The Recessive Gene

[garyh]

Hi ,need some advice please,when breeding the cinnamons that i have ,they came from a split cock and blue hen so carried the blue gene,this year i put cinnamon to cinnamon trying to breed out the blue gene knowing it would be along road to achieve pure cinnamon birds,after talking to a very well known breeder he advised me that the blue gene could probable take up to 20 odd years to truly have pure cinnamons,as the recessive gene could still be being carried in the birds,what are other breeders thoughts ,will it take that long,thanks garyh P.s. this site is the best information site going around second to none for the right info all the time,cheers gary

[Tiaris]

I have had a very similar journey with culling white-breasted from my normal Gouldians. I have bred from my current Gouldian stud for 13 years. In this time the earlier years saw the occasional white breasted bird or 2 being bred. Each time this occurred I culled the white-breasted bird(s), their parents and all siblings. The production of white-breasted became less frequent & for the last 7 breeding seasons I haven't bred a WB at all. It would be nice to say I have completely culled the gene from my Gouldians but the truth with recessive mutations is that you never be 100% certain that you don't have one or more split birds remaining. It is certainly possible to have hidden split recessive genes lurking through a collection for many years. Each split produces roughly half of its offspring as splits and it isn't until split progeny are eventually paired to another split that the mutant offspring appear again. This can be decades ahead. So the truth is you can never be 100% certain of being "in the clear", even 20 years ahaead.

[Craig52]

I have the same reasoning as Tiaris but you will have a lot of trouble for years to come if you keep breeding from your stock. Being a rare mutation at the moment you need to find someone who breeds cinnamon with no blue gene which in my opinion will be hard to do as breeders on social media pages are striving to have blue cinnamon's.
It's a bit of a catch 22 for you Gary as the birds are rare, not like WB's. You can't or its not feasible to cull young CB's or sell off the parent birds so you might be stuck with breeding the odd cinnamon blue. Craig

[BrettB]

Dominant genes and sex linked genes are much easier.
When you are dealing with two recessive genes it is never possible to be completely sure . There is just no way of knowing if you are totally in the clear.
The method Tiaris suggests is the best, but relies on you breeding individual pairs and keeping good records and being prepared to cull lots of birds.
No easy road.
Good luck, I think it is a worthwhile exercise
I think I would be going back to the breeder and seeing if he has any birds that better suit your requirements.
Ideally you would start with a pure cinnamon, non blue (even if split) and breeding to a Pure black head with no mutations
All the young would be split to cinnamon and half would not have the blue gene.
Might save you many generations of breeding

Cheers
Brett

[Brenton]

Hi Gary,

I thought it may benefit others to relay some of the conversation we had about some strategies that you could use.

Strategy 1 - if you think the chance of you having a non-split for blue bird is low:

First - get some pure normals as others previously mentioned. Select them from a few good blood lines that can improve genetic diversity in the mutation and also help improve the quality of the birds.

First year - start by taking cinnamon birds that are possible split to blue and mixing them with pure normals.

If I were to target a specific bird - I'd be using a pure normal hen with a cinnamon cock. This would result in guaranteed split for cinnamon cocks and cinnamon hens. (If you use a coloured hen with a pure normal cock you'll end up getting normal hens and split cocks - the hens would then be of little use to your breeding program).

This would work two-fold:
1) You would be reducing the number of split for blue birds in the gene pool; and
2) You would be able to use unrelated split for cinnamon cocks with your unrelated cinnamon hens to create more visual cocks.

The second item is the next step. Rather than going back to your original stock, which would have a greater statistical chance of being a split for blue, use unrelated birds from the first year and pair up your new unrelated split cinnamon cock birds with your new unrelated cinnamon hens.

This will produce coloured cocks, split cocks, coloured hens and normal hens.

Repeat what was identified as the first year with these birds - cinnamon cock with another pure normal hen.

At this stage (year four of breeding), I'd then do a trial breeding of your cinnamon birds with some of your personal existing visually blue birds. I'd aim for 5 - 10 test cinnamon birds (more if your aviaries allow). You would really need to breed at least 10 bred birds per pair to be pretty certain of your outcomes.

