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I have found that in Germany there is a variety of Leghorn called Goldfarbig (they have it also in the Czech Republic, and there they call it GOLD). How does it differ genetically from Rebhuhnfarbig (which I understand is just e+/e+)? Here are some pictures:

http://www.fluegelvieh.de/italiener.html

http://www.rassegefluegelzucht-linnenkamp.de/Italienergoldfarbig.html

and the Czech ones:

http://klubvlasek.webzdarma.cz/barevne_razy_soubory/zlatezbarvene.htm

There are German bantams called Wildfarbig (although I must admit I haven't seen wild hens in this colour). They look a little similar to brassyback hens but not quite. What is their genetic make-up?

http://www.mein-rassegefluegel.de/deutsche_zwerge.htm
http://www.deutsche-zwerghuehner.de/Ausstellungen/deutsche_zwerghuhnschau.htm

As far as I understand (from partridge Silkies), wild farbig - wild colour is a melanized "ordinairy" partridge. Wild colour can be on e^b and e+. In Silkies the wild colour partridge (e^b) seem to have Cha (dark heads) too and are melanized in total. I would suggest just add Ml, and you have wild colour. Black doesn't "stick" on the salmon breast effectively; therefore, it's still visible.

Goldfarbig are what we call "flitter." Note the shiny gold outer lace on the hens' feathers.

Henk, the flitter itself would not change the colour of the entire body. I have one light brown Leghorn with flitter, and it just looks like a light brown Leghorn with flitter. There must be something added. There were some very distinct pictures on the Internet (which are now gone) on which the colour of the hens looked like show quality New Hampshire "melted together" with e+/e+. The colour is more visible on the Czech birds (much more reddish).

If you read description of patrijs goudflitter on this site:

http://www.leghorn.nl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11&Itemid=145

"De patrijskleur van de hennen bevat in de grondkleur minder grijsbuin en iets meer geel/oker bruin. De pepering is fijner dan de normale patrijskleur".

you can find more differences. I don't speak Dutch, but I guess through German and Danish, that background colour of the hens is less grey than on normal light brown. So the flitter is not the only difference.

I'm very hesitant if it just can be an example of "varied expression" of wild colour.

What the Dutch sentence means, in my opinion, is that flitters are a selection of partridge that has less heavy black stippling, thus showing more of the gold groundcolor. Of course, other factors can be in play that make the color warmer (autosomal red). They are a beautiful color.

It can stick quite well on this Leghorn:




This pullet is e+/e+, S with melanizers. What makes it different from the birds from the German sites? And what makes the breasts of the German wildfarbige so dark red?

She looks birchen.

Yes, she does, doesn't she? But she was not birchen. She was born as chipmunk, as were her brothers, which were even blacker (it will be the subject of my next thread). She grew up to be less black on the breast, closer to normal. (I lost her.) She is F2 from black mottled Leghorn cock X e+/e+ Leghorn hen. When crossed to a light brown Leghorn cock, all her chicks were chipmunks, none of them melanized, and all her sons were S/s.

Coresponding cock to the pullet above (in the first picture with his grandpa):





He had the deepest imaginable black on his neck hackle; even the sheen was black. (I think a black hole in Outer Space must look like this.) It is recessive. I hatched 30 chicks from him crossed to normal duckwings. None of the chicks were melanized; some had broader black hackle stripes.

I have found a better picture for my first posting.





I have read (don't remember the source), that selecting for lighter background(less stipling) should LEAD to creation of lace. I have some doubts about it, because I have a melanized pullet that got lace too. She popped up out of non-laced parents.




The lace can be better visible if you zoom the page in.
At one point I got one pullet which was even darker and laced. So this 'old truth' is not always true.

What I've heard about flitter is, the finer the peppering the more shine on the lace. The coarser the peppering the less shine.

She is melanized but necessarily more heavy stippled!
She looks cream (ig/ig). Cream light browns (dutch) are known for their fine stippling.

Funny (for me) that you mentioned cream. It would be lovely. BUT: the only 2 hens which could give non-mottled duckwings, are both 'mine'(meaning: gold dilution never detected before). So the thing that dilutes the gold in this particular pullet should only be in 1 dose according to my observations. Apart from melanization, gold dilution is a 'mystery' to me at the moment, and I have no birds to test with(which I know with 100% certainty that they are pure for Ig/Ig).Many different shades of gold. I have a hen e+/e+ momo s+, bought as an egg. She looks ig/ig, she looked actually very close to silver on her pictures as a chick . When I crossed her to a cock(also bought as an egg) which looked 'normal', her all daughters fell out 'midway' between the parents, and her sons become burnt orange all over the body. I will make a separate thread on this soon.

