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A genetics calculator is a program which allows anyone to enter in genetic information for parent animals, and receive the calculated results for what the possible offspring will be.

Before using this tool, I would encourage you to also check out the main genetics lessons. While this calculator makes genetics and breeding information more easily accessible for laypeople, understanding basic genetics (and in this case basic peafowl genetics) will assist you in using the tool, interpreting the results, and applying that to practical breeding.

This calculator was the result of over a year of volunteer work, as a labor of love, and use of it is - and will always be - free, as a resource for the peafowl community. I strongly believe that knowledge should be freely-shared, not kept behind locked gates, and it is my sincere hope that this tool will serve our community well.

Click here to use the Calculator

Peafowl Genetics Calculator Q&A

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Q: Who created this calculator?
A: This calculator was created by a small team of folks working together, donating thousands of dollars worth of time (over a year!), work, and art to bring the peafowl community a free resource for peafowl genetic information in an easy-to-use tool. If you'd like to say thanks, we have a little free guestbook you can sign with a message! We'd love to know if it helped you!

Kedreeva/Shelby supplied the peafowl genetics to qwertynerd97/Elli Howard, the calculator programmer that did all of the coding and without whom this would have never have gotten off the ground in the first place. They were endlessly patient with me making adjustment and corrections, and are kindly hosting (and maintaining) the calculator coding.

The calculator had three wonderful artists that donated SO much time and effort and artwork in order to make the calculator accessible to visual learners. Oz was the first artist on the project and is responsible for the creation of the line art that everyone worked with. They also did a lot of the color work, and kept us all organized during the creation stage! Xayazia joined the team shortly after, and worked on color work, creating most of the hen colors! Mothzarellaman joined toward the end of the male colors, and pinch hit sprites we were still missing when we began switching over to do the hen artwork.

Despite that I'm no artist, the artists kindly let me color in one sprite: my beloved purple hen. Fun fact: she's the only hen with her ears colored in!

If you would like to read more about the calculator creation effort, click here!

Q: How does the calculator work?
A: There are two ways to input parent information to the calculator.

The first method uses the common name of the color, pattern, and leucistic phenotypes. You can do this in the top section simply by selecting them from the drop down menus. This method is limited; it ONLY goes by phenotype. This means you cannot enter hets/splits in this section.

The second method is by entering the genes directly, in the drop-down section. This method allows complete customization of a bird, including adding hets/splits. You may add as many splits as you want, to either parent. You can find all the gene notations in the notations key but they are also listed above the drop downs. Once you have entered the parent genetics, the parent sprites AND common names should change to match.

As soon as you've selected phenotypes/genes, the tool will calculate possible offspring, and show you the results at the bottom. Each offspring box will list the colloquial names for the phenotypes the bird in that box displays (sex, color, pattern, leucism, white eye factor), and the percentage at the top indicates how much of the total hatch should be that set of phenotypes. Each offspring box will also have a drop-down menu in the bottom of each offspring box, to show you splits that aren't visible in the phenotype.

For example, if both parents are completely wild type (wild color, wild wing, no leucism, no white eye factors), the offspring will look like this:

This indicates the 50% of the total hatch will be males and 100% of all males will be wild color and wild wing pattern, with no leucism and no white eye factors. 50% of the total hatch will be hens, and 100% of all hens will be wild color and wild wing pattern, with no leucism and no white eye factors.

If you had more offspring boxes, your results might look like this one, for wild type het bronze x wild type het bronze:

This would indicate that 12.5% of the entire hatch will be bronze males, but you can also see that 50% of the entire hatch is still males at all (3 of 6 boxes are males). The same for females; only 12.5% of the entire hatch will be bronze hens, but 50% of the entire hatch will be hens.

You can also see there are two hen boxes that look the same! This is where offspring genotype drop down menus come into play! If you click the small arrow beside "show genotype" it will open an additional menu where you can view splits!

If you look at where the red underline is, you can see where the bronze gene goes. In the second hen offspring box, you can see by the red arrow that these hens have 1 copy of the bronze gene. In the first box, there are no copies. The first box are wild type hens, the second box are wild type split bronze hens.

Q: I have located an error/bug in the calculator.
A: Error reports can be submitted to my email. Please make sure it IS a bug, not a feature, by reading all of these Q&A. Please also check back in 30-60 minutes and try again before contacting me, as sometimes technology farts and it's not something I can fix.

