FINCHforum

Hello! I'm new to the forum ;u; I've had zebra finches for about 2 years, and I'm interested in starting to breed some of them!

This little lady is one of them that I'm interested in breeding in the future (she's about a year and a half old now), but I can't for the life of me figure out what her genetics are. I know these pics aren't the best, but I can try to grab a couple more later if necessary.

I think she's at least split pied because of her white primary feathers, but I can't figure out much else. She has the cream color on her chest and underbelly like fawns do, but her body is normal grey best I can tell. Her tail feathers are all black with clean white bars. Most baffling to me is the fact that she has light cream cheek patches (but she's definitely female).

I don't own her parents and I actually have no idea what her parents were unfortunately.

[thumbnail=float-left]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/102 ... arnet2.jpg[/thumbnail]

Took one extra picture of her today of her tail and back that may be a little helpful?

I'm no good with this, but cindy can usually ID Zebras.

Did you see a little black line going along the birds chest ?
As far as I know only male zebra finches have bars on their chests but I am not sure though I might have mixed something up .
I'd say Normal grey , orange breast , black breast split to pied ( if she has white lines on her wings she is split to pied)
Although I am no experts I believe thats it , but there are other people that will say for sure what the mutation is , good luck and welcome to the forum

It is fairly common for female zebra finches to display partial male markings - faint breast bars and cheek patches, I haven't seen a pic of one with partial flanking yet. However, the faint breast bars may be more common in black breast splits and the faint cheek patches are much more common in orange breast splits.

She looks normal grey split to pied, orange breast and possibly black breast to me. I don't think the tail indicates a split to black breast, but I am bad at seeing the subtle changes in tails and only really see the very obvious ones.

Here is a thread with a fairly similar looking hen (minus the pied) with a few responses from Cindy that may be informative:

http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21502

Oooh thank you for that link, xz_zebs !

And thank you guys for the responses- looks like this lady carries some good genes. I'll have to pick a mate for her that does them justice!