FINCHforum

I have a dilute baby from the last clutch. This morning I saw some red feathers on his head!! I believe I had heard about this before from Candace (and maybe Janine), I myself did experience it last year, but the feathers always started colouring up from the belly, not from the head. And this chick is only over 1 month old a bit.
What do you guys think?

I think you have a beautiful little man that is very eager to show you his true colours

Fascinating!....I can't wait to see what colors he shows....Keep us posted!

Is it possible the feathers just got plucked somehow?

I saw this often in my hand fed babies where the formula would sometimes dry up at the corner of the mouth and cleaning it off accidentally pulled some baby feathers out.

They were replaced with adult feathers immediately.

This is why some breeders will pluck a few head and/or breast feathers if they're too impatient to wait for the bird to start molting when they want to find out what color or sex they'll be

Cute little one. I was wondering something along the same lines as Nixity.

If they do get plucked the feathers will come back in the adult plumage colors but mine were not plucked and got colored feathers on the head, belly, chest and Back. Mine were hand fed but I wipe them after eating and if need be I rinse and blow dry
Here is the link to that one and it was really young...like 6 weeks old
http://finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=1 ... arly+color

I think you have an early colorer too. I am sure you would of witnessed if other birds were plucking it to that degree. I think genetics has a lot to do with it. Some of my lines color very quickly and others seem to take forever.... I think the heat and length of sunlight hours speeds the coloring process also.
Though I am still not sure about that one in my post. He never saw sunlight and was handfed, which I believe to be inferior to parent reared.
Nice looking chick you have there and breeders have always told me to keep the strong and fast colorers as your breedstock. They tend to be better birds.