CREATING NEW PEAFOWL COLORS

           Combining color mutations has been done with many bird species for decades.  One can combine Dark Throated Golden and Yellow Golden pheasants to get a new color, Salmon Golden.  Combinations have been done in other birds as well as pheasants and has also been done with peafowl. These are not hybrids.  A Yellow Golden and a Dark Throated Golden are just different color phases of a single species, Chrysolophus pictus.  Hybrids are created by combining the genes of two different species or subspecies. They are not created by combining two different color mutations of the same species.  Therefore a Purple Black Shouldered Peafowl is not a hybrid.  It is a pure Pavo cristatus.  If it has been crossed with a Green Peafowl , then it's a hybrid.  Breeding a Blue Indian peacock (Pavo cristatus) and a Java Green peahen (Pavo muticus muticus) creates a Spalding, which is a hybrid because it combines two subspecies.  Most of the peafowl in captivity today are hybrids.  Most have some Green blood.  Spaldings are in great favor with most US breeders.

Most peafowl breeders know that Purple and Black Shouldered can be combined to make a Purple Black Shouldered peafowl.  But they don't believe that crossing Cameo and Purple makes a Peach Peafowl.  "Peach" is not a new color mutation.  It's a combination of two existing mutations which creates a new color, not a new color mutation.

As breeders we have become content to combine the obvious colors and patterns and have given up on the exciting, less obvious and more time consuming  combinations with unknown results.  Combining Purple, Opal, or Charcoal with Pied, Silver Pied or Black Shouldered is on everyone's list.  But combining Purple, Opal, or Charcoal with Cameo, Buford Bronze, or Midnight seems in most people's minds not to be possible.  Perhaps they just have not thought of it or perhaps they have done it and didn't realize what had happened when a new color was produced.

Combining Purple and Buford Bronze has produced two new colors for our aviaries.  There is a light form, like the Purple parent, and a darker form that's more  like the Buford Bronze parentage.  The light one I call Indigo and the dark one a Bronze Indigo. The Bronze Indigo's train is the same as a Buford Bronze, but the neck and breast are bluer and brighter.

I have also combined Charcoal and Buford Bronze.  The male has not matured, so I'm still waiting to see the final results.

Following no particular genetic plan, I mixed the ones that I thought would produce pleasing new colors.  There's a lot of work to be done making all of these new combinations.  It will take decades.  Keeping accurate records of crosses made and tagging all birds is the key to getting these new colors established.  Honesty in disclosing what genes are being carried by every bird will facilitate the process for all breeders.  It's impossible for one breeder to do multiple crosses of each combination.  Cooperation between breeders will help keep the new colors from being too inbred.

Many new colors are yet to be produced.  We have all the needed tools.  All that's left to do is years of work.

Clifton Nicholson, Jr.                     Roughwood Aviaries                             (812) 752-5227                     www.clnjr.com