long tail feathers in gouldians

[jaytt]

I saw red headed normal gouldian cocks recently with two extra long tail feathers which I understand is a wild gouldian feature.has anyone noticed this in their birds?

[Misso]

I saw red headed normal gouldian cocks recently with two extra long tail feathers which I understand is a wild gouldian feature.has anyone noticed this in their birds?

I guess you are referring to Tail Spires?

[Craig52]

Jay,gouldians since their domestication and the many mutations that have been produced,have imo lost there long pin tails.In the early days gouldians had pin tail nearly as long as longtails(by the way longtails tails are no where near as long as they were when they were trapped birds)
If i was you,buy those birds and breed them for that trait. Craig

[jaytt]

yes I was refering to the tail spires.I saw the birds at a bird dealer I think only two birds had the feature,should have bought the birds!

[vettepilot_6]

I agree its a pity that trait is so rare...

[finchbreeder]

You got me thinking. Do mine have this or not? So I went down and looked. Interesting. My YH cocks and the RH in with them do not. BUT In the other avairy the younger RH (son of older RH) and the BH (from Macksta) both have beautiful long tail spires.
So I am hoping for chicks from them for more reasons now.
LML

[natamambo]

I don't know about the wild form but the longest spire on the hens in my collection is shorter than the shortest spire in the cocks. In most bird's it's poorly developed though and less dveleoped in the mutants than the normals.

[Tiaris]

As in Long-tailed finches its normal for hens pins to be shorter. This is highly variable and very heritable if you wish to select for it. Just keep an eye on body size if selecting for tail length though as most birds I've seen with relatively long tail pins also had relatively small body size which I believe helps makes the tail pins seem long as they are a higher proportion of the overall length of the bird.
I have a mate with long-taileds with longer tail pins than any wild caught birds I've seen so it is also possible to selectively improve this feature in them too. Interestingly these long-taileds are of very impressive body size too so old mate has kept a good balance in his birds whilst improving them.