Aussie Finch Forum

when looking at gouldians what type of indicators/signs do you look for if it suspected that a bird may be split for a colour other than what it is showing. for example I have heard that a bird that is split for blue may show some blue around the vent.

I have read that the nodules around the mouth are a different colours if they are a blue bird, dont know about if they are split.

Looks like you may have to get "she who must be obeyed" to have a look at the birds.
This site says that.......

- Split Blues can sometimes be identified by those with good colour vision (more often women) by a subtle Blue/dull wash through the Green feathers.

http://finchstuff.com/GouldianFinchColourMutations.aspx

I was told the colour around the beak determines the colour gene the bird carries and could produce.

who said that women can tell... geee .my war office would look and say oh thats pretty....... i had a goulian with blue in the green but was not split for blue it was just a normal white breasted orange head. usually mick if it split for what ever colour it should show some patches , a good example is finchers avatar. his gould is split for for yellow as you can see the white patches in the black head...pete

pete its split for aust yellow just not yellow there is a big difference between the 2

der i know that . ..... just putting it simply ....wether it be yellow or aussie yellow it would show signs of white in the black head if it were a split..........

And a Red head split for yellow head is supposed to have a yellowish tip to the beak instead of a redish one.
LML

finchbreeder wrote:And a Red head split for yellow head is supposed to have a yellowish tip to the beak instead of a redish one.
LML

I was told this very same thing last weekend when purchasing my first pair of Gouldians.

I never new that.

Pooky wrote:I was told the colour around the beak determines the colour gene the bird carries and could produce.

I'm going out for a look right now.

In the US, a bird can not be "split" for yellow.

Being "split" for a gene suggests that the gene it is split for is recessive and therefor hidden.
Yellow is not a recessive, it is technically a codominant, which means it interacts with the genes responsible for normal (green) body color and depending on the breast color you have some degree of intermingling.

With a PB SF Yellow male (again, the US, we do not have the AUS Yellow mutation over here ) you would see a Dilute. If the bird is Lilac or WB, it is visually yellow.
Females can only ever be SF Yellow and as such are always visually bright yellow regardless of breast color.

In terms of "split for orange", "split for lilac or white" or "split for blue" - I have never seen any true indicators.
I have been told that a bird split for orange head will have a difference in color on the INSIDE of the mouth, but I have never been able to see this for myself. I have never noticed a difference to the beak color.
I have normals/blue to look no different from birds I know are not.

More often than not I feel like people are looking so hard trying to see a difference, they come up with something on their own but it can't be substantiated.

The nodules only show different if the bird is genetically blue bodied (both recessives are present), but if that is the case you can almost always tell the day the baby hatches either way. The difference in skin color is pretty remarkable.

Case in point: