Dean - thanks so much for posting all the info on the violets - it's very interesting.

 

I recently purchased (what I was told) was a dominant pied grey cock, however, he looked more of a cobalt colour to me. I asked for a pedigree report and received it today from the breeder (who is a member of a budgie club). It states that the cock is a dominant pied violet grey. Here's a (not so good) picture:

 

 

I'll try and get a better one tomorrow!

 

Anyway, his parents are:

 

Cock - Dominant Pied Grey from (Cock - Opaline Skyblue, Hen - Dominant Pied Greygreen)

Hen - Opaline Cobalt from (Cock - Opaline Dark Green, Hen - Opaline Light Green)

 

I don't have the complete pedigree of the great-grandparents, but there is no violet in any that are listed (lots of Cobalts though).

 

From what you've posted, Dean, I can't work out how this bird could be deemed a violet, as you say the violet gene is partially dominant and therefore one of the parents would have to show violet, otherwise it wouldn't be there (I think??).

 

Also, you mentioned previously that it is not a good idea to breed a violet and a grey, however, (if he is in fact carrying the violet gene) I'm wondering what I would need to pair this bird with in order to get the violet 'away' from the grey. I'm presuming my best chance would be to pair it with a violet cobalt hen? Or is trying to get violets out of this bird a futile exercise?

Edited September 16, 201014 yr by The Black Doctor

that cock is not a grey!

Dean - thanks so much for posting all the info on the violets - it's very interesting.

 

I recently purchased (what I was told) was a dominant pied grey cock, however, he looked more of a cobalt colour to me. I asked for a pedigree report and received it today from the breeder (who is a member of a budgie club). It states that the cock is a dominant pied violet grey. Here's a (not so good) picture:

 

 

I'll try and get a better one tomorrow!

 

Anyway, his parents are:

 

Cock - Dominant Pied Grey from (Cock - Opaline Skyblue, Hen - Dominant Pied Greygreen)

Hen - Opaline Cobalt from (Cock - Opaline Dark Green, Hen - Opaline Light Green)

 

I don't have the complete pedigree of the great-grandparents, but there is no violet in any that are listed (lots of Cobalts though).

 

From what you've posted, Dean, I can't work out how this bird could be deemed a violet, as you say the violet gene is partially dominant and therefore one of the parents would have to show violet, otherwise it wouldn't be there (I think??).

 

Also, you mentioned previously that it is not a good idea to breed a violet and a grey, however, (if he is in fact carrying the violet gene) I'm wondering what I would need to pair this bird with in order to get the violet 'away' from the grey. I'm presuming my best chance would be to pair it with a violet cobalt hen? Or is trying to get violets out of this bird a futile exercise?

 

 

this bird is looking mauve mate

see the deep purple cheek patches

hes mauve for sure

Dean - thanks so much for posting all the info on the violets - it's very interesting.

 

I recently purchased (what I was told) was a dominant pied grey cock, however, he looked more of a cobalt colour to me. I asked for a pedigree report and received it today from the breeder (who is a member of a budgie club). It states that the cock is a dominant pied violet grey. Here's a (not so good) picture:

 

 

I'll try and get a better one tomorrow!

 

Anyway, his parents are:

 

Cock - Dominant Pied Grey from (Cock - Opaline Skyblue, Hen - Dominant Pied Greygreen)

Hen - Opaline Cobalt from (Cock - Opaline Dark Green, Hen - Opaline Light Green)

 

I don't have the complete pedigree of the great-grandparents, but there is no violet in any that are listed (lots of Cobalts though).

 

From what you've posted, Dean, I can't work out how this bird could be deemed a violet, as you say the violet gene is partially dominant and therefore one of the parents would have to show violet, otherwise it wouldn't be there (I think??).

 

Also, you mentioned previously that it is not a good idea to breed a violet and a grey, however, (if he is in fact carrying the violet gene) I'm wondering what I would need to pair this bird with in order to get the violet 'away' from the grey. I'm presuming my best chance would be to pair it with a violet cobalt hen? Or is trying to get violets out of this bird a futile exercise?

 

 

this bird is looking mauve mate

see the deep purple cheek patches

hes mauve for sure

 

 

 

 

 

I've heard that it's hard to tell if a mauve has violet. Based on the information given, there doesn't seem to be any possibility of violet in this bird. Maybe the breeder just used the words "violet" and "grey" to describe the mauve color, thinking it was a grey bird, and not realizing it is mauve.

