Gouldian mutation experts - your opinions and photography skills needed!

[Finchy]

Agree that starting again would be so logistically difficult as to be functionally impossible. Also, it's not clear whether the blueness might reflect a carotenoid metabolism problem, implying a Vitamin A metabolism problem, which guarantees immune dysfunction unless we can work around it somehow.

This, though, is very wrong: "Inbreeding can not cause weaknesses. It can only amplify existing weakness."

That's a risky misunderstanding of genetics. A wide spectrum of genetic...let's call them elements*...are needed to create healthy babies. Some must come from one parent, and a contrasting set from the other, to create the required diversity. Mating two healthy but related parents with very similar sets of genetic elements will lead to genetic repetitions and omissions in their babies, producing unpredictable faults that did not exist in the parents.

I may not have explained that very well. Bottomline, if your son+daughter/son+wife/daughter+husband had babies you would not expect the results to be favourable, even though they may be stunning specimens themselves. So we should not do this with other species and expect things to turn out any better.

*e.g. Major histocompatibility complex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_his ... _selection

[Shane Gowland]

"Inbreeding can not cause weaknesses. It can only amplify existing weakness."

Tell that to the Habsburgs.

[finchbreeder]

A wide spectrum of genetic...let's call them elements*...are needed to create healthy babies. Some must come from one parent, and a contrasting set from the other, to create the required diversity. Mating two healthy but related parents with very similar sets of genetic elements will lead to genetic repetitions and omissions in their babies, producing unpredictable
True.
But only mutation can produce something that DID NOT exist in the parents.
Inbreeding produces as you have said repetitions and omissions. But can not in itself produce something that did not exist. It will produce repetitions, of disease resistance if that existed. And it will produce omissions of disease resistance if that existed. Hence the tendancy to weak chicks, because any weakness is easily multiplied by inbreeding. Hence my emphasis on regular and strong outcrossing to achieve the healthy blues. But breeding related birds together will not get you a blue and orange striped Gouldian. Because it does not currently exist.
Some of the ruling houses of Europe discovered the tendancy for inbreeding to multiply negative genes that already existed when they insisted on marrying their 1st and 2nd cousins.
LML

[Rob]

Thanks for your explanations. If I was to get into breeding blues, what's the cheapest way to do it. What pairs to buy and their value?

[elferoz777]

Thanks for your explanations. If I was to get into breeding blues, what's the cheapest way to do it. What pairs to buy and their value?

The cheapest way is not to.......

But in all seriousness buy known split brirds from a breeder preferably not from Sydney and they have a chance. Splits are cheaper, stronger and as another post demonstates, you can still breed a decent amount of blue birds. Splits rane from $ 100 to $ 150 a bird.

[SamDavis]

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.

[Tiaris]

I doubt that is even a colour morph. More likely the blue wing suffusion evident in many normal phenotype Gouldians.

[Blue Cuban]

I doubt that is even a colour morph. More likely the blue wing suffusion evident in many normal phenotype Gouldians.

Agree.

[Rob]

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?

[Finchy]

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.

Wow, Sam, that's encouraging. With your own eyes?! Don't suppose you took, or could next time take, photos?

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...