Aussie Finch Forum

the "patchy" head is not desirable, but it was my very first gouldian hen. Now I know better than that :-D

GregH wrote:After their discovery each of the three head-colour morphs were recorded as different species and it seems that, in evolutionary terms, a speciation event is not far off.

I tend to agree somewhat with this, I find the different colour head have different shaped heads too, quite subtle changes but its there, and they colour up differently too. RH tend to sing first and colour up last, YH seem much quieter and get the head feathers earlier but not enough to say if the bird is a cock or hen.

And sometimes the birds decide the experts are wrong and even though they have a bird of the same head colour available choose a bird of a differnent head colour and produce more chicks than they have in the previous 2 years. Like my Mothers Gouldians decide to do this season.
LML

A friend of mine placed his red head hen in a cage with 3 males, 2 red heads and one black head. The hen chose the black head.
Resulting in 7 eggs (4 cocks, 3 hens)

I will let the younger ones, the more inteligent and those interested in Genetics to worry about what results you get.
What I will say is for many years I have bred Red to Red Head,Black to Black etc and my White Breasted and Normal Gouldians have clear heads and the females are little behind the male head intensity.Personal choice but demand is greater for the clear headed reds.

E Orix wrote:Personal choice but demand is greater for the clear headed reds.

I agree with the breeders wanting the clear head colour. Im actively breeding to get those results along with true head colours. When I first got my gouldians I didnt know anyone who had birds so I was limited to buying either from bird shops or the local newspaper, this meant I didnt know the breeding behind any of the birds. Consequently, a few of the birds turned out to be splits. I did what I could with what I had and only kept the ones that according to the GGF would be true colour.
I did strike lucky with an older breeder I met through the paper, he bred same head colour together and I have been back to him for more gouldians.

Some years back we got Gouldians off a guy who guaranteed his pure. Each of his 1m x 2m x 4m avairys contained 12 birds. Each avairy contained 1 type of bird only. At the time he was a finch breeder with a mild interest in parrots. Now I don;t know if he still has birds, because his mild interest grew into an obccession that got him into trouble with DET when he decided to disregard where the birds were sourced. But he had the clearest head gouldians of all 3 colours and both sexs I have ever seen.
And the avairys took up half of a 1/4 acre block.
LML

bluebutterfly213 wrote:I found the majority of yellow heads are becoming like the "muddy" reds now. Wonder if it has anything to do with a hen having black heads in her pedigree somewhere?
When I was looking for a YH hen to pair with a YH cock all I could see were muddy ones, I did have his YH daughter who is a lovely clear head so I ended up pairing them in an effort to get clear headed hens. Will see how that turns out shortly.

Hen can't have black in her pedigree per se, she can only be red or black as red & black are on the gene that creates femaleness. It's either there as red or there as black. It is possible that we don't understand the mask genetics yet, a bit like the cheek spots on a budgie where three nice neat round ones are considered "good" but these are now few and far between.

natamambo wrote: Hen can't have black in her pedigree per se, she can only be red or black as red & black are on the gene that creates femaleness.

I can see what you are saying, but I understood that the YH also needed the red gene to produce the YH and given that the colours could have been split and split again including some black heads back in the pedigree surely it would have to have an effect. As you said the red and black gene creates the femaleness and its the females with the increasingly muddy heads. The cocks from what I can see are not affected.
Such an interesting, and sometimes frustrating subject!

bluebutterfly213 wrote:

natamambo wrote: Hen can't have black in her pedigree per se, she can only be red or black as red & black are on the gene that creates femaleness.

I can see what you are saying, but I understood that the YH also needed the red gene to produce the YH and given that the colours could have been split and split again including some black heads back in the pedigree surely it would have to have an effect. As you said the red and black gene creates the femaleness and its the females with the increasingly muddy heads. The cocks from what I can see are not affected.
Such an interesting, and sometimes frustrating subject!

You're right Diane but the easiest way to think of the YH is as a dilute Red everything not just the face, which is why if the YH gene double dose is present in a BH you get the yellow tipped beak. So what the YH gene is really doing is diluting red anywhere it's found and calling it the RH gene is actually wrong, it's the dilute red gene.

What this means in day to day terms is that a hen can have the red or black head gene but never both (unlike a cock) and the dilute red (ie YH) gene either in a single or double dose. If it's in a single dose nothing happens to the red. If it's in a double dose then all red on the bird is diluted.

What is far more likely at play is the amount of black in the throat and pencil line varies somewhat even in the wild. The throat / pencil lines are controlled by a completely different set of genes to the head genes (maybe the black lines are actually multiple or interacting genes like the black spots on budgies or eye colour in humans, the more the genes the greater the black for example) otherwise these would also go red / yellow. Breeders for some strange reason (desperation perhaps ;) ) choose the brightest and bestest cock and pair him with any hen they can get their hands on. Cocks that don't live up to their expectations are culled (sold to pet shops or unsuspecting newbies), hens are retained or sold for a premium just because they are lone hens. Purchasers gratefully accept the breeders offcasts (in pet shops because they don't really know the difference or lone hens out of the desperation that created this scenario in the first place).

Over the years (decades) in order to improve face colour birds have been selectively bred to reduce the pencil lines I suspect and given that hens are generally duller anyway maybe that impacts on the amount of black in the bib (which is creating your muddy bit by extending up into the head colour region). If you look at Cayley's paintings (made in the 30s) his RH hen clearly has more black from the bib into the head region that the cock does in the same painting so he noticed this even then.