Base pigeon colours and how they are inherited — a simple guide

The three pigments

Every pigeon colour is built on one of three foundations (the base colour):

Blue (izazi): the original wild colour — bluish grey.
Ash-red (red): a lighter body with reddish-brown markings.
Brown: rare, like blue but in a faded brown shade.

The order of dominance: red > blue > brown. So a bird carrying red and blue shows red, and one carrying blue and brown shows blue.

Sex-linked — and that is the key

The base colour is carried on the sex chromosome:

The cock has two copies (he can carry two colours).
The hen has only one copy (inherited from her father).

The practical result: a hen's colour always comes from her father, and a mother passes her colour to her sons. Example: blue cock × red hen ⇒ all the cocks are red (carrying blue) and all the hens are blue. A pairing like that lets you sex the squabs by colour.

The spread gene: black

Black is not a base colour — it is blue with the "spread" gene, which covers the whole pattern with dark pigment. The same gene on red gives spread red, and on brown gives dark brown. Spread is dominant: one copy is enough.

The dilute gene: silver, yellow and cream

The "dilute" gene lightens any base colour to a paler shade: blue ⇒ silver, red ⇒ yellow, black ⇒ dun. Dilute is recessive and sex-linked, so dilute hens outnumber dilute cocks in most lofts, and a dark cock may be "carrying" dilute without showing it.

Recessive red — the exception

There is a second red called recessive red: a full glossy red that covers everything, not sex-linked and needing two copies. The famous "paper yellow" in Egyptian breeds is usually its dilute form. If you breed two recessive reds and get a blue — that is normal: underneath recessive red the bird is still blue or ash-red.

White

Pure white is in most cases an absence of pigment caused by different genes (extended pied, or recessive white), not a base colour. That is why white × white can produce coloured young.