Inheritance of the barred plumage pattern of the Silver Campine Fowl, together with its relationship to other patterned fowl.

1. An investigation was conducted among the progeny from a cross between a Silver Campine male and a Silver Spangled Hamburgh bantam female into the inheritance of the autosomal transverse barring of the Campine. 2. Both parental breeds possess the marble chickdown phenotype which has been shown to depend upon homozygosity of 3 genes; the birchen allele ER at the E-locus, the eumelanin restrictor DBB and the feather pattern arranging gene PGP whilst the spangled feather pattern of the Silver Spangled Hamburgh has been attributed to homozygosity of ER, DBB, MLM and PGP, where MLM is the eumelanin extension melanotic. 3. Examination in F1 and F2 generations of both chickdowns and adult plumage demonstrate that of the 4 loci, segregation occurs only for MLM and hence the genotype of the Silver Campine to be homozygous ER, DBB, MLN and PGP. 4. The relationships between the genotypes of the Campine and those of other breeds with autosomal transversely barred plumage and between the Campine and those of other patterned fowl based on the ER allele are discussed and presented in tabular form. In addition patterned fowl based on alleles other than ER at the E-locus are included in order to demonstrate the effect of substituting ER.