Yellow Starfinches

Includes Species Profile.
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SamDavis
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Just caught up with posts in this thread. I'm thinking - I'll just stick with my normal stars!
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Luís Lourenço
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Gustavo, there is a yellow bodied mutation in the star finch.
Remeber what Ricardo said, the fawn + cinnamon combination can produce a bird with a phenotype very similar to a true yellow bodied star.
Luís Lourenço

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Morne
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Tiaris wrote: 21 Oct 2012, 06:33 I can give a genetic forecast for fawn & cinnamon combinations but unless you have them to work with there is no point.
Hi Tiaris,

Just came across this post. Are you able to please provide me with a genetic forecast for fawn and cinnamon star combinations? We have both mutations and would like to know the best way to proceed.

Thank you!
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Tiaris
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Proceed to yellow-bodied? If so, do you already have any YB birds, are the fawns & cinnamons already partially combined or are you starting from scratch with both separate mutations?
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arthur
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A-RxSLR 1.jpg
A-RxSLR 2.jpg
Not trying to steal Tiaris' 'thunder' but these diagrams may save a very wordy explanation . .

Simply replace "Blue" with "Fawn" . . and . . "Lutino" with "Cinnamon" . . and "Albino" with "Yellow-Bodied"

The diagrams use 'XX' for cockbirds; 'XY' for hens

Even with just a basic knowledge of genetics, the diagrams should be self-explanatory . .



And Tiaris can add any extras that he might feel are necessary
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Last edited by arthur on 05 May 2017, 10:02, edited 2 times in total.
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Tiaris
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The following is the majority of what I sent to Morne as a PM to help him. I took out some other bits with a breeders contact details. Just thought I'd post this here to help any others who may be interested in the exercise.


To start from 1st base is quite a long process but very doable.
If you could obtain just one yellow-bodied bird it would cut down the process by at least 2 years.

I got them established from just one yellow-bodied hen and a collection of fawns, but it took me 3 years and I did obtain a known fawn split cinnamon cock in the second year which greatly assisted me to do it in that time.
If not, you should familiarise yourself with the autosomal recessive (fawn) and sex-linked recessive (cinnamon) modes of inheritence and the breeding expectations for all possible matings within these modes. If you don't first have at least a basic grasp on how these work, the whole process is going to be very confusing and difficult for you.

Once the cinnamon and fawn genes have been combined, the pure cinnamon birds are no longer useful to the process of establishing yellow-bodieds - fawns are the best ones to keep a separate strain going for regular outcrosses and you should do this.

Year 1: Mate your best Cinnamon cocks with your best fawn hens to produce cinnamon hens split to fawn. These are the "money birds" from the first year, so the best of these should be retained as year 2 breeders.
The young cocks will be normal phenotype stars but double split to both fawn and cinnamon - these are less useful than the young hens because no matter what you mate them to, they are going to produce a wide range of genotypes in any subsequent offspring (some of which need to be test-mated to correctly identify their genetic composition). Any such matings should be avoided - you need to mate birds which give known genotype offspring to proceed with confidence. So for our program to establish yellow-bodieds, 1st year young cocks should be discarded.

Year 2: Mate the best cinnamon split fawn hens to the best fawn cocks to produce fawn split cinnamon cocks. These are the "money bird" from year 2. Some of the young cocks will be normal star phenotype - these again are double-splits and hence should be discarded. The young hens will be 50:50 fawns and split fawns. If any of the fawn hens are standout quality birds they can be combined with your other fawns to keep improving them. However the split fawns are not directly useful for our program so should be discarded.

Year 3: Mate the best of your year 2 young male fawn split cinnamons to the best fawn hens you have. This will produce your first yellow-bodied progeny - yellow-bodied hens. It will also produce some fawn hens. The young cocks will be fawns and fawn split cinnamons which will be visually identical so best discarded. Some year 2 matings could also be continued in year 3 to produce extra fawn split cinnamon cocks which will always be useful in breeding yellow-bodieds. Year 1 matings are no longer beneficial to the program.

Year 4: Mate the best yellow-bodied hens with the best fawn split cinnamon cocks this is the best mating for breeding yellow-bodied stars thereafter. This mating produces Yellow-bodied cocks and fawn split cinnamon cocks, Yellow-bodied hens and fawn hens. You then have them established. In my experience Yellow-bodied to yellow-bodied matings are neither productive nor do they result in decent quality young birds. This year 4 mating is the best mating for producing yellow-bodied progeny in both sexes.

The best outcross mating for strengthening the yellow-bodied combination is a really good yellow-bodied cock mated to a really good fawn hen. This produces all yellow-bodied hens and all fawn split cinnamon cocks.

That's the whole process. As you can see, if you can possibly obtain yellow-bodied birds you can jump straight to where they fit into the process & hence cut down the process considerably.

Good luck,
Graham.
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hanabi
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Tiaris,

A big thank you for posting these breeding notes. I did the genetics via a matrix method similar to the method that Arthur posted above and quickly realised I would be producing a hell of a lot of offspring, and would require a large number of breeding cages, to produce my first Yellow-body Star. The notes relating to which birds to keep and which to pass over are invaluable and just might make it doable with a limited number of available cages.

One question I still have is, for comments like "keep the best fawns" or "keep the best cinnamons", what are the "best" fawns and cinnamons in relation to the intensity of the yellow body colour? I assume we keep those fawns and cinnamons that have the most intense yellows (and most intense and extensive reds to the head and tail, and the greatest suppression of the darker pigments). Would that be correct?

I actually asked an importer here whether it would be expensive to import several pairs of Yellow-boy Stars from Europe, to save me going through the above multi-year process of making all the necessary crosses. The reply to my question can be seen here:
http://www.petshopisland.net/finchi.htm#index-finchi. You'll see the Yellow-body Stars a few images down, and the price is about $1,200 per pair :crazy: I think I'll now go back to my original plan of "making" a yellow-bodied if I can find a true Cinnamon pair.

Cheers,

Ross
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Tiaris
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By the best, I mean the only breed from one(s) with the brightest & largest red head colour, the larger body size & the most pronounced spotting - all the most desirable Star finch features. This should be done at every stage of the process to result in a truly desirable finished item.
I am a very big believer in the need to constantly improve the quality of whatever species we breed & when establishing a new mutation/combination this is especially important as we are combining two recessive genetic features here which have a tendency to otherwise reduce the overall physical vigour of the species, so breeding from only the very best specimens available is crucial if you wish to end up with Yellow-bodied Stars which look spectacular. Once established, regular outcrossing with only the best available birds from both the mutation and the outcross will give the most benefit to overall quality.
Don't just make up extra pairs because extra birds have the required genotype, it is just as important as genotype that each breeding bird going into the next stage should be in the top 20-30% of specimens for colour, size, body type, spotting, etc. Breeding from only the best birds will consistently produce ongoing improvement as you go through the process to establishing the colour.
A really outstanding male yellow-bodied Star in particular is truly beautiful. A lesser quality one is just a bird. Aim to breed more than just another bird to make the whole exercise something really worthwhile doing.
In any cage full of birds of the same species, a couple of them will really stand out from the rest as superior physical specimens. These are the only birds worth breeding from in my opinion. Mediocrity is far too common in aviculture. Breeding from any male paired to any female inevitably produces mediocrity in their progeny. Being very fussy when selecting breeding birds will pay dividends at every generation and will give you a sense of genuine pride as your young birds colour up to reveal themselves.
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Ajw132
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Any photos of yellow body stars ???
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Craig52
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