Aussie Finch Forum

im a novice breeder who has a few birds 3 pied chocalate & 3 pied fawn bengalese i noticed in 1 nest there is 2 fawn & 1 pure white young.is the white rare as i have never seen one.thanks in advance for your reply

Hi and welcome to the forum.
I just put white bengalese finch into Google and found a few links, here is one of them.

http://www.bengalesefinch.co.uk/mutations.htm

(just a note.....the link at the bottom of the above page dosnt work)

My answer would be - rare no - uncommon yes. This is because the lighter colours seem to be genetically recessive to the darker colours in Bengelese. Try this site it is even more informative re Bengelese or as some call them Society Finches www.zebrafinch.com/SocietyFinch/Society.html
LML

thanx for the info .i brought the birds from 5 different shops must have a couple cairreing the ressesive gene.the blindness has me worried.this one is not blind as it backs up to the back of the nest when i approach the cage.just have to wait and see

Check the eye colour,some years ago I had pure white Bengalese and they had black eyes.
They were not bothered at all by the sun or bright lights like pink eyed birds are.
They would be worth some extra effort as I haven't seen any for quite some time.

How's the young white going Angus?
LML

the white one is going good i also have another white one with a light fawn head , rump and just before its tail feathers

That one sounds like a heavily marked fawn pied. Nice, but not as uncommon as the white.
LML

finchbreeder wrote:My answer would be - rare no - uncommon yes. This is because the lighter colours seem to be genetically recessive to the darker colours in Bengelese. Try this site it is even more informative re Bengelese or as some call them Society Finches http://www.zebrafinch.com/SocietyFinch/Society.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
LML

Here is a quote from the website previously mentioned.

"THE ALL WHITE "Dark eyed" SOCIETY------Believe it or not, the Dark eyed White Society is not a self, even though it is all white, it is a pied bird. Thats correct, the Dark eyed White Society is actually a Pied Society, which does not have any colored patches. These all white birds are produced whenever heavy Marked White Society finches are bred to each other. Often two heavily Pied "Marked Whites" will produce 25 to 50% all Whites in a nest. If two Dark eye Whites are intbred the majority of the offspring will be Solid Whites, but not all. Often times crossing two all White will produce an occasional Pied offspring."

Another good analogy that I have heard is that a Dark Eyed White is like a Pied Bengalese with "one big white dot" on it. And underneath the white the real colour of the finch (Chocolate, Chestnut or Ginger) is concealed and laying behind the white just like any other pied Bengo.

I have had a pair of Dark eyed Whites until recently and due to my lack of space gave them to a friend to help establish the strain. The ones that I had were not particularly agile and almost seemed a bit lazy or weak. With this in mind I have been told that is better to breed a Pied (very white) Bengo with a Dark Eyed White rather than two Dark Eyed Whites together because of this kind of weakness and like the blindness that was mentioned before.

I hope that your Dark Eyed White breeding is going well.

Cheers

Happens with Zebs too. Keep puting pied to pied and you will get black eyed white or so hevily pied that you cant visually sex them.
LML