Topic of Interest for Finch Research Paper?

[Tiaris]

It would be very interesting to see if that hypothesis does pan out that way as in an article I've read by Mike Fidler on Peter's Twinspots where he used less attractive cocks to produce a greater proportion of hens. Previously he had experienced a huge bias to male offspring when the brightest males were selected as breeders.
Without wishing to muddy the waters too much before your experiment I should stress that this hypothesis is contrary to my own experience with Painteds. For the past 6 years I have bred from 8 pairs of Painteds each season with very exagerated red frontal colour & getting redder each year. From large numbers of young produced from these birds over the 6 breeding seasons the sex ratio has been even and has stayed that way as red colour area and intensity has been increased through selective improvement for this trait. Further, I firmly believe that there are generally more male Painteds bred than females in Australian aviaries generally so my own results are a lower than the average ratio of cocks despite above average and increasing redness. As Spanna suggests though, the best way to test this is to breed from a range of pairs where hens are paired with a wide range of males for redness and see what they produce.

[Redwing]

Happy to give some data from my 2 pairs

[finchbreeder]

The painteds sound like a good way to go. And it would be interesting to see if the theory that the brighter the cock the more sons is true. Cause my cock is one of Spanna's nice bright boys.
LML