First of my 6-7 hatchlings to fledge, more to come any day!

[Ginene]

Nanajennie
Loving Woodstock with egg on his face!!!! Definitely a man ! Lol! Yay Pied Fledgling#1!! Yay Jennie ...

[cindy]

Congratulations on the fledgling!!

As far as sexing the gray, this is a tough one so early on. The chest is dark and it appears to have faint bars or smudges. Hens can also have smudges that are considered show faults. You may need to give this one a bit more time to color out. Do you see anything in the flanking or cheeks, any dots of orange or chestnut (flanks)?

(I blew the picture up 2x's to look)

[Nanajennie]

cindy no color, it doesn't really show up to the naked eye yet... so we will wait! Whatever it is, I Love this little one and will never get rid of him! My nutty little bird

@Ginene, Thanks my friend! I can't wait til we are watching your babies grow etc

[cindy]

these little ones can surprise you....hang in there, give it a week or two maybe there will be more of a clue!

[Nanajennie]

Very excited to watch the changes every day!

[fhgwgads]

Nanajennie what a stinkin cutie!!! I love the food all over his beak! They are so adorable when they have messy faces. He(she) looks like a character with a lot of spunk! This little one was meant to be! definitely keep us posted on him-her and of course the others as well! Soon they will be little fluff balls bouncing around learning, failing adorably, piecing things together, etc! I really can't get over how darn cute!!! And they grow up so fast!!

[Nanajennie]

fhgwgads It is so cute... Cant wait to see all the pieds out and about... I need to get the cage Ginene sent me set up... they are going to be bursting at the seams in the cage they are in now. But O will need to recruit some help for this bad boy its a FO40 or something like that LOL

[TheWhiteFinchAviary]

@TheWhiteFinchAviary Charlie and Lucy's first clutch has 1 normal grey male, own normal grey female and a beautiful CFW male

I don't know what 'split to CFW' means.

Splits occur in sex-linked mutations when the genes are passed to the offspring, but do not denote the colors that they show in their feathers. A Normal Grey male can be split to CFW and always appear Normal Grey. You would not know it until you paired him with a CFW hen, resulting in bright white CFW babies.

In this case, your hen is most likely split to Normal Grey, since as Cindy said hens generally pass down their sex-linked mutation to males in the form of splits.

This is also why Woodstock couldn't possibly be split to BC unless his mother is BC and she is clearly not (just my opinion). Weirder things have happened though in the world of Zebra Finches!

That's also why I believe he is a male, because he is the a-typical NG looking boy to me - darker grey on his back and the faint sign of a breast bar, cheek patches and blurry buff-colored flanks. Since you posted this less than 2 weeks ago he is about a month old now & should start showing his adult colors soon. In 4-8 weeks you should start seeing flanks and whatnot starting to come in.

One of my Yellow Beak Normal Grey (Split to CFW) male fledgies:


Here is a comprehensive article for more information about sex-linked mutations from some of the world's best breeders of Zebbies. And here is one regarding recessive mutations from the same site.

[cindy]

Jennie, Black cheek is recessive which mean either parent can pass the gene and carry the gene....if only one parent carries the gene and the other parent does not then the offspring stand a chance of being split to BC (or written /BC)

Example:

Father a normal gray split to BC
Mother CFW

you will get this:

25% Normal/Chestnut flanked white Males
25% Normal Females
25% Normal/Black cheeked Chestnut flanked white Males
25% Normal/Black cheeked Females

the dark red shows the ratio of split to BC expected.

If either mom or dad carry the BC gene and the other parent does not you stand the possibility of get split to BC young

If both parents are split to BC you get

50% Normal/Black cheeked
25% Normal
25% Black cheeked

and if one parent is full visual BC and the other is split you get

50% Normal/Black cheeked
50% Black cheeked

and of course if both parents are full BC you get full Black cheek young

Efinch.com shows an example of a split to BC male.
http://www.efinch.com/species/bczeb.htm

[Nanajennie]

So it's possible Charlie and Lucy had BC in the bloodline?

[cindy]

My guess is Charlie, his tear is a bit wide or irregular. With recessive traits not all the visual markers will show, sometimes you see more than one, sometime none. Depends on what else the bird is carrying in their genes. Woodstock's tears are a bit wider, thicker than a normal and this is what leads me to think he/she may be split to BC. The best way to prove if he/she is split to BC is to pair him with a full or a split to BC hen/male. If he/she is split then that pairing will give you some full BC.

If you go into the files on the fbk group there are documents that you can copy and save for your own use in identifying splits to recessive and sex linked mutations in zebras. If you can't locate it, let me know and I will send it to you.

[Nanajennie]

Cindy thanks I will do that .. meantime.. here are todays five Pied fledglings!

[cindy]

So very cute!!!!! They look great. The parents did an excellent job.

That was a good size clutch. The dirty little bottom is most likely from sitting in the nest, the droppings can soil their bottom. Gently clean the baby off, don't let it get chilled or really soaked. Keep on eye on him/her just in case it may be something more....most likely it is just a lot of little ones in the nest with lots of droppings. Nest get so gross sometimes!!!

[Ginene]

Yay Jennie...see!!! Thank Goodness Cindy thinks it was due to being in the nest too!!! Beautiful Babies...

[cindy]

I had a large clutch of 7 BC CFW fledge, their beautiful white tails and bottoms were stained a bit, yellow. And that was with periodical nest clean outs!!!!!

Just curious did you use a plastic nest box....I did.