For some time now I have been interested in Spaldings in various colors.  This started my first year in peafowl when I bought a pair of Spaldings, 50% Green, that were split to Black Shoulder.  When I bred the pair I hatched a chick that was yellow just like a White.  At that time I did not know that a Black Shoulder chicks started off like that.  When this bird (a hen) matured, I was fascinated by her color.  I bred her back to a pure Green bird and hatched several chicks.
 
  At this time I sold all my birds to E.A. Hott and went to work for him taking care of his birds.  I have mixed feelings about that move, but doing nothing but taking care of up to 1200 peafowl for five years taught me a lot about the bird.  When Hott got out of the bird business I acquired several nice birds.  One of these was a Black Shoulder Spalding hen bred from the 3/4 Spaldings split to Black Shoulder that I originally sold to Hott.  The first chance I got I bred her to a high percentage Spalding split to White, hoping to pick up the white gene for future projects.  This did not happen but the offspring was starting to show lots of Green blood. 

  In 2003 I hatched my first Black Shoulder Spalding that is 7/8 Green.  They are absolutely gorgeous but I'm not through yet.  I intend to use Black Shoulder Spaldings in several other lines of birds; Oaten Spalding, Jetta Spalding, etc.  In most of the new colors you cannot tell if they are a high percentage Green bird or not until you get to 15/16 or higher.  For this reason it is essential to have breeder birds at a very high percentage of Green. 

  OK,  let's say you have a Oaten Spalding hen at 3/4 Green blood and you would like to go higher.  If you breed to a pure Green bird you come up with hens split to Black Shoulder and cocks split to Black Shoulder and Cameo.  When breeding these birds back together only 1/2 of the hens will be Cameo and 1/4 will be Black Shoulder.  This means that only 1/8 of the hens or 1/16 of the total hatch will be Oaten.  At that rate it may take several years to come up with an Oaten Spalding, 7/8 Green blood. 

  If you had bred the 3/4 Oaten Spalding hen to a Black Shoulder Spalding with 127/128 Green blood, you would get a Black Shoulder cock split to Cameo that could be bred back to the 127/128 line and produce Oaten Spalding hens close to 15/16 in only two generations.

  Because high percentage Spalding hens usually do not lay until they are three years old it can take an extremely long time to come up with high percentage Spaldings in all these new colors.

  Another problem is mixing several color patterns with the new colors.  Take Pied Black Shoulder Opal Spalding: when breeding for higher percentage Green blood, if you breed to pure Green and then line breed you will be looking at a one out of 32 (or maybe 64) chance of getting the bird you are breeding for.  The three breeder Spaldings I think are most important are Black Shoulder, Pied and White because Pied is codominant to White.  This year (2004) I will be breeding splits in all three at 15/16 Green. 

Peafowl Home page
02/10/07