Neville

You can check under the wings to be sure it is blue based. If there is blue or white showing there then it is blue based

If it's a hen it would have to have opaline

Type 2 yellow face cobalt dominant pied spangle

YF grey spangle. The yellow on the wings is too light for it to be a grey green

The first chick is dominant pied and the second looks to be opaline. Some of the females will be opaline dominant pieds, they won't be split for dominant pied, you'll be able to see both mutations on the same bird. Some of the males will be normals. Very white down on a chick is an early indication that it will be an opaline

It is quite common for the first egg of a young hen to have a bit of blood on it and it is usually nothing to worry about. A small blood vessel has probably broken when she passed the egg. Just watch to see that she doesn't bleed too much

Breeders often sell their birds at markets

If you decide not to take her to a vet then she needs to be isolated from your other birds and treated for worms as they are the most common cause of unthriftiness in birds. The state of her feathers is a because she is ill, they are not the cause of her illness. Is it possible that her problem is old age? Sometimes age symptoms can appear quite quickly

Definately dominant pied

It's normal behaviour. There is a common misconception that mating causes egg laying. It is not the mating that causes them to lay, hens will lay whether they have mated or not. They are mating because the hen is in laying mode

It's hard to tell in your pictures but your bird looks like he has blue cheek patches (rather than purple that a mauve would have) and that would mean that he has a grey factor which would account for the colour. I don't think he is dark enough to be a slate You wouldn't be able to see if your green spangle was split for blue. Many green birds have a few bluish feathers. It is possible that you have a type 2 yellow face blue that has gone green, or another possibility is that he is a green bird carrying violet

French Moult only affects budgies under 5 weeks old so if she was not like that when she was young it can’t be French moult. You can tell be the way she is standing that she is sick. Has she been treated for worms? There are several diseases that it could be but it would need a vet to diagnose which.

If the mate that you choose in not a recessive pied or split to recessive pied then there won't be any recessive pieds among the chicks. If you are breeding show birds then you'd need to be sure that you select a bird with plenty of size and show qualities, otherwise just choose a hen that you like

I also think it's spangle recessive pied sky blue

A yellow face opaline spangle sky blue

Sky blue dominant pied probably female Grey dominant pied probably male Grey green can't see if it's pied or not, probably male Green, by the colour of the cheek patches it looks like you might have another grey green The 1st and 3rd ones could be opaline but can't see their backs

Some very nice birds. I like all the grey greens

There are always exceptions to every rule. I have a double factor spangle that is showing no iris ring but I know that her mutation is right because it has been proven by breeding. I have heard of several other cases where the iris ring hasn't developed the way it is expected. Actually all budgies have iris rings but in some mutations they are the same colour as their eyes so we can't see them

Let me out of here and I'll show you

In the unlikely event that it was non sex linnked ino then, because it is recessive, it wouldn't mask dominant mutations

I'm afraid that I'm very sceptical about this whole thread. It is not hard to produce a yellow face albino that is masking both spangle and dominant pied (even double factors of both) but an albino's female daughters would also be albino, which the females in this line up of chicks are clearly not. Even if I was prepared to accept the explanations of the hen's mutation it still doesn't seem credible

Most if not all the chicks are spangle and at least 3 have dominant pied as well. I think that the white parent must be a double factor spangle

First of all I'd must ask; Were these birds cabinet bred or colony bred? I have heard of a non sex-linked albino but it wouldn't explain what you are talking about The opaline in your first picture is very interesting. I have never seen a type 2 yellow face where the colour has spread like that. The parent's of the six in this picture could not have been a white and a grey. They could have been a white and a grey green but the white must have been a double factor spangle or if she was albino she must have been masking spangle and one of them must have been a dominant pied.

The chicks should all be recessive pied dark green unless the cock bird has a blue gene (split for blue). If he is split for blue then half of them will be recessive pied cobalt. (If the cock bird is split for a sex-linked mutation the result will slightly be different) A sky blue has no dark factor and an olive has 2 dark factors. Therefore the chicks will all have one dark factor. That is: cobalt or dark green. No olive or sky blue

I would like to second everything that has been said in this thread