Extreme Dilute Project
I just got started with the extreme dilute fantail project this last year (2008). Below are the first generation young birds and parents.
These are the parents. An extreme dilute mut cock bird and a pretty good quality silver fantail hen.
This is the best bird I have produced so far. It has 22 tail feathers and of course it is a hen.
This another hen that is not as good in tail or body. She has 18 tail feathers.
This is a cock carrier extreme dilute hen I started with.
Extreme dilute is a genetic trait that came out of a strain of racing homers from South Africa. It is an allele of dilute in pigeons and is recessive to dilute and the wild type. This is another trait that has been around for a few years that the people that had it thought it to be extreme dilute. According to the son of the person that discovered the trait it is dominate to dilute at the dilute allele. I hope to get some of the birds that carry this trait to test and document the trait and preserve it.
Extreme dilute was first predicted show up in pigeons by Dr Holllander that was found to be in ring neck doves. The trait in pigeons was tested and documented by some people like the late Larry Long and others.