Blue to Blue

[garyh]

Over the last few months iv'e been selling my blue goulds and splits,it has been very surprising the number of buyers wanting to put blue to blue,just as surprising is that 95 per cent would have been from NSW,i know we have come along way from when the blues were first bred,and each year i can see an improvement in the birds,but are we ready to breed blue to blue? A couple of years ago there was a women who tried and the birds went down hill fast ,and in the end found some new stock and went back to the old method of blue to split,so is there anybody trying to breed b to b and what were the results,in say size and colour,cheers garyh

[Tiaris]

I think it will be a good few years yet before that would be a safe pairing.
You guys who have been working on them for the last 10 years or so outcrossing & outdoor breeding them have made commendable progress in improving their environmental resilience, but as you know, they still have some way to go before they are generally as robust as most other established Gouldian mutations. They don't need major backward steps as in their early years as this would undo much of the recent good breeding work.

[elferoz777]

I was going blue split and when the blue young weren't busy dying the parents weren't far behind.

I attributed this to super bugs as shortly after purchasing and releasing i lost a lot of young birds.

I now breed split to split and sure i cant tell the splits from the normal birds im at least getting some big attractive normal colours on the perch.

I know a few who go b to b and they don't get many young in the nest and none fledge.results i have seen are far better when pairing split birds....well around here at least.

[Craig52]

I agree, they are not ready to breed blue to blue. Doing this will set you up going back to the beginning when they were hard to keep alive.
You guys are doing a fantastic with your breeding program and breeding split to a colour is still the way to go imo. What worries me is the breeding of blues with AY's and breeding AYB's together of which i know some breeders are, it is still two blues breeding together even though they are AYB's and imo blues are not ready for this yet.
The mortality rate for this breeding is virtually 100%,probably because of the blue gene imo. Craig

[garyh]

I totally agree that the blues are nowhere near ready to be put together,seems the dollar is more of a concern than the long term betterment of the bird,dollar driven breeders only concern themselves with how many blues they can get so it makes for quick easy sales and then get out of them ,leaving someone else to clean up the mess.Craig i think you hit the nail on the head with the AY birds ,in the near future i can see birds being bred that are suppose to be pure blue only to produce birds with varying degrees of mottling or dots,i know of some breeders that have sold birds related to AY as a pure blue or pure split ,they breed a lot of unwanted birds when trying to breed a blue aus yellow,once produced , they are breeding two coloured birds together to get all blue ay yellows these birds are weak and a lot are lost ,but the ones that make it bring a good dollar ,so were back to the dollar again,cheers garyh