 

I think this bird would be very useful in breeding violet dom pieds. He will give 1 dark factor to each of his chicks, so if you pair him to a sky violet, you will get all cobalt (1 dark factor) babies, and 50% of them should be dom pieds, and 50% have violet, so I think that comes out to 25% expected violet dom pieds.

Edited September 16, 201014 yr by KAZ

The bird looks like it could be a Mauve but a clearer picture would be good. The breeder may be one of those who cannot distingiush the difference between grey and mauve and this is quite a common mistake. As for the violet, I don't think so. There is none in the immediate pedigree supplied. Violet Mauves are not a dull as a usual Mauve.

The bird looks like it could be a Mauve but a clearer picture would be good. The breeder may be one of those who cannot distingiush the difference between grey and mauve and this is quite a common mistake. As for the violet, I don't think so. There is none in the immediate pedigree supplied. Violet Mauves are not a dull as a usual Mauve.

i totally agree

this bird is just mauve

violet mave is much more violet sheen through out them almost all feathers under tail would look visual violet if was violet mave

ive breed many

Thanks for all the replies guys. Yes, I too thought it was strange that the fancier's pedigree report stated that was a dominant pied violet grey, as there is no trace of violet on his family tree. I must admit though, I haven't seen his parents or grandparents, so they could possibly (?) have the violet gene, but it's just not evident on the pedigree records.

 

The pedigree report I received for the other bird I bought off this breeder has a mauve grandparent, so I would have thought this breeder knows the difference between a mauve bird and a grey one - but who knows.

 

I took some more photos this morning and it was a bit overcast here when I took them.

 

 

 

 

 

Anyway - the plot thickens!

Edited September 16, 201014 yr by The Black Doctor

well i will admit he looks exactly like my violet grey dom pied cock who has violet chicks with whom ever hes with

ill try upload a picture of him latter today but im off to a teddy bear picnic right now so will be tonight

his cheek patches are neither violet like they looked in last pick or grey

their the slate blue its called french blue colour that the violet holding greys have

m plot does thicken blackdoc

My vote is mauve, but regardless of what he is the best possible pairing you could do to find out would be with a normal sky blue hen. If you get greys and blues then he's grey, if you get all cobalts he's mauve. Presence of absence of violet is neither here nor there at this point - Finnie is right, paired with a violet sky hen he will produce 50% visual violet chicks, half of those being dominant pied also.

 

I'd be happier to find he is mauve than grey Mauve you can work with as far as violets go, grey I would avoid like the plague.

In the show budgie world when I first starting in clubs, the budgie breeders never really ever talked about mauve budgies. A budgie was either called grey or blue. If it didnt fit into those two slots it wasnt anything else. We all know there are mauves and likely so do show budgie breeders, but they have got in the habit of calling a budgie grey or blue........which is likely why the breeder you got yours from called it grey.

What a difference another picture makes. These new pics definately makes the bird look Violet Grey. okay so lets look back at the pedigree to find clues.

 

Cock - Dominant Pied Grey from (Cock - Opaline Skyblue, Hen - Dominant Pied Greygreen)

Hen - Opaline Cobalt from (Cock - Opaline Dark Green, Hen - Opaline Light Green)

 

The Grey is from the sire. Assuming the bird is Violet (as it looks like it in the photo) it has to come from either or both parents. Lets take the sire. Could he have been a Violet Grey? His sire, could he have been a Violet Grey Green?

 

The dam is Cobalt but is she? Could she be a Violet Sky? Her dam, could she be a Violet Light Green?

 

Just a couple fo possiblities of how the Violet can be explained.

Thanks for all your thoughts!

 

So, I'm guessing I'll pair him with a violet skyblue hen or a skyblue hen (anyone got a violet skyblue hen they want to sell me?)

 

If he is grey, what's the best way to breed the grey out, while still keeping the violet (presuming he has it)? I understand that the violet gene does not attach itself to the colour gene, so to me it seems like it could be achieved. It seems the best way is to get rid of the grey is to see which of his offspring are carrying the violet and are not grey and breed them to, say, a nomal skyblue or cobalt or a violet bird that does not have any grey? Can his offspring be split for grey, or is this impossible as grey is a dominant colour. Now I'm getting myself confused....!

I've found this topic to be an interesting read. We have a grey opaline cock (red rung) who we are about to breed for the first time. I've always commented that his grey colour just looks different??? (and I couldn't pick why). He has unknown parentage, but I'm very confident he's grey not mauve. The colour of your bird BD, looks just the same as my boy, so I'm thinking that maybe mine might be violet grey . That would be great, but only breeding will tell for sure....think I'll put him with a sky hen and see what happens.

 

Good Luck with your breeding and investigation BD, will be interesting to hear in the future, what you find out.

