Gouldian nodules

[akidsgal]

I remember reading once that the color of the nodules will help in determining the color of the Gouldian when growing. I remember that yellow nodules mean a normal. The white were blue and something else. I didn't realize I had a baby until the other day I went in the aviary and found that the peeping I heard wasn't from where I thought I heard it.

I will be keeping this one as I am unsure of daddy although I do have my guesses..... The baby has white nodules. I only have one Blue in the aviary that is a male so I am going to venture a guess that he is daddy. He is who I know is mated with this particular female however she is green. I am however unsure if she is split so this is why I will be keeping this baby as I am too late to band.... besides I need a crash course from someone in person!

[L in Ontario]

White nodes can be difficult (for me) to confirm whether the hatchling is blue, silver, pastel blue or "just" yellow. I've had chicks that I swear had white nodes for the first 2-3 days and then they turned yellow and the chicks are yellow.... Go figure.

Could be interesting though!

[lovemyfinch]

I can't go by nodule colours anymore either.
As we all know by now, half of my babies that are born with white nodules end up green/blue

[akidsgal]

So quite possiby it sounds as if white nodules could be white, blue, yellow/blue, or dilute/blue. Sound fair to everyone out there?

[GOULDYGIRL]

Almost ;) Yellow and dilutes will have yellow nodules. White would be Blue, Silver, and Pastels.

Renee

[betchacanthavejust1]

This has been something I have seen in my babies too. On hatch day the 3 babies were pink skined with clearly white nodules. Oh boy, I thought, my OH/BH PB Green Male, must be split to blue... His hen is Silver... Well, 5 days later they took on a yellow skin tone and the nodules turned yellow. They are now juveniles. 2 Dilutes and a Green. Obviously, these 3 are split to blue, but now I'm thinking ... Could this be another way to determine if a baby hatched from 2 split to blue parents, are showing us at an early age that it is split to blue?... Problem is... there really isn't any way to "mark" that baby at only a few days old... especially if it is in a clutch of more than 1...
This has happened again. This pair's 2nd clutch began hatching yesterday, The baby was again, clearly pink skinned with white nodules. I checked later to find it tossed to the other side of the dang cage, but alive... I warmed it up and put it back in the nest to see a 2nd pink skinned baby with white nodules. The good news, they didn't toss the baby again & believe u me, I checked every half hour... I know they have 5 more eggs, 3 of which should have hatched, but at this point, I know the hatch date, I don't want to peek in the nest for fear they might toss a late hatcher... I will however let u all know if these babies also turn yellow..
I just thought this was quite interesting....
sorry, I can't upload photo's as mine are too big for this site to handle and I don't know how to shrink them

[L in Ontario]

Good luck with your latest clutch Carol!!!

I too have a new batch of babies (well three anyway) and they all appear pink skinned with white nodes. No way are any of these babies pastel, blue nor silver.

One parent is a blue hen but the papa is simply a dilute - not split for blue! (sigh) Just when you think you've got it down pat they throw this curveball at us.

[betchacanthavejust1]

Well, Liz, I guess we can venture to say.... that babies born to one blue parent & one non blue or not split to blue parent, will be split to blue of course, but will also appear to be.. blue bodied (pink skinned with white nodules) at hatch, but will then change to the yellow skin tone with yellow nodules and grow out to be either a green, dilute green, or yellow bodied bird...split to blue...
Just another interesting factoid of this breed....

Congrats on your new clutch...

I checked the nest last night, & took a photo, but still only have the 2 babies of 7 eggs .... I fear the others are either late hatchers, DIS or infertile... I will be on watch, for toss-lings again today. Even thou this pair has successfully raised a clutch of 3, and the male has been a dad in the past, they are both very flighty & will flee the nest at the slightest noise. Their last clutch of 3 had a late hatcher, which was tossed with the shell still attached... I tried to save it, but couldn't.. so now, I move ever so slowly & quietly around them or when feeding etc..... None of my other birds act like these two.

[L in Ontario]

Best wishes for your chicks Carol!

[betchacanthavejust1]

well, found one of the babies tossed again this morning. Alive, but cold. Warmed it up in my cupped hands and blew warm breath onto it..... this time, I made up some formula and with my smallest pointiest paint brush, managed to get some food into it. It already had some, so one of the parents are feeding it, but one is f...ing tossing it.... after I noticed some food make it's way into the other side of the crop... I stopped.. don't want to over do it.... it was now warm and had some warm formula... I put it back in the nest... the other baby had food also on one side of it's crop, so I didn't mess with it... Oh what a day this is going to be... joy joy..

