could be an unknown mutation that we've never seen before,
but we can't tell because the white has turned off
the pigment production. All the other genes are still there, the white has just
made them invisible. Maybe an illustration might help. Try and
imagine a painter who's painting his masterpiece but
someone switched out all these paints for white.
So although he's painted everything you can't see it, all you can see is white
because all of his pigment has been replaced with white.
So now that we understand that let's think about our original question:
"What happens when i cross a white pigeon with say a blue bar or a blue checker?"
and the answer is we can't tell, we can't tell unless we know
what genetics are being hidden by the white genes in this pigeon.
Now I earlier said that it's probably recessive white
that's causing this pigeon to be white. But another complicating factor with
white is there are actually an abundance of different genes that can
cause the white phenotype. Recessive white is a very common gene
that is behind the white phenotype, but there are also different pied genes,
some pied genes can be stacked on top of each other to give
an entire coverage of white. You can produce white
with grizzle. I will make another video on that in the future but homozygous
grizzle on ash red comes out to be almost white and
the only way you can really tell without doing a breeding test
is to look at the eyes. A recessive white pigeon will have bull eyes or dark
eyes whereas a grizzle-based white will have coloured eyes.
There is also a dominant white gene sometimes the stipper gene or any of its
alleles can cause a phenotype that's white or near white,
there are other genes that cause plucked feathers to grow in white,
so really there is an abundance of different ways to produce a white pigeon
which just adds to the complexity. First of all you don't know what's underneath
and then you might not even know what is causing it to be white in the first place.
So although white looks like a very
simple colour, it's really one of the most complex and
it's not even a colour. White really is the absence of colour.
I hope you were able to understand that. If I haven't made any sense please feel
free to leave a question in the comments. Okay, well let's have a look at the rest
of the birds now. Our opal grizzle is more protective than
usual, because he is a new father.
These two little ones hatched - one hatched yesterday the other one hatched
overnight, so we'll see what colour they come out as.
This is our spread recessive opal project -
there's the mother up there - so there is the slim chance that we
might have one in this nest. In a couple of days we should find out.
Let's put him back before he kills me! I don't know what it is about our opal
cock birds but they are very protective fathers.
The little one here is nice little black so it's not a recessive opal spread
like we were hoping for,
but he's growing up nicely. And he's just as aggressive as his dad.
I was hoping the father will be off the nest so I could show you, but this little
baby likes to fight just as much as his dad does.
I'm a little worried about the tiger grizzles. These ones were supposed to
hatch today and last I checked they hadn't actually
started hatching yet. Let's have another look...
see if we've gotten lucky.
There's a little tiny crack there, maybe it's starting to hatch. How about
the other one?
I'll have to check them again tomorrow. I really do hope those eggs hatch because
this pair isn't mine, I borrowed them, and I've had them all winter and haven't
actually produced a single tiger grizzle from them yet and that was
the reason why I borrowed them, so that I could produce for myself a tiger grizzle.
So hopefully tomorrow there'll be a nice little baby in this
nest and we can finally have a tiger grizzle to keep.
Here is our little orphan from the cock bird who escaped and was lost.
Definitely an ash red bar, which is what we expected.
I do think it's a hen though, which means that... if it is a hen it does not carry
the dilute gene, which is a shame I was really hoping to
have not lost that progress in my yellow project.
But even if it is a hen she is still quite a well bred little racing pigeon
and she will go on to race next year.
Hopefully she can prove herself against all the people who
like to comment that I don't have racing pigeons. And the last of our babies are
in here with the old black boy and the nice
little almond hen.
Let's pull these guys out and have a look as well. In this nest
there's another little black baby which belongs to the black cock in the
almond hen, and then there's this little guy who
genetically has to be a grizzle, but he's not looking
completely like a grizzle yet so I'll be interested to see what it comes
out looking like. I'm a little surprised about this one
the old black boy carries brown, which means that half of
his daughters should be brown, but he hasn't actually produced any
brown daughters yet this year. Which is interesting, I was hoping for
some nice browns. As you know I do really like the brown so colour. So it would be
nice if we can get one before the end of the year.
Anyway these two are growing up nicely as well.
And of course as with all the rest of them these guys will be raced.
But that's about it for today. I hope the explanation about white
and why white is not a colour made a little bit of sense.
Let me know in the comments what you thought, let me know if I explained it
even half understandably, and if you have any questions
just leave them there and I'll try my best to answer them. Anyway guys, enjoy,