Hey guys,

 

I would like to try my hand at breeding sometime later this year. I'm not ready to start yet - I want to go into it slowly, make sure I've learned as much as possible, prepared properly, have the right setup etc (plus, of course, allowing for settling in times and whatnot). I also don't really feel "ready" to do it yet. But I'm thinking in advance, and would like some help.

 

The girls I bought on Friday are for breeding, but here are some questions for the future:

 

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Number of pairs

First things first, should I get a third hen so that I will have 3 pairs to put down (eventually) or is two okay? Haha, let's face it, I doubt I'll be upset if someone tells me to go get another...

 

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Breeding for colour - violet/blue

At the moment I'm not really interested in breeding birds to actually actively show (although I do want to breed show type). Obviously I don't want to blatantly ignore faults (and would prefer to correct them) but I'm not going all-out to have a perfect show bird, if that makes sense?

 

I am particularly partial to blues/violet, pieds, and opaline. My new violet girl (http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f136/sma...7_hens_blue.jpg) is gorgeous. What should I pair her with? I was thinking sky or cobalt (or violet if I can find one). Sky blues are growing on me quite a lot, and they will be a lot easier to find than another violet I think. http://www.budgerigarrare.com/violet.htm says that pairing a visual violet with a sky would be:

 

25% violet sky

25% sky

25% violet cobalt

25% cobalt

 

(this is, of course, assuming that my girl is violet cobalt)

 

This is basically a mix of my favourites, with no "wastage" in terms of what I personally think is attractive - all of the babies would be what I want. But are there any problems I'm not seeing? By that I mean the fact that I am still learning genetics etc and I read things about "wastage" because birds are split and you can't tell they're split etc. Can you see any hidden problems I should be aware of? Any undesirable outcomes?

 

Do you think I should pair a normal cock with her, or another dom pied? I *love* DF dom pieds, but again if there is some hidden problem with doing that, I'll shy away from it. As pretty as I think they are, if breeding a bunch of double factors will mess with future breeding later, I want to keep that in mind. A normal sky will also be a lot easier to find, so I'll have to keep that in mind too.

 

Any other suggestions for this hen? I'm totally open to ideas.

 

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Breeding for colour - green series clearbody

 

From the reading I've been doing on TCB, you can either go TCB to TCB, TCB to ino, or TCB to normal.

 

TCB to TCB is obviously the way to go for maximising your TCBs.

TCB to ino will give you TCBs and inos (a clutch of little yellow TCBs and lutinos would make me happy)

TCB to normal will give you some normals/split and there'd be a bit of "wastage".

 

Here's my girl again: http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f136/sma...ens_yellow2.jpg

 

What do you think would be the best course? I'm thinking that finding another TCB is going to be a bit difficult, so it's probably going to be a choice between ino and normal. What do you think?

 

She has excellent colour, almost no suffusion (at least I believe so!). What's with the sloppy spots though - should I worry about trying to fix those with a bird with good spots? (as I said earlier, I'm not really breeding to show, but at the same time, I'd like to fix any obvious, glaring faults)

 

If I went with a normal cock, what colour would be best?

 

 

 

Any other suggestions welcome!

 

 

 

As I said, this is all for months down the track, I just want to have an idea of what to look out for if I see people culling or happen to see something in the store. I want to know of a few different types to look out for, rather than picking something that I think looks good and finding out it's really a poor match. If I know now, it means I can keep my eyes open over the next few months.

 

 

Thanks in advance!

:bump:

*grin*

 

Thanks Neat.

 

Plenty of time, I'm in no rush.

 

Although Maurie seems to be desperately in love with his red swing and things are moving fast. What would I get from YF mauve pied x red wooden swing? He's really smitten.

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Number of pairs

First things first, should I get a third hen so that I will have 3 pairs to put down (eventually) or is two okay? Haha, let's face it, I doubt I'll be upset if someone tells me to go get another... :bump:

The more pairs the better as you get more fosters if something goes wrong.

 

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Breeding for colour - violet/blue

 

My new violet girl (http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f136/sma...7_hens_blue.jpg) is gorgeous. What should I pair her with? I was thinking sky or cobalt (or violet if I can find one).

