Aussie Finch Forum

My aim is to breed true red and yellow head Gouldians.
I have little difficulty with the male bird, a lovely deep red or a nice pale orange.
It's the females that cause me problems.( surprise, surprise)
The red heads have a hint of black or yellow or both, the same problem arises with the yellow heads, a hint of black or red.
How do I go about getting the females' head colour as good as the males?
Any suggestions? Is there anyone out there who has managed to breed true red or yellow females?

This is a hen I bred myself. When the parents got together all I knew was they were YH PB GB cock x RH PC GB hen, a pair of my original birds when I didn't know anything about the genetics.
Ive since found out the parent cock was split wb and the parent hen was RH/y
This hen has produced white chested young when she was paired up with her father so this hen is YH PC/w GB and these are 2 of her daughters (perched on the white cup) from being paired with a totally unrelated cock While the head colour Im fairly happy with, the breast colour seems very pale to me when compared with her sister the BH but the YH also seems paler than the unrelated YH hen in the bottom of the pic, but that hen also has a lot more black on her head too.

bluebutterfly213 wrote:This is a hen I bred myself. When the parents got together all I knew was they were YH PB GB cock x RH PC GB hen, a pair of my original birds when I didn't know anything about the genetics.
Ive since found out the parent cock was split wb and the parent hen was RH/y
This hen has produced white chested young when she was paired up with her father so this hen is YH PC/w GB

and these are 2 of her daughters (perched on the white cup) from being paired with a totally unrelated cock

P1010014 (640x427).jpg

While the head colour Im fairly happy with, the breast colour seems very pale to me when compared with her sister the BH but the YH also seems paler than the unrelated YH hen in the bottom of the pic, but that hen also has a lot more black on her head too.

Nice photos and nice healthy looking birds! I haven't kept Gouldian for more then twenty years, I don't know if anyone agrees with this but in my opinion I would only keep birds like the Black-headed hen in the second photo, to me it looks stunning with the head being completely black whereas in the others the heads have some black as well. Same with the Red-headed and the Yellow-headed, I just think they look better! I'm not 100% sure if Red and Yellow-headed birds exist in one color heads, they may have some black under the chin, if anyone has birds with one color heads could you post some photos so that we can see and compare. However, I think that even in the wild Gouldians the heads are not always one color but in captivity I would try and breed one color head birds if possible.

Nice photos and nice healthy looking birds!

Thanks!
That hen you mentioned is a visual BH hen but she is actually genetically a YH you can tell this by the colour of the beak being yellow.
Cant say Ive ever seen a RH or YH Gouldian hen without the black trim, even the RH and YH cocks have some black trim under the beak and also slightly varying degrees up the sides of the head.

Thank you Blue Butterfly, I'd be very happy to breed yellow hens like yours.
At least they're quite yellow, is it possible to eventually breed the black and red tinge out?

I wouldn't think so, it seems to be the way the RH and YH headed birds are. The cock birds always have very similar amounts of black but the hens can vary a huge amount. Ive seen RH hens that you have to look twice at to be sure they arent BH and some YH headed hens that are so muddied. Personally I like the clearer coloured hens, however if the clearer head colour comes at the expense of the purple colour of the chest Im not so sure. I dont have any very dark hens to compare the chest colour with.
Any one else noticed anything like this?

is it possible to eventually breed the black and red tinge out?

Do you meant the black under the beak or are you meaning the general overall head colour?
If you mean the overall head colour Im sure you can get the head to become clearer by putting good coloured birds together.

The black ring around head and the black bib is present in the normal Gouldian. It goes blue in a SF yellow back (Euro yellow) and white in a DF yellow back and also in an Aus Yellow.

I rather like the black ring and understand that's normal.
My problem is the actual coloured "cap".
The male's colour can be a vivid red or a sparkling orange/yellow.
Yet the hen's red often has a orange glow through it.
Likewise the yellow hen's colour is often marred by a black ground colour or red undertones.
And these are birds from the same nest.

We keep the "brightest and cleanest" of both sexes for breeding stock and sell the others. And have pretty good coloured birds.
LML

finchbreeder wrote:We keep the "brightest and cleanest" of both sexes for breeding stock and sell the others. And have pretty good coloured birds.
LML

How about a few photos of the best off the Reds and Yellows. I assume no one's got any as bright as "Canary Yellow" heads?