THE INHERITANCE OF SPREAD

BY DOUG BROWN

Do you like Black? Do you like Lavender? If so spread is the key. Spread is not a pattern. Spread is a factor that covers over the patterns of a bird. In the last series we said that a bird has two genes for a pattern. It can be pure or impure for the phenotype or what you see. The gene for spread we will call S is a dominant gene and will show spread with the presence of just one. In the pure genotype for spread we will use the (SS). The impure genotype is (SN) the N stands for normal or no spread. We then know that a bird has two genes for a pattern, but if only one S-gene is present the bird will be a spread.

On the Blue Family spread will be a black and on the Ash Red Family spread will shown as a Lavender. The black is a very good looking bird and many are very good rollers. Spread being dominant makes it very easy to develop good rolling blacks. You can take black birds to your very best patterned birds and get black youngsters right away. There is no waiting for second generations as there is in so many other of the colors and factors that are not dominant.

If your desire is to make really dark shiny blacks there are some other factors that must be taken into consideration. Many of you have seen poor blacks, some even show a pattern through the spread. This is caused by two things. First and foremost is the fact that most of the poorer blacks are single factored. That means that they only have one Spread gene. There pattern shows through. If there pattern underneath is bars you will see blacker bars in the spread. Many call these black bars. They really are just poor black birds. In Lavender if you only have one Spread gene and the birds pattern is bars you will have a bird that you would swear is a red bar, but truly is a spread.

If you truly want to make some nice spreads there are some things that you can do to make them very dark and shiny. The first thing that you want to do is use T-Patterned birds in you matings. T-Pattern underneath spread makes for an even distribution of the color and you get better blacks even if they are only single factored spread. Checks will work but they are not as good, but if that is all you have then that is the best you can do. They next thing that you need to do is to mate spread to spread. This will make it possible to get some pure spread youngsters. Pure spread with the T-Pattern underneath will make for better blacks.

The next thing that you can look for in producing blacks is the presence of bronze in your birds. If you have t-patterned birds with bronze in their flight feathers your blacks will be darker. In some of the youngsters that are black you will see a little bronze on the outline of the feathers on the wing shield. These will be the darker of the blacks. The old "514" bloodlines were full of these dark checkered birds. Most are T-Patterned.

Smokey will also help in making some darker blacks. I will write an article about this factor at another time, but it is a factor that makes the beak horn colored and makes the patterns look a little smeared. It does have a tendency to darken the blacks.

Sooty and Dirty are two more things that can make blacks darker. Sooty is the factor that makes blue bars look like they have checkering. Many people have said that they got checks from barred birds, but what they were probably looking at was sooty. On checkered birds the sooty makes them very dark. Dirty is a very unattractive look by itself. It makes for very dark blue bars. Many of the feral pigeons have this trait. When the squabs are in the nest they are black skinned and have very dark feet and beaks. Dirty will help in making your blacks blacker.

We found something a while back that really makes the birds shiny and resist feather breakdown. This is the presence of grease quills. Down around the tail on both side of the tail you can find feathers that don’t open and if you squeeze them you can feel an oily substance. These are the grease quills and the birds will use these to oil up their feathers. This is obviously very helpful in producing feathers that will not tear up when they roll. It also makes them better able to fly in the wet weather. Ducks have an overabundance of these types of feathers. That is why the water runs off of their backs. If we would bathe our birds more often you would find that your birds would stay drier longer when they fly in the rain or fog. How can you tell if your birds have this quality. Well look at them. If they are quite shiny and have a soft feel to them like they have been oiled they probably have them. Just look down near the tail. If they have unopened quills then they are of that type. This grease quill gene really makes blacks shine.

Okay, now how do you make some nice Lavenders. The making of Lavenders is pretty much the same as the Blacks, except that it in the Ash Red Families. The best Lavenders are of the pure spread genotype (SS) with the pattern underneath being pure for T-Pattern (C^TC^T) or even impure for T-Pattern (C^T?). There are some problems that are inherent to lavenders however. Spread Ash Reds will range from Dark Mahogany to a beautiful lavender and it is really hard to know exactly what you are going to get from them. One thing that will make them dark is the presence of the Smokey, Dirty and the Sooty factors. So if you are trying to make true lavenders stay away from these if you possibly can. You have probably have noticed that some lavenders are speckled with black. I know that I have not talked about color genetics as yet but this speckled characteristic is caused by the presence of blue in the background of the bird. The black speckling tells you that the bird is an ash red bird carrying blue. These are cocks. Hens as a rule do not have speckling, but once in a while you will see a hen with brown speckling.