Aussie Finch Forum

Today I bought 4 new pairs of zebbies There are 2 pairs of Isabellas, 1 pair of silver/blue and one pair of charcoal. They are all rather small in stature and not like my big, strapping normals and Marked white pairs. I am wondering how to increase the size (or if it's even possible) of, for example, the charcoals. If I breed one to one of my large normals, will I end up with birds split to charcoal? And then what? I know nothing about genetics unfortunately so any advice will have to be put very simply please. Also does anyone know of any breeders of quality zebs in the NSW Central Coast or Hunter as I'm not keen to keep on buying them from pet shops. My other pairs have been bought from sales but sales are few and far between and good zebs seem hard to come by for such a popular bird. Thanks in anticipation

Isabel's and Charcoals are Recessive and Silver are Dominant .
Garry

This link to a couple of zebra genetic forecasters might help too
viewtopic.php?f=115&t=12867&p=120117&hi ... er#p120117

http://www.seqzfs.org/apps/blog/entries ... ra-finches
This site will explain genetics for you.
Garry

The Zebra Finches on the Internet site has overseas mutations so can confuse some when we don't have the same birds / names etc.
If you pair your Charcoal to a normal Grey, all the young will be normal Grey colour split for Charcoal. Cross these over a Charcoal
or another split and you should improve the size. Good luck.

So to put it as simply as possible. Put each of your pair of Charcols to a normal, then breed the resultant young from each pair to the young of the other pair. And good luck.
LML

You will only increase size in young when the largest parent birds are selected & paired to each other. Doesn't matter if they are charcoal, normal or pink with yellow spots - the size of the parents are the key to increasing size in the progeny. ie. try to find the largest available normals to outcross with your charcoals, then use only the largest of the split progeny for further improvement in the next generation, etc, etc.

Thanks everyone for the great advice. It is really confusing looking at some of the genetic stuff related to zebs on the internet!! I will put the birds with my big normal and see what happens