Aussie Finch Forum

finchbreeder wrote:Sounds good. Accept as a bit of a geneticist you must know that recessive genes do not have to turn up anytime in under 10 years. Though they should show up on a 50/50 or 25/75 depending on the type basis. But try flipping a coin and tell me that you get heads and tails evenly like you should. Good luck what you are trying to achieve is a good thing, just playing devils advocate.
LML

That's why I'm mating them with birds that ARE displaying the recessive traits to see if they are split at all in a seasons worth of breeding I should well and truly be able to identify which birds are split to what with appropriate pairings. Will also have a lot of split birds to sell off, or may even keep some mutations will never like them nearly as much though!!!

Spanna/Jayburd - great idea to try to get pure normals. I used to breed heaps of gouldians when living in the big smoke. Some years ago I had a colony of normal yellow heads who bred true for many years. I'd added the odd YH cock every so often to get some fresh blood and was assured each new cock was pure. Anyway one year a white breast appeared and then white breasts started showing up all over the place so I threw in the towel. Hopefully you'll have better luck!

Sourcing fresh blood will always be a problem. My current thoughts are that I may keep a mutation strain (BH or YH WB) and a pure strain, that way I can test breed any new arrivals against my own mutants to see if they carry any hidden genes with them. Just requires an extra aviary...

An extra aviary at anytime is a plus Spanna..