I have a Beautiful pair that Cock is Normal Blue & Hen is Albino. I thought all the Chicks must be Normal but the cocks are Normal and the hens are opaline !!!

 

Now I've 2 question ...

 

1) Why the hens are Opaline?

2) Do All the chicks are split Albino?

Dad is a normal blue but is split to opaline.

 

1) The opaline mutation is a sex-linked trait. This means that if a male has the opaline gene, he will appear normal, but when a female has the opaline gene, she appears opaline. All the girls from this male bird will be opaline.

 

2) The Ino gene, which is what makes a bird albino or lutino, is also a sex-linked gene. This means that if a femal bird gets the Ino gene, she will appear as an ino, either an albino (blue) or lutino(green) bird. For a male bird to appear as an albino, it must get 2 ino genes. In your case, all the males will be split albino as they only received one albino gene from the mother. If you breed these young males with another bird, then all the females will be albino's.

Just to clarify

 

A sex linked trait attaches to the X sex gene. In birds boys are XX and girls are XY (other way around for mammals).

 

Both Opaline and Albino are sex linked but recessive to normal.

For a male bird to appear as opaline he needs 2 oplaine genes (one for each x sex gene) whereas a female bird only requires one opaline gene (as she only has one X sex gene for it to attach to).

For a normal split opaline cock pairing to a normal hen (assuming the Albino is not masking anything) then the breeding outcomes are:

 

25% Normal/Opaline Cocks

25% Normal/Albino Cocks

25% Opaline Hens

25% Normal Hens

 

As far as being split for albino again because it is a sex linked gene that attaches to the X sex gene - cocks have 2 and hens only 1 so cocks can be split for albino but hens cannot. For ANY sex linked trait hens are either visual or they do not have that gene at all.

 

As for the opaline. If you breed a split with a normal hen you will get:

25% Normal cocks

25% Normal split Ino cocks

25% Ino hens

25% Normal hens

 

Dave it's not until you put an Ino cock to a normal hen that all the hens will be ino - as the only X genes that the cock has to give to the hen carry the ino gene.

Just to clarify

 

A sex linked trait attaches to the X sex gene. In birds boys are XX and girls are XY (other way around for mammals).

 

Amazing! You learn something every day on this forum!

Thanks a lot

 

Your information is complete And Wonderful