Q: How accurate is this tool?
The calculations of the tool are very accurate, and the genetics used in this tool are accurate to the best of my knowledge, which is considerable. However, the peafowl genome has not been sequenced/the mutations have not been mapped by science, and so there are no official gene names, nor chromosome or loci for any autosomal mutations. All peafowl genetic information is gleaned through practical breeding results (what most people know, ie "if I pair x and y, I get z") coupled with in-depth knowledge of genetics in general (the scientific knowledge that explains WHY you get z if you pair x and y). Which is all to say: it's very accurate to the currently-available genetic information, and also subject to change if more knowledge is gained.

Q: Why is blue not on the calculator?
A: "Blue" is not a color mutation, blue is a species descriptor (ie: 'Indian Blue Peafowl' as opposed to 'Green Peafowl' or 'Congo Peafowl.') What most people call blue is actually the wild type, genetically speaking. When there are no mutations present and/or no mutations strong enough to show in the phenotype, the wild type shows. For example, a bird with 1 bronze gene would not be bronze, it would have the wild phenotype ("blue"), which is blue colored. Calling a blue-colored peafowl "Indian Blue" or "IB" for short, while technically accurate because it is that species, isn't actually useful when speaking about the genetics of color and pattern mutations. This is because a bronze-colored Pavo cristatus bird is also an Indian Blue species, just a bronze mutation of the Indian Blue species. So, we are using "wild type" for accuracy.

Q: Why is "Mocha" listed as a single gene? I read it was purple+ midnight?
A: Chances are good you read this in an old guide on BYC (my guide! from 15+ years ago! I am Kedreeva on BYC), and at the TIME, this was the assumed combination of genes to produce mocha, due to some mochas throwing purples. Given the phenotype, it was assumed midnight was included, but practical testing by the original breeder and breeders since seem to indicate it is actually a de novo autosomal recessive, just like bronze or opal etc. Mocha's inclusion in Rosewood (Mocha + Purple) additionally excludes it from being purple + midnight, at the very least.

Q: Why is my color/pattern not on the calculator?
A: Either it is and you didn't find it (for example, "white" is not a color, it's a genetic mutation for total leucism and is an allele of pied, therefore it is located in the "pied" section of the drop downs), I don't have proof of the genetic inheritance method, you are using an outdated mutation name (for example "oaten" instead of "cameo blackshoulder"), you are using the wrong mutation name (for example, someone made up a fake name for an existing color), or it's not actually a mutation (for example, "elfenbien" was passed around as a sex-linked BS gene that didn't actually exist).

Mutations I KNOW are missing, but do not have detailed genetics info on yet: Brown Wing (USA), Cream Bronze (EU), Fawn (AUS), Holla Metallic (AFR), Ivory (EU), Onyx (BR), and Raw Umber (EU). You are welcome to submit other known mutations, but if you do NOT have detailed enough genetic info, they will only be added to this list of missing mutations.

Q: Will missing/new mutations ever be added?
A: Yes! If you have reference photos of a wild wing male and female, and a blackshoulder male and female, and can provide me with the genetic information of the mutation (mode of inheritance [dominant, recessive, incomplete dominant, sex-linked, etc], type of gene [de novo single gene, mutli-gene combo, newly-combined multi-gene, etc]), along with any other relevant genetic info (full name of the mutation, location, exceptions, etc), simply e-mail the information to me and I will contact you with any questions I have regarding the submitted info. If it checks out, then I can get any new mutation added to the calculator.

Submit the following info to my e-mail:
New mutation name: [for example: bronze, opal, etc are mutation names]
Mutation Origin Location: [where did this mutation first appear?]
Mode of inheritance: [autosomal, sex-linked]
Type of gene: [dominant, recessive, incomplete dominant]
Type of mutation: [single gene, multi-gene morph]
Other relevant info/exceptions/notes: 
Please describe how you determined mode of inheritance/created the new combination: 
Please describe any test breeding you have done to check your work:

Q: Why does my peafowl look like a silhouette with question marks?
A: When the phenotype doesn't yet exist (for example, compound colors that haven't been created in practice yet) or when we could not find accurate reference photos of the birds, the sprite was left "blank." If the morph is created and/or we receive accurate reference photos, we will create the art and add it to the calculator.

