is it safe to breed crested to crested budgies together or are they like canaries and have a fatal gene

Timbo,I have read about that fatal gene,But havent had any personal experiance with the problem.All the crested breeders I know.Dont breed crest to crest,because they are trying to breed size into there birds,so they breed crest to normal or crest breed.You don`t get as many crests.But they are usely biger then finches.Or sparrows.

I don't know. I wouldn't think it would be fatal.

A fatal gene, means that they can't have two copies of the gene or else they die and thus when parents carrying the fatal gene breed, the babies carrying both genes terminate before they are hatched or born, or just don't fertilize.

There are also some fatal genes in chinchillas too and for them it means they abort them, I think. So usually they aren't born and then die, they usually die before birth or hatching, before they are fully developed. I'll have a look for you.

Here is a quote from MedicineNet.com. This is a definition of a zygotic lethal gene.

Lethal gene, zygotic: A gene that is lethal (fatal) for the zygote, the cell formed by the union of a sperm (male sex cell) and an ovum (female sex cell). The zygote would normally develop into an embryo, as instructed by the genetic material within the unified cell. However, a zygotic lethal gene scotches prenatal development at its earliest point.

 

A zygotic lethal gene is a mutated (changed) version of a normal gene essential to the survival of the zygote. The extent of the mutation can range from a change in a single base in the DNA to deletion (loss) of the entire gene.

 

Here is the definition of a lethal gene from the free online dictionary:

Lethal gene - any gene that has an effect that causes the death of the organism at any stage of life

cistron, gene, factor - (genetics) a segment of DNA that is involved in producing a polypeptide chain; it can include regions preceding and following the coding DNA as well as introns between the exons; it is considered a unit of heredity; "genes were formerly called factors"

 

So I was wrong about any lethal gene having a terminantion in-utero. Only zygotic ones do that.

 

Ah, here we go. It appears that it is lethal, quoted from centralpets.com http://www.centralpets.com/php/search/stor...ay.php?Story=24 :

The Crested Budgie: There are at least three varieties of Crested Budgie. It should be noted that the gene that causes cresting is dominant. Two Crested Budgies should never be mated, as the 'double crest factor' resulting from such a mating is lethal.

 

It doesn't go onto to say, where the lethal gene terminates the baby, but if it is a zygotic lethal gene, which it most probably would be, the two crested parents would still produce babies, just no double factor babies, so you would have half the amount of babies you would normally have.

Edited July 9, 200717 yr by Sailorwolf

Hello I once bred cresteds and ive paired two cresteds together on numerious times to increase my numbers and never once had any problem with them but i will agree with macka the size of the birds went down and from a show point was not good the crossing of crest to normal or crest to crest bred is the way to go .

a crest bred bird is the young from the pairing of crest to normal , the birds that are normal will carry the crest gene hidden in their make up and so are called crest bred.

thanks for the replies dont have crested birds yet but aiming to soon. just getting as much info as i can before i go into the crested