PigeonGenetics.com Forum

Hellow there. I recently acquired some new pairs and have a hen which is shown in the attached pics. I am wondering what the colour of this pigeon is. My guesstimate is that it is a recessive opal? It is darker than a standard blue bar with reddish hue in crop area an in bars - as seen in photos; would much appreciate thoughts. Thank you. Jeff

sorry i just saw this area - pigeon of unknown colour is shown - a hen
would much appreciate thoughts on the colour of this bird

I cant see any pics?

will try to upload again - it did upload before but did not show

That's a smoky (slate) blue bar, possibly also with dirty

Hi Adam - thank you for the colour diagnosis much appreciated - I find the colour quite attractive - 'slate' sounds better than 'smoky' so will call it that - cheers Jeff

I did a bit of searching for the genetics of 'smoky' (aka 'slate') and it appears it is a null mutation (large deletion) of the melanocortin 1 receptor (Mc1r) gene [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/792945v1]. Mutations in this gene cause red hair in humans, different to the effect in pigeons, i.e. it does not result in markedly red plumage. However there is a reddish hue to the bars and crop area in my bird, so there is some similarity. Interestingly the study also showed that 'dirty' is also a mutation in Mc1r (amino acid change), so if 'smoky' is recessive as generally thought, then a bird cannot be phenotypically 'smoky' and 'dirty'. However, it seems 'smoky' can in some cases be semi-dominant (discussion in Biorxiv paper), in which case the double phenotype might occur. It will be interesting to see what happens when I breed from this bird !!

There is some controversy over that study - many in the community are not convinced of smoky and dirty's potential allelism.

what colour would you get if the pigeon was slate (homo) and also spread (het or homo) - perhaps a solid colour but not black? perhaps a washed out version, e.g. grey?

Spread is espistatic to smokey, it covers it. If anything, smokey helps the spread produce a darker colour.