Glossary of Peafowl Info and Terms

Peafowl Information

Peafowl Species
Peafowl are Galliformes, the same order as chickens, turkeys, pheasants, and quail. There are three known species of peafowl: Pavo cristatus (Indian Blue) with no subspecies, Pavo muticus (Asiatic Green) with several subspecies, and Afropavo congensis (African Congo Peafowl) with no subspecies. The pet/domestic industry only breeds blues, greens, and hybrids between blues and greens. Congo peafowl are incredibly rare and even zoos have had trouble keeping them in the US- there are less than 30 congo peafowl in the USA and all of them reside in zoological institutes.

Indian Blue Peafowl
Indian peafowl are those of the species Pavo cristatus. This species does not have any scientifically recognized subspecies, but it does have a few distinct, regional variances in phenotype. The Sri Lankan blue (Pavo cristatus singhalensis), the Napalese (Pavo cristatus nepalensis), and an unnamed variation in Shimla and Rajasthan. There have been some hens in Delhi with beige fronts (lacing so thick it looks almost solid).

Green Peafowl
Green peafowl are those of the species Pavo muticus. This species has had many subspecies, but the three most common and still around are Pavo muticus muticus, pavo muticus imperator, and Pavo muticus spicifer. There have been other green species, like Pavo antiqus, Pavo annamensis, Pavo javenensis, and others, but they are either wild and not kept in captivity, rarely mentioned, rarely seen, or rapidly going/have gone extinct as recently as 2011. Finding information on them is extremely difficult even for dedicated ornithologists, and my focus has been mainly cristatus birds.

Spalding Peafowl
Spaldings refers to any bird which carries both blue and green peafowl genetic coding in any amount. They are called Spaldings (not spauldings) after Madam Spalding, who was the first to hybridize the two species. Spaldings are noted by the percentage of green blood in a blue bird, rather than the amount of blue blood in a green bird, in all cases. This means that when someone refers to a bird as a "low percent" or "high percent" Spalding, they actually mean "a blue with a low percentage of green blood" and "a blue bird with a high percentage of green blood" respectively. This means a bird cannot "have a little Spalding in them," as Spalding is the name of the hybrid as a whole; at best, they would be a blue with a little green in them. "High" and "Low" are also estimates based on the visual presentation of the bird and do not necessarily reflect the actual percentages of mixed blood. Breeders who track Spaldings accurately will use fractions (ie: a 31/32 Spalding) and have records.

• Historically, a bird with 75%+ green blood used to be referred to as an "Emerald" Spalding, but breeders (out of ignorance or malice) began to use this for any bird with a high green phenotype regardless of the actual genotype (calling their birds Emeralds without actually knowing if they were 75%+ green, just that they LOOKED more like a green than a blue), so Emerald largely fell out of use.

Sexing Peafowl
Most peafowl cannot be reliably sexed by phenotype until around 3 months of age, or up to 2 years for white birds. Attempting to do so sooner results in inaccuracies, and attempting to vent sex peafowl can actually injure them. Due to their green blood, young Spaldings may require additional time for visual differentiation, as muticus hens and cocks are not as dimorphous as cristatus birds. Any age peafowl may be sexed by DNA, typically through blood or feather testing done by a lab.

• The most commonly-used lab for peafowl sex-testing via DNA is Iqbirdtesting.com and costs $16 per bird.
• Sex-linked color males bred to (almost) any non-same color will produce sexually dimorphic offspring- hens will match the sire's color, cocks will be blue split the sire's color. The exceptions are when a sex linked color is bred to phenotype that includes their same color, even if the phenotype doesn't match (ie, a purple bred to a peach will not produce blues).

Bird Sex Chromosomes
In birds, the sex chromosomes are represented with Z and W rather than the mammalian X and Y, and it is the males that have 2 of the same sex chromosomes (ZZ) and females that have two different ones (ZW).

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Peafowl Genetic Terminology

Peafowl Mutations
All of the current mutations (color, pattern, AND leucistic) have first appeared in blue (or Spalding, so with blue blood) individuals. As such, all of the info here refers mainly to the commonly kept blue species and minorly to the green species as it relates to the blues (ie, Spaldings), since there are no purely-green mutations which require genetic inheritance explanations.