Q: Why are there missing sprites for colors that exist?
A: The artists could only illustrate what they had photos for. If you own a peafowl in one of the missing colors/sexes, please feel free to submit photos of them, especially for the hens! The artists would like to lodge formal complaints with every person that takes a ton of photos of their males and never their beautiful hens, as finding photos of some of the hens was next to impossible.

Q: Why are there no green or Spalding peafowl options?
A: Because this is a calculator for Pavo cristatus (Indian Blue Peafowl) birds, not Pavo muticus (Green Peafowl) or hybrids (Pavo sp. aka Spaldings). However, the calculator will still work fine for calculating mutations in most Spaldings, as the genes all still move the same way for hybrids as they do for blues. The only difference is that the artwork may not be accurate to what you see, as hybridization causes huge variances in phenotype, and Spaldings with too much green blood may or may not display the mutation at all, as the mutation is a mutant gene in the cristatus genotype that may not exist in a green bird's genotype. The artists simply could not reasonably account for every phenotype variation in hybrids and I have no interest in making them. They already volunteered a huge chunk of their time and skill in the name of education.

Q: Why is there no "emerald" option?
A: "Emerald" is an outdated and no longer accurate term for a Spalding whose genome is 75% green. Since there's no way to prove this is actually the case without genetic testing that is not available publicly and is prohibitively expensive, terminology has switched to using "low/mid/high percent" to indicate the percent of the phenotype that appears green. Anyone claiming a hard percentage (ie: 75% vs "High" percent) is either guessing off phenotype, or using math based on how many times the offspring's lineage was bred back to "pure" greens in order to calculate percentage (which may or may not be scientifically accurate to the actual gene percentage, but is better than random guessing based on phenotypes). See above for additional explanation.

Q: Why does my bird not match the sprite for that color?
A: Either you don't have that color, I could not find good reference photos for the artists, or you have a Spalding (likely low percentage of green blood) that is altering the phenotype. Many backyard breeders don't actually know what birds they have, and will sell birds of one color as a different color. Some of the sprites here were colored off of one photo of one sole individual of that color/pattern that I could locate, across thousands of photos. Hybridization alters phenotype so the "same" bird (color/pattern wise) can look very different based on their individual mix of species genes. In addition, iridescence can drastically change how a bird looks in different lights, but the art can only be one color, and the artwork is simplistic for ease of standardization in the code. It's not meant to be a hyper-realistic representation of a peafowl.

Q: When I bred my birds, I didn't get the results this calculator predicted! What gives?
A: If you mean your percentages in practice were not the same as predicted, you must understand that the percentages listed here are the percentages of the combination of the genes, not the practical outcomes. If a breeding can produce 4 different offspring types, then each type is 1 of 4 (25%) of the possible outcomes, but this doesn't mean that type of baby will appear 25% of the time all the time in practice. Over time and across large numbers of offspring (think, thousands of birds), the practical outcome percentages will generally get closer and closer to matching the possible outcome percentages, but on a small scale that's not always true.

If you mean you got different phenotype/genetic results in your offspring, barring any genetic anomalies, it means either a) your birds were carrying hets/splits you didn't know about, or b) your birds are not the birds you thought they were. Test breeding is one way to find out what genes a bird has. Peach and Cameo understandably look a LOT alike, and both of them kind of look like Taupe even though Taupe is unrelated. If, for example, you were sold a cameo boy that you thought was peach, and you bred it to a purple to get purples and got blues instead, either your bird randomly separated the two genes again OR you actually just had cameo and didn't know it. I can't help you with mis-identification, nor with one-off genetic anomalies. This calculator displays only what should happen in general

Q: My mutation is on the calculator, so why won't it calculate?
A: Either we don't have the genetic information for it, or there is a serious health concern associated with the mutation, and we've chosen not to support the breeding of that mutation. For example, "progressive pied" is not a harmless pied mutation, but a serious autoimmune disorder. We did not want this tool being used to support the propagation of unhealthy animals.

Q: How can I contribute photos for educational purposes, to be added to the Peafowl Image Database for reference?
A: Easy! Simply e-mail your photos with identification on them to [email protected]. Please include your name or farm name to be used as a watermark.

Q: I have a question about the calculator that isn't answered here, where should I ask?
A: You may e-mail me questions at any time. Please double-check your question has actually not been answered, or I will simply link you back to this page again.