I wonder what type of connection is in it?

1)linkage?
2)side effect of gold dilution?(= pleiotropy)
3)none?

Very mild columbian-like restriction of ig

As it was mentioned, there is a difference how heavy or fine the stippling can be. But this is only one side of the matter. If one looks closely at the feathers of e+/e+ females, it can clearly be seen , that there is also a difference between the backgrounds themselves. It can range from dark brown on Danish brown Leghorns, to light fawn/tawny on ig/ig diluted birds.
What kind of pigment is responsible for the colour of the background of the wild type females? Should it be concidered a pure pheomelanin or mixture of both eumelanin and phaeomelanin?

Would't it be more proper to call ig a pheomelanin diluter than only a gold diluter?( it sounds in my ears as it only dilutes the hackles and the saddle).

It doesn't affect the salmon red breast much but it does dilute body of buff columbian also.

The groundcolor is pheo. It is a myth that RIR need black for a good red color for instance. Sure, it darkens (optically).

ig makes the body of an s+ based orange buff (Di + columbians)not considerably lighter. It does help lighten hackle and other sex feathers which are less affected by Di than body feathers. It helps to less the red on the shoulders of roosters.

This is the lemon/buff S and s+ dilemma.
When you have silver based lemon with Di, this is a purely autosomal red (plus enhancers)buff bird and you add ig, its hackle will become white and body colour will stay buff, although perhaps a bit lighter than without, but this is not obvious since there are so many shades even in sibblings since autosomal red behaves unpredictable.

PS the best lemon (self coloured, no pattern) is an S/s+ rooster with autosomal red and pure for both Di and ig and all columbians. He will loose black totally when based on e^b.

Hard to state since there are no tester-lines of Di (and ig? etc...).
What about the lemon vorwerks? That diluter is recessive and has full body action (my guess is ig/ig).

Depends on what you call a tester line :-)

Here is a mother with her daughter. The daughter has some blood from English Light Brown Leghorns, which look overall lighter to begin with.



What gene(s) or gene combination can cause this(look at the breasts):

Silver. The mother looks red enhanced to me.

In her case paternity is known -no silver involved.

Silver doesn't have to affect the breast(not always):

My point is that these are red enhanced salmon breasts.

O.K.
Is Di known to affect the breasts of the wild type females in one dose?

Dilute still has a very doubtful status, imo.

Apropos ig/ig dilution:
Although I found that on my own duckwings the lighter colour of the hackles is accompanied by lighter colour of the body, I have also found that it doesn't have to be this way. Look here(the picture had a title 'cream brown leghorns'):

The shoulder is not representative. Many ig/ig roosters are even redder there. Whole different story with columbian restricted chickens.

In Dutch Bantams, in the Geelpatrijs,(igig), the light red/orange back is preferred--with Geelpatrijs to Geelpatrijs the preferred breeding for "show" color expression.
The dark red back indicates a "sometime" cross to a Patrijs carrier (ig), and while often done, is not recommended for correct Geelpatrijs vzriety description for "show" birds. Tails, and other plumage goals, dictate the wish to cross with Patrijs--as often, the Geelpatrijs will have superior plumage. Some Patrijs breeders need it! And those offspring with (igig) ARE of course, Geelpatrijs, from one or both Patrijs carriers. (Maybe only the breeder "knows"!) I have a super Patrijs cock that was sired by a Geelpatrijs, but have no Patrijs (ig)-carrier hens, but a Geelpatrijs hen would give me some gorgeous offspring. Maybe sometime? CJR

Comment to my previous posting(with the last picture)

I should have written that I meant the PULLET to be in focus here. She doesn't look melanized , but the contrast between the colour of her neck hackle and the body is big. My own diluted pullets look pale on the body too.

This posting is following the previously mentioned thought , that ig/ig has 'very weak columbian effect'(making peppering smaller, thus allowing for more background colour to be visible), ie paler/lighter birds

I will show what I mean. If you compare the two mottled duckwings, the hen on the left is diluted on the hackles AND on the WHOLE BODY:




The pullet on the picture from my previous posting is ONLY DILUTED ON THE NECK HACKLES

In these showlines there are often subtle melanizers in play that make a sharper hackle stripe in the cockerels. These are known to clutter (=boost) the peppering; the opposite effect of the ig/ig. Also the body expresses more autosomal red.