[kenny]

hi everyone
you see evryone learns something every day on here.....i confess i never ever kept gouldians because my birdroom was not warm enough to keep them,and all my other birds survived without any heat ,because it was well insulated and warm enough in a winter for the rest of my birds and if i thought they where suffering i would certainly have put some form of heating in.....anyway i digress the reason i am posting this is i always thought the nodules as you guys call them where solely for the adults to find where the youngsters beaks where in the dark etc....i didnt know that it also acts as a solution to what colours the birds would turn out to be!i am not questioning this as i said i never ever kept gouldians ......so even i can learn something ,thats why i love this site!

ken

[L in Ontario]

well, found one of the babies tossed again this morning. Alive, but cold. Warmed it up in my cupped hands and blew warm breath onto it..... this time, I made up some formula and with my smallest pointiest paint brush, managed to get some food into it. It already had some, so one of the parents are feeding it, but one is f...ing tossing it.... after I noticed some food make it's way into the other side of the crop... I stopped.. don't want to over do it.... it was now warm and had some warm formula... I put it back in the nest... the other baby had food also on one side of it's crop, so I didn't mess with it... Oh what a day this is going to be... joy joy..

Hope the parents take it back and look after it. Are they proven or first timers?

[nixity]

Can't get any closer to hatching than this - right out of the shell.
This baby was from Coby, my blue male, and Jenni, my Normal hen - so all babies would have to be /Blue but this baby doesn't look pink at all to me.

The nodules on normals definitely aren't always yellow right at hatch, I notice it coming out more around day 3, though sometimes it is obvious.

The skin - well, I think when they're all not blue sometimes it's harder. It's easier when you have a definite blue in the nest to compare to :/

[CandoAviary]

I think your tosser is just doing it to drive you insane I do the same thing as you, suppliment , warm and put it back. 9 times out of 10 they don't toss it again. If they do toss again, I will replace it yet again and this sometimes does the trick...if not, get your handfeeding apparatus ready....it's time you learn to do that too
Just kidding, hoping they settle down and do a great job. Just watch out for the next hatchling as Daddio may want to pitch it too

Seens like they just don't recognise them as chicks at first. In a couple of days when the babies start begging then they seem to figure it out....oh, I'm your Daddy

I have a nest of 3 from a young pair , my first DF yellow with a yellow hen pairing from my last year's offsprings. They have not tossed but last evening 2 were well fed and one wasn't. I supplimented it before lights out and it seemed to be being fed this morning along with the others. Sometimes if the chick is a little behind the others and doesn't beg as strongly, the parents see it as weak and sometimes don't waste their efforts on it. I find supplimenting it until it gets as loud as it's siblings does the trick. Of course this takes removing the nest several times a day and if you have flighty parents this action may end up doing more harm than good. Most of my pairs are made from offsprings that are so use to me and my presence that it doesn't phase them...they have seen me since hatching and just think of me as the "Great Mother Bird of the Sky"

As far as the white nodules and pink skin turning yellow meaning /blue, interesting. But with the one parent being split to blue then it's a given. You need to keep 2 green back /blue and breed them together. Then mark those chicks that are born with white nods that turn yellow...then keep them and breed them to a blue to see if that plays true. Of course you would also have to keep some greens that had the yellows nods from the start and breed them to a blue to prove that they were not /blue....... hmmmm, looks like you will be in for years of generations for these test
From my own experience I can't say I have had white nods turn to yellow but I have had chicks born with yellow nods that I assumed were normal greenbacks yet they grew up to produce blues ...so in actuality they were /blue, though they were born with yellow nodules. These came from 2 normal /blue parents.
Maybe since you have a blue and a normal pair it makes a difference. I haven't noticed that in my blue to normal paired chicks. But then again I probably didn't scrutinize them as chicks too much as I knew they would be greens split to blue anyway. Next clutch of those I will pay more attention to the early days nodule coloring. How many days does it take before they turn yellow would you estimate? I do find this interesting

[CandoAviary]

I agree with brand new hatchlings... they always look pink to me. Within 48 hours I can usually tell if they are greens or blues. And yes...it helps a great deal when you have both colors in the nest to cpmpare to side by side.... I have definately been fooled on more than one occaision by the nodules and the skin tone of newbies.