Brabra
Songster
- Nov 29, 2022
- 68
- 69
- 101
Hi! Sorry to ask on an old thread I was just curious what Guinea to breed to not get pearled? I was to get solid colored Guinea and would like them to continue to breed solid. Is that possible? Thank youMost of the keets from that pair's hatches will be Pearl Grey keets (Pearl Grey is dominant), but depending on what hidden recessive genes each bird may be carrying, Buff Dundotte (or even other random/surprise colors) may pop up. If you keep several of the keets that hatch (that are now carrying the hidden recessives as well) and add them to the flock, when the next breeding season comes around the hatches will still be dominated by Pearl Grey keets, but you should get at least a few more Buff Dundotte keets, and again, depending on what hidden recessives they inherited from their parents, more of the random/surprise colors may show up in their hatches as well.
My flocks are mixed colors and mixed Pieds and they all have varied genetic backgrounds, so my hatches are always very random. I don't separate my flocks into breeding pairs, typically just small-ish breeding flocks, aiming for certain colors to hatch. A couple examples: I added a Lavender male to a few Chocolates to get Coral Blue keets last season (which worked, I did get some Coral Blues in every hatch), and this year I added a Coral Blue (hatched from the Chocolate Hens' eggs) and Buff (unrelated) to the Chocolates to get more Chocolate keets and some Blonde keets (again, this worked, I did get lots of Chocolates and a few Buffs). The Coral Blue also bred with my Brown Hens and produced some Lavenders and the Buff also bred the Brown Hens and produced a few Buff Dundotte keets. I knew all of the birds had varied genetic backgrounds and because of that I still expected that my hatches be pretty random (which they were), but I was lucky enough to get a few of the colors I was hoping/aiming for.
It's hard (for me anyway) to quickly explain the basics of how the Guinea Fowl color and pearling genetics work to produce certain colors/varieties from the hatches... but each keet gets one gene from each parent that determines what color they will be and one gene from each parent that determines the amount of pearling it will have... so if 2 of the same color or pearling genes don't hook up then whatever is dominant from the pair of genes is what determines what the keet will turn out to be. (Fully pearled genes are dominant over partially pearled genes, darker color genes are dominant over lighter color genes etc). The recessive genes can and do hook up tho, which is how some flocks produce such varied hatches, and also why surprise colors/varieties to randomly show up.
Hope that made sense... lol
