FINCHforum

I have read on some sites that pied zebra can be put in three categories: Light, Medium and Heavy. I was just wondering if birds in these categories will produce young that fit into the same category, or is it all just kind of random? Also, I was wondering if anyone could give me any ideas as to what mutations I could expect to see from these two birds. I am thinking that the offspring could be 50% Normal/Pied Fawn Males or 50% Normal Pied Females.

Thanks for the help!

I think it's a random shot as to the % of piedness and the gender but I'm not sure. Nice birds!

It is very random I have to say. My female is very little pied and her mate split. Their 3 chicks on the other hand are heavily pied, 2 all white with little gray dots and 1 all white with two flanks of gray and spots.

We have one heavy silver pied female who is paired with light pied fawn male.
The colors they produce are: cream, light pied normal grey, medium pied normal grey, heavy pied normal grey, fawn, medium pied fawn.. etc.

here is a picture of fledglings from this pair im talking about.


but, you will never know what to expect to get, when you have zebra finches.
Any color can show up!

Good luck with your Zebbies!

Thanks for all the help! I had a feeling that the percentage of piedness on a parent wouldn't really matter when looking at the offspring, but I figured someone on here might be able to tell me if I was right or wrong.

Nice pics of your birds. Your little Fawn Pied hen looks like she could have come from our flock. We've had a bunch that looked just like her.

The thing about Pied is that those who consider themselves to be serious Zebra breeders (a category we do not include ourselves in) spend the bulk of their efforts trying to breed it out of their flock. Therefore not a whole lot has been documented about how it carries over. I have heard however that it can be a stubborn mutation to eliminate. I don't recall all of the specifics, but well over a year ago, someone on the Zebra forum on Yahoo had successfully eliminated pied for something like 15 generations until all of sudden one just decided to pop up. (He was not happy about it at all)

Fortunately most of the general public (ourselves included) find Pied to be attractive so there generally is a market for all of the birds that the breeders are trying to sell off. While we don't necessarily try to breed for Pied we do not eliminate Pied birds from our breeding stock either. True we are trying to highlight certain mutations but we feel that personality is just as important. so when we're trying to decide which birds we want to keep, we discount a bird just because it's Pied.

Nagdabit wrote:so when we're trying to decide which birds we want to keep, we discount a bird just because it's Pied.

Did you mean to say you don't discount a bird just because it's Pied?

Nagdabit wrote:The thing about Pied is that those who consider themselves to be serious Zebra breeders (a category we do not include ourselves in) spend the bulk of their efforts trying to breed it out of their flock. Therefore not a whole lot has been documented about how it carries over. I have heard however that it can be a stubborn mutation to eliminate. I don't recall all of the specifics, but well over a year ago, someone on the Zebra forum on Yahoo had successfully eliminated pied for something like 15 generations until all of sudden one just decided to pop up. (He was not happy about it at all)

Fortunately most of the general public (ourselves included) find Pied to be attractive so there generally is a market for all of the birds that the breeders are trying to sell off. While we don't necessarily try to breed for Pied we do not eliminate Pied birds from our breeding stock either. True we are trying to highlight certain mutations but we feel that personality is just as important. so when we're trying to decide which birds we want to keep, we discount a bird just because it's Pied.

I have been trying to find some more information about pieds, but like you said, there isn't a lot of documentation. But, I guess I can kind of understand why extremely serious breeders don't care for the mutation, even though I do find it attractive. I'm sure that once her babies are grown, we will have no trouble finding homes for them.

L in Ontario wrote:Did you mean to say you don't discount a bird just because it's Pied?

Nice catch Liz, yes that is what I meant to say. That's what I get for trying to type something semi-legible with no sleep.

After gathering up babies earlier in the day on Sunday, we decided to keep three for ourselves, two of which are pied. And while our decision is based primarily on their very sweet dispositions, we also are very fond of their unique coloring and patterns.