Is there in Dutch(or any local dialect)any other word for chick than kuiken? I've been trying to google pictures of goldfarbig chicks, but I've found only this one:



It doesn't show details. The chicks don't look particularly chipmunk-like.

The problem may be that "goldfarbig" is german...

Yes, I know. I've tried gold flitter too, the result was even worse.

I have found some new pictures and videoes of goldfarbig. My impression is that nearly each second cock has giant leakages of red spilling on the breast:




So it looks like they have red enhancers(as it was said before). But what makes the leakages appear in some but not in the birds on the shows?

Second issue. I have found new pictures of chicks. Although the mature birds look like e+, none of the chicks I've found show the typical eye stripe. Is there any (known) connection between red enhancers and the lack of eye stripes?





Has anybody observed something like this?

It doesn't appear as Di is a candidate for this gold flitter trait, as going by Brumbaugh's description, Di significantly dilutes e+ hen breasts also.

The following on Di (as posted in this thread):

A STUDY OF THE GENETIC CONTROL OF BLACK-RED PIGMENT PATTERNS IN THE FOWL.
Brumbaugh, John Albert
ProQuest Dissertations and Theses; 1963; ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT).

Test breeding results...
Di/di+ - heterozygote



Di/Di - homozygotes



* It's a pity not a better description, as it sounds like Di might significantly extend phaeomelanin also, not just a phaeomelanin diluter.

Yes, the Gold Flitter roosters have red markings on the breast also.
Eg from the Czech website (rough translation):


I was told there was a similar correlation with this pullet-bred BBRed Modern Games I have, ie red lacing on the males breast correlates with the outer gold lacing (flitter) on the hens:




The male's red breast markings develops over alot of time though (ie years), so this may explain the variation in exhibition Gold Flitter Leghorn roosters too?
Eg, an 18 week old cockerel (grandson):

*There is also some red lacing developing around upper thigh/hock area.

I don't know if this is any different to other e+/e+ lines, but these ones the cockerels first juvenile breast feathers are salmon, & they start moulting to black around 6 to 7 weeks old.
Eg, the same cockerel above at 7 weeks:


Note, that old rooster above is also an even shade of phaeomelanin - orange/red throughout (simiar to gold flitters), yet the hens are a very pale gold. But this line is in the process of redevelopment, & the following son (plus grandsons) have the typical lighter orange gold neck/saddle, darker wing bow:

* Can't see in the photos, but he has thin red lacing developing on the breast.

This is a grand daughter to the first pair above (daughter to last rooster above).


She has the same grandfather on both paternal & maternal sides.

So although some similarities to Gold Flitter, also some differences, & some way to go to get the clarity of flitter in these Modern Games (a darker gold would help).

P.s. the chick down of these is typical e+:

it looks like some Welsummer lines don't have much of an eye stripe:

*From Feathersite.



My Pile Modern Game line:
Blue Red cockerel e+/e+ Bl/bl+ i+/i+ segregate (11 days old):


Might be that Bl/bl+ is diluting eumelanin too much. But explains why most of the I/i+ Pile siblings don't have distinctive e+ markings.

There is a red enhancer that somehow increases the red in salmon breasts, plus on wings, but the neck hackles remain a lighter gold shade:

e+/e+ I/i+ Pile Pullet 5mth 3wks old:


Interesting red enhancer.

Here is her sister showing stress marks.

Looks a bit like a ribbon tail in pigeons.

I have something that sounds like that here with straw colour hackles:




And here with medium gold:




WHAT IS THIS?

Yes, yours have even more red on the wings, etc, but neck hackles remain gold. Is there extension of red on any roosters?

My Piles I think are not extending phaeomelanin, as the roosters have clean eumelanin breast & the hens it's more reddening of what phaeomelanin is already there (a flaw noted in the Modern Game Standard, ie ruddiness in e+/e+ hens). But it does look like a darker phaeomelanin (red) on wing bows & back of Pile males. The neck/saddle hackles remain orange gold:


-------------
The following OEGB was at a local show:

She probably is Bl/Bl Spangled (e+/e+ mo/mo) (there were also Blue Spangled). Diluting all eumelanin highlights how much the phaeomelanin is modified (intensified & extended) in exhibition Spangled OEG hens. Yet the equivalent Spangled male is not eumelanin restricted, may have dark bronzing on the black at most, but not eumelanin restriction like Co, Db, nor Mh really.
Eg Spangled OEGB:


Although this following Spangled hen has lighter gold neck hackles:

Maybe the same or similar modifier(s) are in Dark Brown Leghorns? Really hard to tell whether these Spangled OEGB have e+ or e^b, going by adult female phenotype (ie no obvious salmon breast - heavily modified).

