Why are my yellowfaced budgies producing normal blues? ..... my male is a normal yellowface and the female is opaline yellowface. All the young have been skyblue normals. Years ago i had a chart to be able to predict the possible outcomes of mated pairs if their background was known... unfortunately i no longer have this chart...but i did think have a pair of yellowfaces breeding together would give a fair chance of the young 50% being yellowface.

Here are some really good articles written about the yellowface gene....

 

http://www.birdhobbyist.com/parrotcolour/peter/yface01.html

 

http://www.birdhobbyist.com/parrotcolour/peter/yface02.html

 

I have a dark factor mauve cockbird who consistantly produces yellowface babies. He is a double factor yellow face that "appears" white face. Maybe you have produced double factor yellowfaces ?

I gave a pseudo-genetics explanation about this somewhere, but I can't find it.

 

Let's use WW for a normal whiteface, and yW for a yellowface. You only need one gene for a bird to appear yellowfaced, and it will override the gene for whiteface. If you have two yellowface blue birds, they each have yW. The possible outcomes therefore are yW, yy, or WW depending upon which gene the babies get from each parent. The funny thing is that a doublefactor yellowface bird (yy) will appear to have a white face. If you figure percentages, you have a greater chance of whitefaced bird from two yellowfaced blue parents because you will get both WW and yy birds (whiteface) and fewer yW (visual yellowfaces) simply due to percentages.

 

For an example, I bred two yellowfaced birds and out of 9 young, only 3 had yellowfaces. The remaining 6 were either true whitefaced birds, or doublefactor yellowfaced birds. The first clutch contained 5 babies - 2 were yellowfaced. The second clutch contained 4 babies, only 1 was yellowfaced. (He was also doublefactor dominant pied, but that is a different lesson, LOL.) The only way to tell which is which would be to wait until the offspring were of breeding age and pair them to birds that are known whitefaced birds to see what the babies look like.

 

The links Kaz gave you are obviously more in-depth than what I've written, but I hope it helps explain why you have so many apparently whitefaced birds. You actually have a 67% chance of having whitefaced birds. :hap: But that is over the breeding life of the parents, so if you've only had one clutch, it is very probable they all were visual whitefaces. Some of them might actually be doublefactor yellowfaces though. One of the miracles of genetics.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forums!! When you get the chance, introduce yourself and your flock in the "Your Flock" section if you want, and post up some pictures of your birds. We love pictures.

Edited March 28, 200718 yr by Rainbow

I gave a pseudo-genetics explanation about this somewhere, but I can't find it.

 

Let's use WW for a normal whiteface, and yW for a yellowface. You only need one gene for a bird to appear yellowfaced, and it will override the gene for whiteface. If you have two yellowface blue birds, they each have yW. The possible outcomes therefore are yW, yy, or WW depending upon which gene the babies get from each parent. The funny thing is that a doublefactor yellowface bird (yy) will appear to have a white face. If you figure percentages, you have a greater chance of whitefaced bird from two yellowfaced blue parents because you will get both WW and yy birds (whiteface) and fewer yW (visual yellowfaces) simply due to percentages.

 

For an example, I bred two yellowfaced birds and out of 9 young, only 3 had yellowfaces. The remaining 6 were either true whitefaced birds, or doublefactor yellowfaced birds. The first clutch contained 5 babies - 2 were yellowfaced. The second clutch contained 4 babies, only 1 was yellowfaced. (He was also doublefactor dominant pied, but that is a different lesson, (Laughing out loud).) The only way to tell which is which would be to wait until the offspring were of breeding age and pair them to birds that are known whitefaced birds to see what the babies look like.

 

The links Kaz gave you are obviously more in-depth than what I've written, but I hope it helps explain why you have so many apparently whitefaced birds. You actually have a 67% chance of having whitefaced birds. :hap: But that is over the breeding life of the parents, so if you've only had one clutch, it is very probable they all were visual whitefaces. Some of them might actually be doublefactor yellowfaces though. One of the miracles of genetics.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forums!! When you get the chance, introduce yourself and your flock in the "Your Flock" section if you want, and post up some pictures of your birds. We love pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

THANKS that.... so far they have bred twice... and all babies are showing white faces...

If i breed, say, a male from these two that is presenting a whiteface ... with an unrelated female with a yellowface will that improve my chances of yellowfaces?