Peafowl Wild Type
Wild type is the default genetic code of a peafowl. It is not dominant except in the sense that if there are no (or not enough) other genes to say otherwise, the wild type color and pattern will display as the phenotype. A Pavo Cristatus wild type bird is referred to as a blue, Indian blue (NOT Indigo, NOT Indiana... Indian, as in "from India" as that is where they are from), or IB. A Pavo Muticus wild type bird is referred to as a green, or sometimes Java peafowl, although that is a misnomer unless it refers to muticus muticus from Java.

Mutation Notes

Leucism in Peafowl
Fully white peafowl are leucistic, not albino. A white bird has 2 copies of the white gene (WW), a pied bird has one white and one pied gene (Wp), and a dark pied bird has 2 copies of pied (pp). This means that TECHNICALLY the pied phenotype is blue split white and split pied, or more accurately, heterozygous white-pied. White (W) and pied (p) are alleles of one another, meaning they replace each other on the chromosome. A bird may only have 2 of these genes total (ie: WWp and Wpp etc cannot exist).

• "Masking" - Leucistic phenotype is often referred to as a pattern (example: pied) or a color (example: white) but that is a misnomer. It is not a color or pattern, it is a lack of either. Because of this, it is sometimes referred to as a "masking" gene; as in, the white masks the true phenotype.
• The leucistic genes (white, pied, and white eyes) are separate from one another, but can interact to cause additional effects (ie, 1 white + 1 pied gene = pied phenotype).
• All of the leucistic genes are partially dominant, which means that a bird with one copy of them may show this in the phenotype, usually via a white throat patch and/or white flight/alula feathers, and/or (in the case of white eye genes) pale or white markings on the eye feathers or a silver cast to the body feathers. It is also possible (though is less common) for leucistic splits to not show any white feathers.

Peach in Peafowl
Chromosomal crossover is the effect responsible for the creation of the original Peach phenotype. At some point, chromosomal crossover divided and rearranged code in just the right place to put both purple and cameo on the same chromosome for a single bird, which forged the first peach Z chromosome. That altered chromosome then recombined like normal, which caused this double-colored chromosome to carry on in offspring. The specific crossover event responsible for the original Peach mutation is exceedingly rare and unlikely to be reproduced through breeding Cameo x Purple birds to one another. Peach is produced now through having a bird with the peach mutation already. That being said: because recombination as a general process occurs for every offspring, it's always "possible" for it to happen again, and it's ALSO possible (though again, exceedingly unlikely) for chromosomal crossover to UNDO that rearrangement, and place the purple and peach mutations back on separate Z chromosomes, thereby undoing the Peach mutation.

• Peach has mutated twice that we know of. The first time was the result of chromosomal crossover, which occurred when someone was breeding purple and cameo together. The second time, purple seems to have mutated for a second time, and happened to do so in a cameo bird, which means the purple mutated new on a chromosome that already had cameo. Both of these events were completely random mutation events that are extremely unlikely to ever be replicated in a way that can be proved.

Hazel and Indigo
Hazel and Indigo are part of the "Color (Other)" group but they differ from the others in that they are both the same GENOTYPE (double bronze, double purple) but display different PHENOTYPES (they look like different colors). The effect appears to be random, such that breeding hazel x hazel mostly produces hazel, but can still produce indigo, and breeding indigo x indigo mostly produces indigo, but can still produce hazel. It is currently unclear why this happens.

Oaten and the Blackshoulder Gene
The outdated term "Oaten" refers to what is now known to be a cameo blackshoulder bird. Because blackshoulder first showed up in wild type birds, it was assumed that it would turn any other color's wings black. However, since the BS gene affects PATTERN, not color, it simply causes the color morph to lose the barring on the wing feathers. This is why some folks will refer to blackshoulder as "solid wing" morph instead. Interestingly, barring in the feathers of most birds is due to a gene which inhibits color, meaning that the blackshoulder "gene" may actually be the ABSENCE of some form of barring gene rather than the presence of a new gene.