Should I be annoyed ?

[Diane]

While its a shame you didnt get what you wanted/expected the young are quite a surprise. Will be interesting to see what they moult out to be.

[Tiaris]

I really do think that the majority of split birds passed off as normals in many species are people unwittingly producing them without knowing any better. Most serious mutation breeders use matings which produce known genotype offspring & know what they have. There are numerous posts on this forum as perfect examples of people mating mutant to normal birds and combining mutations without even knowing which mutations they possess let alone their modes of inheritence & what genotype young they will produce, etc. I don't see any conspiracy by experienced mutation breeders to dupe beginners with known splits passed off as pure normals but I see numerous examples of a lack of understanding by many others resulting in inadvertent "pollution" of the purity of normal finch stocks.

[Myzomela]

The biggest problem as I see it is when excess stock is disposed of at dealers or through third parties who don't particularly care about the details of individual birds.
The split birds in this situation get lost in the system.
Although the breeders may keep accurate records and do the right thing, it all gets lost once the birds change hands.

Perhaps this discussion has similarities to the pros and cons of modern technology. Once the technology is there, the moralities of how it is used is a different matter and requires education and leadership and depends on the morality of the community as a whole.

Once the mutations are produced and numbers increased, we invariably lose control over what happens to them once they leave our aviaries.

I have nothing against mutations and think that some are quite attractive and provide another interesting aspect to our hobby. However, I think that there is a price to pay for this and it is up to us to determine how expensive this price may be.

I also do not necessarily agree with the argument that you can produce "normal" birds from a population of mutations.

Although this may be possible, you immediately narrow your genetic diversity and so the effective population of "normal" birds is much reduced. This may become a problem when the overall population is quite small to begin with and potentially lead to inbreeding depression.

[Tiaris]

I guess all these contributing factors just add to the complex & mostly unknown mix of genes we see emerging. I remember many years ago European breeders warning that split mutants would eventually dominate normal appearing stock in the future (particularly in Gouldians) & at the time thought to myself "that will never happen here". It seems never comes around all too soon.

[finchbreeder]

And some people think that a mutation is the norm. Ask anyone what colour a canary should be if you don;t believe me. Then there is the fact that a mutaion can and will turn up from time to time from normal birds, because thats how we got mutations in the first place.
LML

[jusdeb]

Just for curiosity sake ...is a normal canary actually a brown type like a sparrow ?

[TheFinchMan101]

I only use to think all canaries were either yellow or white and that's it.

[jusdeb]

curiouser and curiouser ????

[MadOzzie]

Heres a couple of wild canaries:

http://www.robirda.com/canari.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

MadOzzie

[jusdeb]