Yes, and it's the first time I've found it on a rooster. Here is Karol, he is from March last year. On the 2 first pictures taken ca. 2 months ago, he is clean .Now he is flecked with red on the breast and the sides.





He is a beauty(and he knows it). Un updated picture will be made later.

Here is his breast as it looks now:



His 'trousers':



One of the more mysterious things in this is: the father of all those reddened birds was S/s+ with absolutely no gold leakages(perhaps 'microscopically ' creamish on the saddle at the close inspection, he was starring in my GGG thread
http://www.the-coop.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=91924#Post91924
)

There are numerous lines of Welsumers in Europe, which show the chicks differently depending on the gender(like I had in my Brown Leghorns), where females have eyestripes , and cockerels are stripe-free.

Flock of Welsumers

The breeder has not had luck here (only 2 pullets , find them)


Here is a flock of Altsteirer chicks


Match between lack of eyebrow and big comb= 100%

I would like to come back to Wildfarbige. Try to observe the pictures on following site:

http://www.mein-rassegefluegel.de/ausstellungen.htm

I have saved some pictures in case the site disappear.
If you are observant you should notice that the females look eumelanized, including rather black hackles, but the males are NOT. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE ???

Here are some more pictures,a little bigger:

http://www.deutsche-zwerghuehner.de/Ausstellungen/deutsche_zwerghuhnschau.htm

If you look closely at the females, the eumelanization is not uniform like on the majority of my birds, but rather like an imperfect black lace or something. Is it supposed to represent Pg/ML version of e+ ?

Comments are welcome.

I am having a bit of a deja vu here...

I think they are not Pg since they require stippling.
The black in the roosters hackles is mainly hidden on the underside of the hackle feathers. Had the same effect in lakenvelder crosslings.

although silver, Dark dorkings have a very similar look to what you are questioning Wieslaw.

some indian game X dorkings also have a very similar colour pheno

Yes, a bit of a deja vu. But there is a difference now: The first time round , I did not pay attention to the fact, that the cocks did not eumelanize. Hence the BIG SHOCK now! What is their excuse to not eumelanize?

As far as your remark about stipling is concerned: I have seen quite a number of photos of laced varieties, traditionally regarded as carriers of Pg, where a lace is accompanied by stipling as well.

The lace is due to melanotic i.m.o.

The problem is, that according to Smith and allies, homozygous melanotic is supposed to eumelanize cocks too, including e+, e^b, and even wheaton(according to what Kazjaps recently wrote)

Maybe a different melanizer then?

Looks like it. Has anybody described a melanizer that only melanizes females? I have not heard it.(apart from black heads on some Dutch/Belgian ? breeds).

Some Belgiam (breeders) speak Dutch others French, some both !!
Why WAS a vault lethal in males and not in females !?
Why IS a vault not more lethal in males as in females !?

The cocks look rather dark red, and the hens look red enhanced too. Maybe an alternative explanation could be, that they have a red enhancer that prevents melanization in cocks but not entirely in hens? Or is it too far-fetched?

I think that the melanizer in play also enhances the red. I see this too in dark lakenvelders. Again deja vu...

The influence of the hormone testosterone !

A very beautiful video with silver flitter leghorns. Pay attention to the fact that the flitter is also present on some females breasts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRVKwtdZ5kk

It also looks like the black hackle stripes are not necessarily followed by black stripes on the saddles

Beautiful hens, much better than the gold version.

Do you think the hens are Bl/bl+ blue or is this just the effect of silver blending in the eumelanin? I've got a silver pencilled Wyandotte pullet that is similar, hard to tell if blue or not.

It seems slightly less neck hackle striping too.

With my test breeding of Coffee-laced (Australian Pit Game), I've segregated another e+/e+ phenotype in BC1 (P1 ER/ER CL roo X e+/e+ wildtype, F1 ER/e+ CL hens x e+/e+ wildtype = e+/e+ BC1).

