What is all this talk about Recessive Red?

 By Marshall Duncan

           I feel like I’ve been away on a deserted island, and when I came back, everybody has the mind-set that a recessive red pigeon will make their birds roll better.  (How absurd can we BE)?  First of all, Recessive Red is not a “true” color to begin with.  When you start using recessive red as a basis for breeding, you might as well grab a pair of dice, close your eyes, and take a crap shot!  The color recessive red has no bearing on the way a pigeon rolls, period!  Recessive red is just a cover, the true color of the bird can be just about anything.  For example:  If you have a family of rollers that throw a variety of colors, but it seems that the dark checkers are the hottest, but then, out pops a recessive red, and it performs just as good as the dark checkers, it’s probably a checker underneath.

        Here’s some information I’d like to share with you.  Red pigment is Red pigment!!  That’s all there is to it!  No magic beans, No magic wand, No crystal ball!  With the exception of the bronzes, there are two main inheritance pathways for red pigment in pigeons.  One is sex linked dominant mutation or Ash Red.  The other is Recessive Red.  Today we’re going to talk about recessive red.  Recessive red is neither sex-linked, nor dominant.  Instead, it is a recessive autosomal-mutation.  That means that both, the cock, and the hen, have to carry TWO copies of it for it to show itself.  And the mutation is carried on chromosomes other than the sex-chromosomes.  Recessive red is also epistatic to all patterns and many other mutations.  Epistatis is easy to understand.  It’s just a term which means that the particular mutation under discussion can hide other mutations which we would normally expect to see.  It differs from dominance in that it  IS NOT on the same chromosome as the mutation that it hides.  For example:  Checker is dominant to barless.  Both mutations are on the same chromosome and are alleles, (alternatives to each other).  A bird carrying one gene for checker, and one gene for barless will be seen as a checker.  However, if this same bird also carries two genes for recessive red, it will be seen as a solid brick red pigeon.  In like manner, if a bird beside it—let’s say, one which carries brown, spread, checker, and indigo also carries two genes for recessive red, we’ll see the same thing:  A brick red pigeon.

        A recessive red pigeon can literally be almost anything under it’s coat of recessive red.  It’s like putting three men in red sweaters, one may have on a black shirt underneath, one a blue shirt, and one a red shirt, but we can’t tell because all we see is the sweater.  Similarly, we can have four pigeons in front of us, all recessive red, all appearing the same, that is, they have similar phenotypes, yet all may be very different genetically.  Recessive red doesn’t have it all it’s own way though.  There are some mutations which in turn are epistatic to recessive red.  Recessive White, for example:  A solid white pigeon may actually be recessive red under that white and we can’t tell.  So you can feasibly have a white pigeon that is really recessive red underneath! 

        If you have a recessive red pigeon and want to have more like it, simply mate the bird.  Take any of it’s young of the opposite sex and mate it back to the recessive red parent, and you should get about 50% recessive red in both sexes.  You can also inter-mate the siblings and get about the same results.  Now you have all the recessive reds you want, but believe me when I tell you, recessive red is a nice color and may be preferred by some, but the color will not make your pigeons roll.                                                                                                                Marshall Duncan