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There is no way of looking at a bird and telling if it's split to blue or not.Rob wrote:If you buy a split bird how do you know it's carrying the blue genes if it looks normal? Is there some way to tell?
I haven't seen them in the flesh, but have seen multiple photographs of multiple wild blues. They are clearly a blue mutation, with some differences to those in captivity. I'll need to ask if I can share the photos as they were provided in confidence.Finchy wrote:Wow, Sam, that's encouraging. With your own eyes?! Don't suppose you took, or could next time take, photos?SamDavis wrote:Random comment....
There are blue Gouldians in the wild. Not common but in some populations I've seen they appear in reasonable numbers.
Not sure if it's the same morph present in aviculture, but they do appear to be fine health wise.
This could put Rob's question about starting again back into play. (Yeah, yeah, I know we're not supposed to catch 'em.)
When you say you're not sure whether they are the blues we're used to, please do tell a little more. Or maybe open a new thread about them one day...
If only... a kind thought nevertheless. I would like to replace my normals with splits as I like both blues and the more colourful normals.Blue Cuban wrote:There is no way of looking at a bird and telling if it's split to blue or not.Rob wrote:If you buy a split bird how do you know it's carrying the blue genes if it looks normal? Is there some way to tell?
Buying splits comes down to trusting the breeder, if only you lived near me I would give you some free and you could save the drug money people charge.
What will split x split give and split x normal give?Tiaris wrote:Blue is an autosomal recessive mutation which means a Blue x Normal mating would result in all young having normal phenotype (appearance) and be split to (carry) the Blue mutation gene - no pure normals or blues.
Hi Rob I see you have a few basic questions about offspring results and I feel the below link will be of big help to you.Rob wrote:What will split x split give and split x normal give?Tiaris wrote:Blue is an autosomal recessive mutation which means a Blue x Normal mating would result in all young having normal phenotype (appearance) and be split to (carry) the Blue mutation gene - no pure normals or blues.
Both these matings are not ideal as they result in the production of both split and normal progeny which cannot be visually discerned between as they are physically identical. Such matings which result in unknown genotype offspring should be avoided at all costs in mutation breeding as they inevitably eventually result in pollution of what people think are pure normal stocks with split birds' mutation genes. Not knowing with certainty the genotype of all birds in your collection is also counterproductive to establishing & improving any mutation so for this reason too these matings are also undesirable. Only blue x split, blue x normal & blue x blue result in known genotype offspring. IMO blue x blue is far from yet being a viable option to produce quality birds until much more improvement work is done on the mutation using top quality normal birds as outcrosses. Personally, if using a split in a mutation breeding program, I would only use splits which have a decent quality normal parent. To me, using splits from blue x split pairings is of no strengthening/improvement value at all unless it is a particularly impressive specimen with obviously outstanding features to contribute and such birds are very uncommon.Rob wrote:What will split x split give and split x normal give?Tiaris wrote:Blue is an autosomal recessive mutation which means a Blue x Normal mating would result in all young having normal phenotype (appearance) and be split to (carry) the Blue mutation gene - no pure normals or blues.
