Historical Data on Tangerine & Frosty Mutants
by John Fowler - 8/2007

I have confirmed this historical data with Gary Harding, Ken Becker and Dr Miller

Frosty (symbol Fr)

Frosty first appeared in the loft of Gary Harding of Salina, Kansas about 1985.  The first frosty appeared in the offspring of a white female that Gary's son had obtained in a swap meet that had been paired with a wild type male obtained from Charlie Wieble of Hutchinson, Kansas.  The white female is the likely source of the frosty gene as frosty on the white background is hypostatic (hidden).  This pair produced several wild types, some white and a blue-gray male (Frosty).  The white offspring would indicate that the male carried white hidden and that frosty first appeared on the dark background.  This original frosty was paired back to its mother (white) and produced six blue-gray (Frosty) in 1989.  One of the males was paired with an ivory female and produced frosty offspring.

Tangerine (symbol Ta)

Tangerine first appeared in Czechoslovakia on a blond background. Alois Munst of Ravensburg, Germany obtained two females and named the color orange. Munst crossed these original orange with rosy. He had imported rosy, peach and pied from the U.S. in 1974.

Richard Burger of Newark, Delaware imported the first of these orange into North America through Canada in 1981.  In the imported group of five ringnecks were two orange females with white neck rings, two peach and a rosy.  Ken Becker of New Dundee, Ontario as owner of a small Canadian quarantine station received the shipment and cared for the birds while in quarantine.  Becker started the birds breeding while in quarantine, pairing one orange hen with a peach cock and the other with a rosy cock.  The offspring were rosy, peach, orange and one similar to rosy, but with a white neck ring and white flights.  Becker named this color tangerine.  In 1985, Dr. Wilmer Miller obtained two doves of the orange and tangerine color from O. F. Munsell of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Dr. Miller determined that tangerine was the single mutant color on the dark background and orange was the single mutant color on the blond background.  Very likely, all these orange and tangerine doves were carrying the homozygous rosy gene.

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