FINCHforum

I've been reading up a lot on genetics but the yellow mutation continues to confuse me regarding single factor yellows.
If you get a single factor yellow does that make them a dilute? But then the color can vary from very light yellow to green to a really bright canary yellow depending on the breast color so that doesn't make much sense. If you get a single factor yellow that is greenish would you call that a single factor green?
Or is it that only yellows with purple breasts are dilutes? How does it work that only purples breasts can be dilutes where white cannot?
I realize how stupid I must be sounding but the more I think about it and try figuring it out the more confused I get.

Birds that retain the darker pigments to produce purple breast will also have darker pigments that show up in the back color...lilac breast, not as much, white breast even less dark pigment will be seen...resulting in a lighter yellow back. Though dilute and single factors are the same... inherited one pastel..or rather one yellow factor. It is the inheritence of the breast colors that make the difference. I tried to simplify it
Read under Dilute and Single factor on my site here

http://candoaviary.com/page4.php

Males can be single factor or double factor.... Hens are only single factor. They need only one factor of yellow to show yellow where males need two factors to show pure yellow. The single factor purple breast remain green back (though lighte/diluted over the normal green back) and the lilac and white breast are usually a lemon lime yellow on the back.

I have a question too, probably a stupid one but I ask because I'm not a specialist with yellow factor...
I've bought a male to a breeder(probably not really honest about the pedigree and the age of this bird... ) who said that he was "YH WB double yellow factor/BB" ...
She presents me the "mother" of this boy, a "YH LB/WB BB" hen and said to me the father was identical to his son: "YH WB Double factor GB"... I suppose that if she was sincere, my male can't be Double factor if her mother wasn't yellow?!?
I'm confused because when I look at this male, he looks a lot like a double factor to me (but I'm really not a reference...).
He passed away this summer after giving me five young: tree yellow hens and two pastel boys with my VDM1a who is RH PB GB/BB or sea green(?)...no normal back at all.
For you, is it a single or a double factor??? [quote][/quote]

Looks like Double factor. These DF will have the brighter clear yellow on the back. The neck collar band and under the chin will also loose the eumelanin and will become white. With the single factor their will be blue to grey retained in this collar because some of the eumelanin remains. Also the back is rarely that clear and bright.

The flash may make him look that bright and white... pictures can fool me sonetimes. If he is a single factor and was bred to a blue back hen you would get offspring that look just like the single factor
yellow father. The sf with white breast are the hardest to tell sometimes, since you have such a reduction of pigment in the breast...

Caution for sensible heart...I've try to cut the most difficult part of these pictures...
Two other pictures (sorry, after his death ) , without flash but in the sun...
Is double factor retain a certain amount of blue in the collar or is it only normal structural glance for double factor?

The DF can have the blue on the back of the neck but under the chin always white. He was a double factor for sure. Glad you got chicks from him so his leagcy lives on

Thank you very much Candace. Your post and website helped me out a lot. It all makes sense to me now and was all so easy to understand I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much Candace!
Now, I know that I can thrust what I think about this male and I will put some ??? on his "pedegree record"...and the name of this breeder on my "black list"

Thank you too Dayna to give me the oppotunity to resolve some questions with your topic!!!

Dayna wrote:Thank you very much Candace. Your post and website helped me out a lot. It all makes sense to me now and was all so easy to understand I really appreciate it.

I had a hard time getting it all straight in my head too... that is why I am working on a simpler way to explain it for those of us that aren't masters of genetics

Vertdemer wrote:"YH WB double yellow factor/BB"
She presents me the "mother" of this boy, a "YH LB/WB BB" hen and said to me the father was identical to his son: "YH WB Double factor GB"... I suppose that if she was sincere, my male can't be Double factor if her mother wasn't yellow?!?
I'm confused because when I look at this male, he looks a lot like a double factor to me (but I'm really not a reference...).
He passed away this summer after giving me five young: tree yellow hens and two pastel boys with my VDM1a who is RH PB GB/BB or sea green(?)...no normal back at all.
For you, is it a single or a double factor???

If the breeder was honest with you about the parentage, then you're correct, there's no way you could have had a DF Yellow male from that pairing.
A Lilac/White Blue Backed hen paired to a WB DF Yellow male would only have been able to produce Lilac or WB SF Yellow/Blue sons.
It's entirely possible that the five offspring produced could still have inherited his single yellow gene, but based on the information your breeder provided you, it's genetically impossible for him to have been DF.
Although his pictures may be a bit deceptive one thing you have to keep in mind is that SF Yellows that are white breasted can be extremely difficult to identify as SF because the white breast pulls out some of the other melanin pigments that create the blue collar and the bib, IMO, is never a sure indicator.

In my opinion the degree of lilac breast color is degraded or dependent upon the number of pastel factors the bird inherits, and is further inhibited if the bird is BH.

Not the other way around (meaning, the lilac or white breast color isn't really affecting the yellow body color).

In other words - a Lilac Breast Normal male (who has no reduction of melanin in the body color) will have a darker shade of lilac breast than a LB SF Yellow male, and a LB DF Yellow male will have the lightest shade of lilac of them all.

However - the amount of "yellow" that is distributed in the body of a Lilac or White breasted SF Yellow bird is simply a matter of the individual bird and to what degree their melanins are suppressed.

Here are two different WB SF Yellow Males:




The second male above has a crisper yellow body color, but some of these birds will also change with each molt. For instance, the second male with his second year molt developed a few sporadic green feathers in his body plumage that then molted out the third year.

Here we have a RH Lilac/White SF Yellow/Blue male:


Here is a different (unrelated) RH Lilac/White SF Yellow/Blue male:


(Notice how the bib on this SF Yellow is much darker than on the above, but they are both most certainly SF Yellows)

And here is a RH Lilac/White DF Yellow/Blue male:


It gets even trickier when you toss in a black headed DF yellow bird - where you essentially have taken away nearly all ability to produce melanins in the body, to where a BH LB DF Yellow male will have the lightest lilac possible, as seen in this BH/OH Lilac/White DF Yellow/Blue male:


(A later picture, right after a heavy molt)

These pictures Tiffany posted are a great example of the lemon lime , yellowish green color back of the single factor goulds. In the first 4 of Tiffany's picture, look at the color below the beak, the first four have a dingy, grey blue color along with that off yellow back.
In the last 3 pictures you see the much clearer and truer, pure yellow in the back of the double factors.
These chins are a crisp white.

Thanks a lot Tiffany and Candace!!! Great to see awesome pictures and "sharp" information about these tricky guys!!!
The youngs of my "YH WB Double yellow factor", mâles and hens will be really dark because I think there mother(VDM1a) has a Dark factor and an "Opaline" factor, as I call for fun... A big amount of phaeomelanine in there with pink or lilac at the end of blue feathers...! When they'll finish their molts , I'll post some pictures...

Here's some pictures of the day!!!
My first Single Yellow Factor maybe Seagreen or if not ,"Opaline" cock...! He's really dark and bluer (I think) than other pastel ones and the ended of his covertail feather is pink as his grandfather!!! His chin is in-between blue, grey and purple...great guy in person!!!

Very beautiful and interesting coloring! How do you even go about getting the seagreen mutation?