Dean_NZ

A definite score Looks great.

Just remove the nest box and leave them for now Dont fret about the eggs, just remove them.

Looks to me like a violet cobalt as the colouring is quite deep and normally camera blue doesnt show up very well. Might be a normal cobalt, but if it is purple in real life then go with violet lol. Also the wings need a bit of a clean up with regards to the trimming.

My only question at this point is to ask how often and how recently have you brought in new birds? What is the quarantine procedure? I know there are some breeders in the UK and elsewhere who are facing a rather new respiratory illness they cannot cure. It stays in the population and some birds seem more resistant to it than others. Of those who start to show symptoms (nasal discharge, sneezing, lethargy/low energy etc) 50% will die. The other 50% get better, but usually get sick again later - no bird that has had it has been cleared of it. I will try to find the posts/forum where I read about this, but in the meantime it is worth considering that you may be dealing with an airborne illness rather than setup issues...

Very excited to see what these 2 produce. Come oooon feathers!

Just wait until she lays it and then move her. If you move it now she will most likely lay it off of a perch and it will fall to the ground and break. easier just to wait and then move her as soon as she lays.

There are always differences in the wing marking strength of both normal spangles and opaline spangles. Nothing there that sets off any alarm bells for GB, Kaz and myself.

If mum is opaline, then dad is a double factor spangle opaline. The chicks are all spangle opaline from what i can see.

10 pups! Thats an incredible first litter. Fingers crossed about the other one getting out okay and the deceased one coming out with no problems as well so she can start to recover. 10 pups... my goodness Kaz, what have you been feeding her!

Chicks crops start out being able to only hold a few drops of liquid but soon expand enormously. If you put your thumb and forefinger together to form an "0" the crops at their largest get to about that size and very tight/round. After fledging age and onwards their crops shrink down a bit as adults tend to eat more frequently, but less at a single time. Once they are adults they eat a maintenance diet rather than a growth based diet so there isnt the need for such a large crop. During breeding the hens crop gets noticeably large when feeding a lot of chicks and/or receiving feed from the cock as well.

What I meant by this is both hens are split for 'blue', and the 'blue' mutation they are split for would be YF2 (so in essence they are green split for yellowface blue mutant as opposed to basic 'blue'). I know they cannot be green + split blue + yellow face, rather green + yellowface blue.

In short, this cock is likely not the carrier or the cause of any yellow face. It is 99% likely both the hens he paired to were split for blue, and carried YF2 which would not have been detectable as they were green birds. White faced blues are either normals, or double factor yellow face type 1. You cannot mask YF2 or golden face in single or double factor in a blue bird. Green birds SPLIT FOR BLUE can have one normal set of genes for normal yellow pigmentation (which is why they are green..) and one faulty (i.e blue) mutation. Without going into specifics that 'blue' gene can be normal blue, or a single YF1, YF2 or golden face gene. A green bird could never be double factor yellowface and produce 100% yellow face in its blue offspring - at MOST 50% of its blue offspring will be yellowface if it is carrying a yellowface gene and is paired to a normal blue partner.

I have two light green opaline cinnamon hens in the nest right now. And I have two single factor violet cobalt yellowfaces with 6 chicks, so there is a good chance one will be a DF violet sky, cobalt or mauve chick. We shall see.

I tame birds for people myself, and I absolutely agree with GB that its the personality that shows who can be tamed so sometimes you cant give people a certain colour because not all babies respond to taming the same. The other thing is, every time I try to tame one myself, I "happen" to get a request for the VERY colour or type of bird I am taming for myself. This has happened every time I tried to tame one for myself, and guess what. It just happened again today with the YF visual violet I was secretly taming for myself lol.

I'd be interested in hearing as well GB when you have the time

Looks like a hen to me It 'looks' clearflighted in the pics, but then dommy pieds have varied amounts of clear feather so she may just be a dommy pied with very little clear feathering, OR the dad is a dommy clearflight combo pied.

Great picture up against some very stiff competition! Well earned win!

Looks to be an opaline recessive pied. Orange beak, no iris rings (he is young mind you). What colour are his eyes? I was going to ask about the cere as well as it almost looks hennish there, but then when you consider recessive pied + camera lighting, I figured it would be pale pinky purple not white, plus it is far too smooth for a hens cere.

Wow. Never seen or heard of this before. Sorry I cant be of any help, but it is quite interesting!

I cant quite see the yellowface but i'll take your word for it. On that note, YF cinnamon opaline sky blue. And the other one is either a cinnamon recessive pied cobalt, or a recessive pied SF violet sky blue as I cant tell from the pics if her head barring is brown or black. She looks cinnamon to me from the wing markings tho.

Right on both accounts. Grey probably has a dark factor too, would be a cobalt if the grey was removed.

Thats the mistake people make. Colony breeding is NOTHING like the wild. We shut them in, cramp them up, offer them 1-2 nesting sites each, and then leave them to fight over it. In the wild, they go where they want, when they want, with who they want. Yeah they may still fight, but thats the cock/hens fault for being stupid enough not to find their own spot :fingerscrossed:

Just looks like an opaline dark factor grey cock with heavy flecking. The flecking shows he has a good deal of melanin, which, coupled with the dark factor would likely make for a very dark grey bird with deep black markings. But I don't think there is anything more to it than that.

All my yellow belly chicks were from the same hen too. I watch my eggs like a hawk around hatch time, and I know when they first start making moves inside and can guess the hatch time within about 2 hours accuracy. All my yellow bellies started chipping the egg late evening and should have been due about lunch the following day, but they were long dead by early morning each time. I think they may even have been helped out of the egg by the hen before midnight, just too eager. Usually happened with the first 2 eggs and she seemed to stop for the last 3 of each clutch. Eager mum Just a bit tooo eager :hmm:

Yes ALL visual greywings produced from a greywing/greywing or greywing/dilute paired with a dilute/dilute will be split for dilute, as the dilute parent can only pass on one dilute gene and the other parent will pass on either greywing or dilute depending on whether it is pure greywing or split.