Question about maintaining bloodline

[geasterbrook]

Hi All,

I have a general question about maintaining bloodline for a particular finch. This is not to propogate mutations I should add.

I have a pair of stars that have bred for a few years and are now reaching 4 years old.

It struck me that they are reaching the end of their breeding life and the young produced I have not kept.

If I was to keep young I would have the issue of common parents.

Is there a "normal" way to going about maintaining blood line while introducing new blood at the same time ?

For example would you keep hens and purchase new cock birds or visa versa ?

This is in a colony breeding situation I might add.

Any comments would be most welcome.

Geoff

[Alf63]

I have always found keeping my own hens and bringing in unrelated cocks to be the better option.

In most species cocks are more readily available and cheaper so you can generally source "new blood" from multiple breeders easily.

Your own hens are already acclimatized to your diet and conditions which usually assists in improved results.

Only my view, hope it helps.

[SamDavis]

I agree with what Alfa does is a sensible organised way of going about it. However I suspect in many colony situations things are not so organised. I've certainly had colonies in the past where a heap of inbreeding has gone for years and I've just added a few unrelated cocks every so often. I can't say I've experienced any particualr issues. I now tend to have one pair per aviary so it's all much easier to control.

A related issue I'm unsure about is what does related and unrelated mean? A simple example - I have many species where one pair has had young, and these young are now paired with unrelated mates. So if I sell young pairs they're either uncle/niece, aunty/nephew or cousin/cousin. In terms of selling, are these related or unrelated? How unrelated is unrelated?

I suspect one never really knows how unrelated unrelated is. It's amazing how quickly your own bloodlines can travel, particularly if you have really productive pairs. For instance, I have 2 pairs of longtails who have bred pretty much continually for years. I know their young have gone all over NSW, to various sydney pet shops and also Vic. and Act. over the last few years. Early last year a buyer came to buy a pair off me, luckily for him we discovered he'd just bought a pair from Crystal Pet and Wire where I'd just sold about 6 pair (so lost the sale). Makes you wonder just how limited the gene pool may be.