Aussie Finch Forum

Thanks Shane.
Enjoy your holiday and will wait with baited breath LOL.
I am in the process of building my aviary 3m x 3m by 2.4m high.
Finding lot so of good info here, as as far as I know there are no breeders etc near me so only have a few pet shops to get info and they appear to know very little.
Have been to Sydney to check out a few shops there but hopefully will find better info here
Regards
Brian

Enjoy your holiday and will wait with baited breath LOL.

Just putting the finishing touches on it this week. Unless any serious and fundamental design flaws are discovered (always a possibility), I should have it ready for testing imminently.

Exciting stuff.

Diane wrote:Exciting stuff.

Agreed

I see a bright future for you. And a profitable one.
LML

I have a design question for you:

How many generations back would two bird's common ancestor need to be for you to consider them unrelated?

ShaneGowland wrote:I have a design question for you:

How many generations back would two bird's common ancestor need to be for you to consider them unrelated?

I really don't think it matters as all birds sold at a bird sales are unrelated if they were sold as related i think they would taking them home.Seriously,if you think about the dozen or so prs of sparrows,starlings,goldfinches and blackbirds that were released and with the hundreds of thousands of them around now with minimal mutations,change in size and vocals it really doesn't matter for birds.
The small flocks of wild gouldians,WE mask's,WB crimsons,RE firetails and the list can go on,they would have to be inbreeding and related so again imo it really doesn't matter for birds compared to mammals.
Then you have to think of our foreign aviary finches,they would have to be from the original stock that was bought in,so how many generations have been bred from them with no flush of new blood? Sorry for the waffle
Craig

Like Craig said, realisticly they are probably all related. And if they have a known common ancestor then they certainly are. But with all livestock careful line breeding is the way to success. That means putting cousins together, but being very careful to watch for any defects. Occassional Uncle to neice combinations are also done but carefully monitored in many forms of livestock including birds, with regular outcrossing.
LML

Can't edit the above so adding here. A situation I am aware of because it happend to a Budgiebreeder of my aquaintence. A flush of a particular mutation showed up in this seasons breeding. Not one she was aware of or desiring. Took a lot of wading through paperwork to locate the likely source on each side, of the gene. Both bought in outcrosses. This is why you want to be able to go back as far as possible and have as much information as possible. The Budgie breeders are probably your biggest market and many of them have records that go back 5 to 25 years.
LML

Shane if you are worried or wish to put in an alert when a person considers a possible match that should be avoided, could you not put in a user defined variable where the user can select a level they are happy with.
I assume by reading the replies there are different desires and it would perhaps differ for different users so a user variable would perhaps solve the problem.
One breeder might be happy with 5 generations where another would require 20.
We used to use this option a lot so a customer could dictate how a program worked. Also good for lots of variable options.We even used this for the selection of language as our software was used in many countries.
When we set up a company it had its default set and then each user either took a set company default or had a administrator defined set, and then each high level user had a different configurable set to enable access to different levels. This covered different job roles etc.
This can also enable you to configure for different species etc. Parrots would want different alarms /desires to finches to pigeons etc.
Looking forward to the finished product.
Regards
Brian