FINCHforum

I am sorry these pictures are not the greatest.
This first is a crested cock. He will be bread to a non crested chocolate pied hen. Can you tell by these pictures what color he is and if so what color babies do you think?


These next are the crested hen. She will be bread to a non crested chocolate pied cock. The breeder said she was something dilute but I could not hear him and he was painfully shy so I didn't press him.




Thanks for looking and all your help.

The first crested one is fawn clear wing or pied. It's hard to see.
The second bird looks solid white which is a totally pied bird. If she has washed out cream colors than she's a dilute fawn heavy pied. Beautiful birds! Closer photos would help.

The first one is a crested fawn heavy pied...
The second one i can't really tell, pied without a doubt and heavily pied, but i'm not extremely familiar with Society mutations... Either way, they're beautiful!

thank you so much.
I will try to get better photos.
Camera phones are such a great invention but Nikon needs to get together with the smart phone designers and work on their camera capabilities.
What do you think about the colors for chicks? Do you think I might get colors other than chocolate?
Thank you again for sharing your knowledge.

Congrats on your new Society's. The white one could be a dark eyed white, which is the heavy, totally pied finch. The other one is a fawn that is heavily pied, notice the mottling on the head. As far as babies, you could get anything, as the background likely includes various pied and color mutations. Last year, I bred my crested chocolate pied hen to my chocolate pied cock and got two fawn pied and two chocolate pied. Of the four babies, two were crested. I never expected fawn since both parents were visually chocolates, but one must have fawn in their genes. You just never know, unless you can trace their geneology back and even then, an odd gene can show up when you least expect it.

WOW! Thanks Deborah! That is very exciting to know. It will be interesting to see what happens.

In order for a fawn chick to show up, both parents have to be visual or split to fawn. (Simple recessive, they need to get a fawn copy from each parent.)

So since your cock is fawn and you are pairing him with a chocolate hen, you will know that all the chicks will be chocolate split to fawn, unless the hen happens to be split to something else.

If she is split to chestnut, you can get chestnut split to fawn chicks. If she is split to fawn, you can get visual fawn chicks. If she is split to neither, then they will all be chocolate.

For your hen that is all white, I guess you won't know what her actual base color is. You will probably get all chocolate chicks from that pair, unless both parents are split to something.

As far as the dilute goes, that is a separate gene than color. It modifies whatever color the bird is. If your breeder said the hen is dilute, then all her chicks should be split for it. None will show up dilute unless the cock is also split for it. (Another simple recessive gene.) You never know, depending on who bred him, he could be split for any mutation that societies carry. But you can keep track of these chicks, and maybe pair them with dilutes in the future, to see if they truly did get the gene from their mother. (If you want to test breed them.)

WOW! I felt that I would get only chocolate chicks from both pairs. Thank you for all the genetic information it is very interesting.

Bee-Beep wrote: WOW! I felt that I would get only chocolate chicks from both pairs.

Well, yes, you are right. That's all you will get, unless the parents have splits, which you can't know until you breed them. And if they don't have splits, then yes, all chocolate.

But at least you will know that the children of your fawn cock will be split to fawn. And if it is true that your white hen is dilute, then all her children will be split to dilute. But those recessive genes will remain hidden until two birds that carry them are paired together.,

So the first generation clutches could be all chocolate but if a pair from the two first generation chocolate clutches were crossed making a second generation I could see the color change there. Unless the two chocolates I have now are already split to another color then other colors might come out in the first generation clutches. Am I understanding correctly?

Bee-Beep wrote: ... but if a pair from the two first generation chocolate clutches were crossed making a second generation I could see the color change there....

Now, your first pair with the crested fawn cock, those chicks will be split to fawn.

But your second pair with the white hen that you think the breeder said was a dilute, those will not be split to fawn, they will be split to dilute.

If you breed a chocolate/fawn with a chocolate/dilute, you will still just get chocolate. Some of them might end up split to fawn or dilute or both.

The thing about the recessive genes is that the chick has to get one from each parent in order for it to show up. So you need to pair a /fawn male with a /fawn female, and a /dilute male with a /dilute female.

Now if you meant that you were going to pair brothers and sisters together, then yes, the /fawn siblings can give you visual fawn and the /dilute siblings can give you visual dilute. But brother sister pairings are one of the worst possible inbreedings you can do, and it would not be advised.

So, have I cleared things up, or made them worse?

This site may help.

http://www.australian-bengalese-finch.com/colours.htm

wellingtoncdm wrote: This site may help.

http://www.australian-bengalese-finch.com/colours.htm

That's a good one, Charlie, that I hadn't seen - will read more of it later - Thanks!

Here's another and very similar site: http://www.nbfa.co.uk/page11.html

Thank you. Clear as mud. That actually does make a little more sense.
I would never breed brother and sister. I know people do it but to me it just doesn't seem right. I don't even like it when grandfather X granddaughter is a breeding. I use to be involved with dog showing and they did that a lot. I never understood genetics for color or type in that either.
My only real goal and hope is to produce some crested chicks.

wellingtoncdm wrote: This site may help.

http://www.australian-bengalese-finch.com/colours.htm

This site was very helpful. Thank you.