All the following pullets are e+/e+:




The older pullet is paler, only slight salmon on upper breast. The younger 2 have more prominent salmon breast colour (might change as they age?):


They have one dose of a eumelanin restrictor (similar to Di & Db), plus het. for lacing mutations - including a neck hackle melaniser. In day-old chicks I can't tell laced from non-laced:


* left chick e+/e+ with one dose of Di-like mutation, right chick e+/e+ without Di-like mutation.

I'm thinking the head/neck melanisation might actually come from a black pit game hen, their great grandmother (mother of CL jnr pit game roo). Their great grandfather - original CL pit game roo wasn't melanised, only slight tip lacing on breast & wings. Here is one purebred CL pit game ckl with a melanised head/neck:

Now with the e+/e+ wild-type BC1 chicks (one depicted on right above, without Di-like mutation), something I had hoped for....

Both chicks (2 hatched) have much darker breasts than the purebred e+/e+ wild-type Modern Games (not showing juvenile orange-salmon breast (found in both males & females) from the flitter line):


Both chicks are showing some part lacing in wings, more melanised base of neck, tail, etc (often with light feather shaft):



So I think I segregated the lacing (Pg) & melanisers this time without any eumelanin restrictors (except maybe one dose of the MG flitter mutation).

There are 2 F1 ER/e+ CL hens (mothers), the following showing how they changed in tone of eumelanin as they matured (ie went from black eumelanin to a bronzed dark brown):


Notice too how the base ground colour of phaeomelanin is much closer in tone to a Dark Indian Game hen without a red enhancer (ie brownish), not gold like a Gold Sebright. I think this might be because they don't have Co.

------------------------------
* Also hatched in the CL BC1 were:
- ER Brown Reds,
- some hatched ER black with faint brown face tinge, but turned out Brown Red -slightly more phaeomelanin lace on breast & peppering,
- ER Ginger (without lacing),
- ER Coffee-laced, &
- 2 e+/e+ het. Di-like cockerels with extra phaeomelanin developing on breast, but unfortunately these 2 died young (escaped - pythons probably got at night). Don't know if they would have developed lacing with age.

So with these results & previous CL F1 & BC1, it is clear that there is no close linkage between the lacing phenotype (Pg? & melaniser?) and the Di-like mutation.

I do not think they are Bl.

Flitter on e^b:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-c7-IMsKNrDE/Vb...ilberhalsig.jpg

I have visited the European Show that was held in Denmark in Herning in the beginning of November. I bought a pair of SQ goldfarbig bantam Leghorns. The cock has also the flitter on his breast and sides. On a close inspection of the female, the flitter looks actually like an extra structure attached to the edges of the feathers. I could compare it to artificial eyelashes. So it is not just a colour.

Here is a feather with flitter on (the left one)



I have recently read this article:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4805547/

It is about feathers on the legs of pigeons. The feathers grow because they " think" they are on the wings (mistaken limb identity), and then it dawned on me. The feathers with flitter look like neck hackles. They most probably "think" that they are on the neck.

I have been very busy this year, so not much happened in the "chicken department". Only a very few chicks. Anyway , I've crossed my SQ flitter leghorn bantam hen to a non-flitter wild type cock. Of the two surviving cockerels(no surviving pullets), neither has the flitter on their breasts or anywhere else.

Any updates on your flitter test breeding project, Wieslaw? Any signs of flitter now in the F1 cockerels?

Do you know much about the SQ flitter line, eg how long does it usually take for the flitter to express in the homozygous line?

With the flitter modifier I had in a e+ pullet line, it usually wouldn't express much in e+ males until adult age, and it would increase after each moult. In e+ male juveniles, I think a trait of excess orange-salmon on the breast was due to the same flitter mutation (this a partial eumelanin restrictor, S males had intermediary silver breasts, gradually moulting to black). The e+ flitter girls would also increase in lacing with age, but was visible as young pullets, before lay. At first I thought the mutation was recessive, but it was just delayed expression, and appeared incomplete dominant (less lacing in het. girls).

Completely different age expression on BC1 ER (ER from black breasted males or solid eumelanin, non flitter stock). The flitter expressed in some ER in late juvenile ages, both genders.

But this e+ flitter MGB line is not European SQ flitter Leghorn phenotype, the Leghorns appearing to have additional modifiers, maybe including a partial eumelanin restrictor?