Aussie Finch Forum

Hi All
General question regarding how inbreeding impacts birds and how to prevent mutations occurring. Are mutations caused by inbreeding then bred selectively to highlight and keep the mutations? Sorry if this has been discussed to death previously, I guess a direct question may make things clear for me.

To keep birds as nature intended, is it an idea to prevent siblings breeding or is it not critical and happens in nature anyhow?

Thanks in advance for any information.

Kquail wrote:Hi All
General question regarding how inbreeding impacts birds and how to prevent mutations occurring. Are mutations caused by inbreeding then bred selectively to highlight and keep the mutations? Sorry if this has been discussed to death previously, I guess a direct question may make things clear for me.

To keep birds as nature intended, is it an idea to prevent siblings breeding or is it not critical and happens in nature anyhow?

Thanks in advance for any information.

My shortest answer would be:

1) You can't prevent mutations occurring - you can only regulate their expression in your breeding population by culling and selective pairing once the mutations are identified
2) Mutations aren't caused by selective breeding however within inbred populations the chances of expressing recessive alleles are increased
3) Nature doesn't have any intentions - only the fittest survive but in captivity the owner determines who is fit to reproduce
4) Preventing siblings from breeding is a good idea in most cases as it lessens the chance of (sometimes) undesirable homozygous recessive alleles expressing but some breeders may actually want to express the character - eg red head in Gouldians is dominant to to other colours so to establish these in a new line will require a degree of inbreeding to speed things up. Some species suffer from "inbreeding depression" when not outcrossed but other species aren't greatly affected. The affects vary from low fertility to poor health and of course some homozygous genetic combinations may be fatal even before hatching so you never see them.
5) What happens in nature? Absolutely everything but we tend to see only a vey narrow snapshot of the diversity that exists.

That said we need more aviculturists who are prepared to maintain "normal" wild-types as they are becoming the rarest "mutation" in species like Zebras, Red-faced Parrot Finches and Java Sparrows.

Thanks for your detailed answers, makes sense.

Cheers