If he is grey, pair him to a sky blue and you'll get 50% grey factor and 50% blue chicks (not counting dark factor or violet). If you are trying to see if he ALSO has violet, then HALF of those blue chicks have a chance of visually showing it.

 

Because grey cannot be masked, the best way to get rid of it is to pair greys to blues (or greens if thats what you want) and only keep the chicks without grey. No other way to do it

With RIP on this one - definitely grey and likely violet, dom pied.

 

To breed the grey out you need to pair him back to a bird that is not grey (or grey green). As grey is a dominant factor half the chicks will be grey and half will not be grey. If you put him back to a grey factored hen 25% chance of DF greys, 50% chance of sf greys and 25% chance non grey.

 

Doh! Beaten by Dean

Edited September 17, 201014 yr by nubbly5

Interestingly the whole "violet grey or mauve?" is a reasonably tricky and often debated distinction. If you look back through my threads you can see how hard it was to figure out the colour of my own violet grey / mauve chick. Turned out to be a violet grey, but i later bred a mauve that was a very very close colour. In both birds the tail was the main identifier - the violet grey had a black tail, the mauve had a deep deep blue tail.

 

Your bird is pied - it has a white tail. So no help there (See why I advise avoiding pied until you have fixed your violet line? Then its a simple matter to introduce a double factor dominant pied cock to one or more double factor violet hens from your violet line and bingo!)

 

Link to thread: Mauve Or Violet Grey?

Edited September 17, 201014 yr by Dean_NZ

Interestingly the whole "violet grey or mauve?" is a reasonably tricky and often debated distinction. If you look back through my threads you can see how hard it was to figure out the colour of my own violet grey / mauve chick. Turned out to be a violet grey, but i later bred a mauve that was a very very close colour. In both birds the tail was the main identifier - the violet grey had a black tail, the mauve had a deep deep blue tail.

 

Your bird is pied - it has a white tail. So no help there (See why I advise avoiding pied until you have fixed your violet line? Then its a simple matter to introduce a double factor dominant pied cock to one or more double factor violet hens from your violet line and bingo!)

 

Link to thread: Mauve Or Violet Grey?

 

But a mauves cheek patch is very different to the colour of this birds cheek patch!

Interestingly the whole "violet grey or mauve?" is a reasonably tricky and often debated distinction. If you look back through my threads you can see how hard it was to figure out the colour of my own violet grey / mauve chick. Turned out to be a violet grey, but i later bred a mauve that was a very very close colour. In both birds the tail was the main identifier - the violet grey had a black tail, the mauve had a deep deep blue tail.

 

Your bird is pied - it has a white tail. So no help there (See why I advise avoiding pied until you have fixed your violet line? Then its a simple matter to introduce a double factor dominant pied cock to one or more double factor violet hens from your violet line and bingo!)

 

Link to thread: Mauve Or Violet Grey?

 

But a mauves cheek patch is very different to the colour of this birds cheek patch!

 

But then we've seen a lot of variation in cheek patch colours that are 'supposed' to be either violet or slate blue. Whether that is the problem with blue showing up properly on camera, use of flash or not, camera quality, light quality or just the birds themselves who can say lol.

 

Edit: But I will agree that a mauves cheek patch is different from the colour that appears in the photos of this bird.

Edited September 17, 201014 yr by Dean_NZ

Why is it that so many members on here get hung up about Violet,

By the last photo,it is not Mauve,the cheek patch is Grey.

Cause it is a pretty colour Mack? Simple as that.

 

Dean blue birds are very hard to photograph due to the way in which light works. Light we see with our eyes appears white but it is made up of 7 colours which by the way aren't actually colours, we just percieve it as such. Classic example is a rainbow. Light enters water droplets in the air and are refracted inside the bubble. The light exiting cannot be seen as colour until the bubble is at a certain high upon the ground...from memory 40 something degrees (I'll check on that)... at this point our eyes are able to see the seven colour of the rainbow. Similar thing is happening with the bird feather. Light enters and is refracted inside the structure and depending on the contents i.e. melanin, psittacine pigment, it will change the light wave that is exited. The psittacine pigment that is absent from the feather allows more of the blue part of the spectrum to be seen and it very hard to capture on film. Even photographers will use blue enhancing filters when shooting the ocean and skyies inorder to retain the blue and in some cases to enhance.