Why:
1) Mathematically, if your cinnamon parent bird is split for blue and it is bred to a blue, it would have a 50% chance of breeding a coloured blue bird... The mathematics also suggest that if you breed no coloured blues, from the 10 young birds that are bred, there is a more than a 99.9% chance that your cinnamon is not split for blue.
2) You can remove any of the trial parent birds from your "pure" cinnamon blood line that produce blue birds in your test breeding.
3) Your trial parent birds (that are now "pure") can be bred with each other (there should be unrelated lines) and then more pure normals to increase the number of birds in your pure line.

Note - you could do a test run at any year earlier than the year I've mentioned. The trial breeding theory will work at any stage - you simply have a greater chance of it being successful with more birds if you wait for a longer period of time. Waiting also allows you to out-cross and improve your lines.

Strategy 2 - if you think you may have some non-split for blue birds already:

You could simply just go straight to the trial run and put these to blue birds.

All offspring from your trials would be guaranteed split for blues with cinnamon genes of some form (dependent on the genetics of the birds that you select to breed with in your trial). If you identify parent birds that aren't split for blue at this stage you can then breed them with pure normals. Again, preferably breeding cinnamon cock to pure normal hen to rapidly increase your breeding line.

I suspect there would be purchasers for the birds you breed via your trial - they could be informed all offspring were guaranteed split for blue and this may assist with their own personal breeding programs - if this is what they are targeting.

Cheers,

Brenton

[Tiaris]

I understand the method but the idea of test-mating to ascertain the existence of the blue gene by deliberately using/wasting the first 10 progeny of each bird to ascertain its genotype is (to me at least) counterintuitive - the main game is to reduce the number of split blues from the collection yet we use each breeding birds' prime breeding activity intentionally producing many more split blue (at least) & blue progeny just to ascertain the likely genotype of future useful breeding birds for their 2nd breeding season onwards.

I think breeding "green" cinnamon to green cinnamon & culling any from the collection which produce blue progeny (+siblings) is at least heading the whole collection in the right direction at every breeding attempt. Albeit given one can NEVER be 100% certain of no recessive splits even with test mating. The former strategy takes 2 steps backwards before making any forward progress IMO, intentionally producing many more of the very birds you want to cull.

[finchbreeder]

When you have had no recessives turn up for 10 years you May have pure birds. When you have had no recessives turn up for 100 years you Almost certainly have pure birds. Sorry but thems the facts.
LML

[Brenton]

Fair enough Tiaris, each to their own. Outcrossing to pure normal is certainly the right direction. And you are right - you can never be 100% sure that the progeny is pure (hence the inverted commas previously), the numbers never work like that. But 999 times out of 1,000 is pretty good...

The second part is certainly optional and I can appreciate it's not everyone's cup of tea.

Personally, I'm not sure we'd be taking out a significant part of the breeding timeframe of a bird - it's not uncommon for me to get ten young from my pairs in a single season. This leaves plenty of time to produce new stock in the future - all of which can be used for breeding from day one.

There seems to be a market for seemingly all mutation gouldians. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and some will find the cinnamon blue to be a nice bird. Therefore, the birds being removed from one persons' breeding pool can go to willing homes/buyers.

My understanding is that all cinnamon stock are at least possible split to blue. Therefore I don't think the one-off trial breeding of the birds will make a significant difference to the current gene pool and the type of birds that are available today (there may already be a thousand split for Blue cinnamon birds when the trial breeding occurs). But the benefit we'd have is that we can have literally 99.9% confidence that the birds being bred aren't split to blue. 99.9% is pretty good when they have literally all eventuated from blue stock. We can't get those odds from just outcrossing alone and the number of birds that can be "infected" by a single recessive gene can potentially quickly outweigh the loss of 50 - 100 birds (as quickly as three to four breeding years).

I agree with your previous white breast strategy but I believe you were only dealing with a few "bad apples" whereas this problem is across the whole cinnamon gene pool. This is the major reason for my shift in position. As I said, no disrespect - your position does have merit.

[Tiaris]

I agree with the value of regularly using quality normals as outcrosses to both strengthen the new mutation and to further dilute the blue gene's influence.

[arthur]

P.s. this site is the best information site going around second to none for the right info all the time,cheers gary

Too true . . And discussion is almost always respectful

Beginners (and others) understandably have trouble with 'genetics' . . and those with the knowledge, and experience are always happy to share . . so ask those questions

Brenton and Tiaris both have a good 'handle' on genetics generally, and 'Gouldian Genetics' in particular; and the above discussion provides a good example of varying points of view being presented in a balanced and reasoned manner, for the benefit of all forumites