Also do you have anything like i used to have in the way of a list to predict outcomes... the one i had classified birds under sexlinked, dominant, recessive etc and showed the outcomes of putting various combinations together .... it was in a book ... I think the title was something like breeding budgies ... i purchased it about 25 years ago... thanks

Edited March 28, 200718 yr by Daz

Also keep in mind the DF yellowface (showing white) is only for the type 1 gene.

 

http://www.gencalc.com/gen/eng_genc.php?sp=0Budg

This site can produce possible outcomes from a pairing.

Rainbow. You got your percentages wrong.

Pairing two yellowfaces together. You will get 25% DF yellowface, 50% SF yellowface and 25% white face.

 

When assigning letters to genes, you use capitals for the dominant genes not for the recessive genes and you use he same letter for different alleles of the same gene. There for a DF yellow face would be YY a Sf factor wold be Yy and a whiteface would be yy.

If DF yellowface type 1 appears white. Yelllowface type 1 is an incompletely dominant gene. Whereas if DF yellowface type 2 appears to be mottly yellow then it is an autosomal dominant gene.

Edited March 30, 200718 yr by Sailorwolf

your learning heaps Sailor

 

But why would a white face by yy ?? It holds no yellow gene so it should be ww. as with single factors it would have one yellowface gene and one white face gene which would be Yw.

Yes I know. But the y is the recessive form of the Y gene, thus it has lower case letters. In genetics, it is proper to use the same letters for the same gene locus, or they become confused with other genes. It is the nomenclature.

 

For instance the C locus in mammals is the albino gene. An animal that is cc is an albino and animal that is Cc is not. Same with the dilution gene. An animal that has no dilution is normal and is dominant however it is assigned the letters DD or Dd, even though a DD animal has no dilution allele, at the dilution locus it has two normal dominant alleles known as DD. A diluted animal is dd.

Oh my.... now i am very confused..... but thanks for your help

(Laughing out loud) it does get confusing just know that 2 yellowfaces can produce a white faced budgie odd as it may sound .

 

your learning heaps Sailor

 

But why would a white face by yy ?? It holds no yellow gene so it should be ww. as with single factors it would have one yellowface gene and one white face gene which would be Yw.

 

I have always seen it the way you are describing it too Nerwen .

Sorry twaddle for getting a bit indepth but talks can sometimes do that

 

Yes Lovey may I see it backwards but I would want to use a letter for what is normal then add the recessive afterwards.

 

For instance the C locus in mammals is the albino gene. An animal that is cc is an albino and animal that is Cc is not.

 

See I still want to think of it as (will use N for normal since i don't know the letter used in mammals) NN for a normal animals Nc for one know to carry the albino gene and cc for an albino. Maybe it should be NNcc ?

Well you taught me Nerwen a lot so that is probably why (Laughing out loud) Do what works for you so you can figure it out that is what I say unless it is a genetic test :.

Oh dear I had no idea it would become this involved... :budgiedance:

 

I know my nomenclature was incorrect, but my intention was only to help twaddle easily understand, not go into a technical discussion of genetics. Sorry Sailorwolf, I know it wasn't technically correct. But as you stated, there is obviously more to it than what I said. Thank you for correcting me about percentages. You are right. Again, not wanting to go too much into it, but percentages are just that - percentages. It is not necessarily what you will end up with in actuality...luck of the draw I guess. It seems that in reality the likelihood of getting visual whitefaced babies is higher than 50%...even though that is not what the percentages say. It was my experience, and also seems to be the case with others. Also they are drawn over the breeding life of the birds, so if there are 8 clutches you would have to take all offspring and see if the percentages were accurate or not. If twaddle's bird has 4 more clutches and some yellowfaced babies show up, then the percentages may be closer for her. That is all I was trying to convey. I suppose I should have been more careful in my wording. I really over-simplified.

 

In future I won't respond unless I am technically correct, to avoid confusion.

Edited April 1, 200718 yr by Rainbow

Haha (Laughing out loud). It's okay Rainbow. I have just been studying for my animal genetics and breeding paper.

 

What you said about the percentages is probably right too. There are most likely, other factors that we do not know about coming into play. For instance with Izzy and Saffron they hould have produced 50% whiteface and 50% yellowface however out of 6 babies, 1 was whitefaced and 5 where yellowfaced.

 

Saffron also didn't produce any green birds, so I am starting to wonder if she is actually a really deep yellow, yellowface type 2