 

The denser the structure of the feather is i.e. violet cheek patches the harder it is to capture on film, digital or otherwise.

okay so thats three votes violet grey here is my violet grey boy

 

as you can see the exact colour of your boy

with the french blue cheek patches

 

 

 

believe it or not this is the father to my violet hen

 

and dom pied hen

 

from a light green opaline cinnamon hen/blue

this is mum and daughter

 

so im saying violet blue for sure

I finally managed to work out who the owner is and I spoke to him about it. He said my bird is definitely a dominant pied grey violet and said the violet factor came from the hen's side. Because it is difficult to pick the violet in the green series birds that produced the cobalt hen, he just put it down as a cobalt in his records (I'm guessing that it could possibly be a skyblue violet rather than a cobalt). Anyway, he said that he has quite a few violet birds and has been trying to breed a violet dominant pied for years. He now has one and I'm going up there today to have a look at his birds. He has 30 pairs breeding at the moment!

 

He also said he has a young cobalt violet hen, which he is going to keep for me.

 

I'll take my camera and take some photos if he let's me.

 

GB - Your boy does have the same colouring and the same slate cheek patches as mine. Perhaps the mystery has now been solved!

Edited September 18, 201014 yr by The Black Doctor

I finally managed to work out who the owner is and I spoke to him about it. He says the violet factor came from the hen's side and that he has quite a few violet birds. He also said he has been trying to breed a violet dominant pied for years and actually managed to breed one this year. I am going up there today to have a look at his birds. He also said he has a young cobalt violet hen, which he is going to keep for me.

 

I'll take my camera and take some photos if he let's me.

 

 

thats great

you just remember

when looking at greys anything with his colour cheek patch the french blue is most probbly violet grey with his colouring it helps you find the violet birds that are unknown by some breeders

I finally managed to work out who the owner is and I spoke to him about it. He says the violet factor came from the hen's side and that he has quite a few violet birds. He also said he has been trying to breed a violet dominant pied for years and actually managed to breed one this year. I am going up there today to have a look at his birds. He also said he has a young cobalt violet hen, which he is going to keep for me.

 

I'll take my camera and take some photos if he let's me.

 

 

thats great

you just remember

when looking at greys anything with his colour cheek patch the french blue is most probbly violet grey with his colouring it helps you find the violet birds that are unknown by some breeders

 

Thanks for the advice GB. Great to see that IPS error is now fixed!!

 

Anyway, he has over 120 birds and it was very interesting to see his setup and which birds he had paired together (about 60 birds breeding at the moment!). I was up there for an hour and had a good look at the parents of my bird - the hen defintely has violet in her but it didn't appear to show through that much in her body colour, unless she is a skyblue violet, but her colouring was more like a cobalt, just a bit more intense (if that makes sense!). She definitely had a purple tinge around her neck at the bottom of her mask and different coloured cheek patches to the other cobalts.

 

However, he had some violets that were more vivid in colour and you could definitely tell the cobalt violet pieds - all from the same nest - beautiful violet colouring which looked awesome on the dominant pied. Something I'd like to try and achieve.

 

Anyway, I get to pick up my young hen next weekend, so in 12 months or so I'll pair her with my best blue cock (or the grey violet pied) and hopefully get some nice chicks.

What a difference another picture makes. These new pics definately makes the bird look Violet Grey. okay so lets look back at the pedigree to find clues.

 

Cock - Dominant Pied Grey from (Cock - Opaline Skyblue, Hen - Dominant Pied Greygreen)

Hen - Opaline Cobalt from (Cock - Opaline Dark Green, Hen - Opaline Light Green)

 

The Grey is from the sire. Assuming the bird is Violet (as it looks like it in the photo) it has to come from either or both parents. Lets take the sire. Could he have been a Violet Grey? His sire, could he have been a Violet Grey Green?

 

The dam is Cobalt but is she? Could she be a Violet Sky? Her dam, could she be a Violet Light Green?

 

Just a couple fo possiblities of how the Violet can be explained.

 

RIP Budgies - the sire is defintely a grey dominant pied with no violet whatsoever. The dam, is a violet cobalt, but as I mentioned above, it's not as brilliant a violet as some of the breeders other violets.

 

So, now that I have determined he is a dominant pied grey violet, can you confirm the following:

 

- If I pair him with a normal skyblue hen - I should get 50% blue, 50% grey and some of these should carry violet

- If I pair him with the normal cobalt violet hen I am getting off the same breeder - I should once again get 50% blue, 50% grey and all should carry violet

 

Is this correct?

 

And does anyone want to take a punt a what dark factor my dominant pied grey violet cock is?! Looking at his colouring I'd say no dark factor, but I have not really seen too many grey budgies together and it seems to me to be very difficult to pick the dark factor in a grey, unlike the blues and green where it is fairly clear.