 

Violet Sky birds are a nice colour.

Here is one of my violet sky birds.

 

Violet is like grey and will modify a colour, so if you want a lighter violet use sky, if you want a darker violet add a dark factor and use cobalt.

Do you think I should pair a normal cock with her, or another dom pied? I *love* DF dom pieds, but again if there is some hidden problem with doing that, I'll shy away from it. As pretty as I think they are, if breeding a bunch of double factors will mess with future breeding later, I want to keep that in mind. A normal sky will also be a lot easier to find, so I'll have to keep that in mind too.

 

Double factor pied will only produce single factor pieds when put with a normal. And the chance of getting double factor when breeding two dom pieds together is only 25% anyway, so its up to you if you want to pair with a normal or a pied. Make sure it is dominant pied though because if you dont want to breed her with a recessive pied - that will make a mess.

 

 

Breeding for colour - green series clearbody

 

From the reading I've been doing on TCB, you can either go TCB to TCB, TCB to ino, or TCB to normal.

 

TCB to TCB is obviously the way to go for maximising your TCBs.

TCB to ino will give you TCBs and inos (a clutch of little yellow TCBs and lutinos would make me happy)

TCB to normal will give you some normals/split and there'd be a bit of "wastage".

 

Here's my girl again: http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f136/sma...ens_yellow2.jpg

 

I dont know about the genetics of TBC, however I feel your hen is tall and narrow so i think she needs a cock with nice wide shoulers to add some width to the chicks.

Edited March 30, 200916 yr by **Liv**

Thank you Liv, that is wonderful, exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

 

I agree about her being tall and narrow, which is another reason why I was considering a normal boy for her - they seem to be more "solid" and beefy

 

If I put her with a lutino cock, I'll get 50% lutino hens, 50% clearbody/lutino split cocks.

 

If I put her with a normal cock, I'll get 50% normal hens, 50% normal/split clearbody cocks.

 

 

 

Obviously the first choice is nice for immediate gratification, ie "aww, baby lutinos and clearbodies, yay!" but the ability to find a nice solid lutino cock (to improve her) is probably very limited, compared to finding a nice solid normal.

 

But if I go with the normal, it means I get normal hens and split cocks. To be blunt - I get very confused when thinking about splits and future pairings, it makes my head spin a bit.

 

If I want to get more clearbodies "back" (again assuming it's near impossible to find another TCB to use) I suppose I should take the split cocks and put them with a nice lutino hen down the track for:

 

25% clearbody/lutino cocks

25% lutino cocks

25% clearbody hens

25% lutino hens

 

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So: pair my current TCB hen with a normal

=50% split cocks and 50% normal hens

 

take those split cocks and put them to a future lutino hen

= 25% split tcb/lutino cocks, 25% lutino cocks, 25% tcb hens, 25% ino hens

= what I want

 

 

I'm thinking it will be easiest to find a nice solid normal cock now, and source a good lutino hen later.

 

Thoughts? Am I way off?

 

Does anyone have a better idea for how to improve her/future pairings etc?

 

 

:bump:

Oh - and if I go with a normal boy for the TCB hen, does it matter the colour, or would there be a particular one that would work best - does anyone know?

do you want white or yellow TCB's? If you want to get some white TCB's you will need to pair it to a blue series bird And then (if your original tcb is split for blue) you will get some white TCB's as well as some yellow ones... I think that is right..

Although Maurie seems to be desperately in love with his red swing and things are moving fast. What would I get from YF mauve pied x red wooden swing? He's really smitten.

 

 

You would get a frustrated YF mauve pied cock!

Edited March 31, 200916 yr by KAZ

Another dumb and at the moment entirely hypothetical question because I don't have access to any albinos:

 

What would happen if you threw an albino into the mix (rather than a lutino) with a green series TCB?

 

Anything? Nothing?

 

Mostly curiosity and because I don't have a solid grasp of inos.

albino's are the blue series bird of the ino gene where as lutinos are the green series... as for out comes... I'm hopeless so I will let someone else help you out there :rofl:

If you want to breed violets,mate mauve X sky blue,cobalt will not help the colour Violet.They will be cobalt in colour.