Gouldian head colour

Includes Species Profile.
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POLAR GOULDIANS
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Location: Central QLD

Hi Graham,

While I agree with the basics of what you are saying,
that a yellow headed bird can carry a black gene, and it will only be in males.

I disagree that you can have yellow which is split for black, it will always be a RH which is split for BH which also has the 2 yellow genes attached and therefore will express the yellow colour.

As you would well know the Yellow gene is autosomal recessive, meaning that it merely co-exists with the other 2 head colours.

Therefore yellow can never exist on its own and can never be split for anything.
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Tiaris
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Every Yellow-headed Gouldian male I have here (about 20 of them) is split to black-headed. I know this for certain because they all have a black-headed parent. I pair them up as if they are split to black-headed & they produce breeding outcomes as expected of YH split BH. They are YH not RH - I also have some RH males split to YH and BH. They also produce progeny "by the book" for that genotype.
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Tiaris
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Black-headed is also a recessive gene - sex-linked recessive. YH split BH is just as real as BH split YH.
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Tiaris
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Again, there are plenty of examples of recessive forms of many species in aviculture being split to other mutations. eg Blue Gouldian split to white-breasted.
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vettepilot_6
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Tiaris wrote: 10 Dec 2017, 13:02 You can get Yellow split to black in males only as black is sex-linked recessive (so no female splits). These will have a red-tipped bill exactly the same as a pure black.
A yellow-billed black is actually a yellow and a black both occurring simultaneously in the same bird. In these, the darker black head colour totally masks any yellow on the head.
Thanks Graham ...thought I was going crazy... :think: :thumbup:
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