planning....

[joemau]

planning to buy a phaeo male...what would be a good pair for him? ob female, phaeo female, bb female or obbb female?....

[Nagdabit]

Since we have yet to successfully breed our Phaeos, my comments can only be taken as an educated guess, but I would imagine that it would depend on whatever results you were looking to get. If you're satisfied with the extension of color in the male Phaeo that you get, then a Phaeo hen would keep the status quo. If however you'd like to "beef up" the color, then adding a hen with markings (black breast, black face, etc) might result in more brightly colored offspring.

Since the Florida Fancy mutation (Phaeos are half FF) works to suppress all black markings, I would guess it wouldn't be much of a difference between a black breast and an orange breast. It really only would manifest itself in whatever splits the two birds may be carrying and therefore might surface during the subsequent pairing.

We have two Phaeo males that we have been unable to pair up until recently. After looking for some time, we finally found some Phaeo hens for them. While waiting for the girls to come out of quarantine however, we paired the boys up with available hens on hand. A pied C/CFW and a nice sized Fawn (possibly split to BC) Both are sitting on eggs right now so we are anxiously awaiting the results.

Keep in mind that depending on the area you live in the birds that you are describing might not be easy to come by. It took us well over a year to find acceptable honeys for our boys. Also since the Phaeo mutation is a combination of two different mutations (FF and BB), it's difficult to predetermine the strength of said mutations, making breeding them for the first few times a crap shoot. Once you are able to ascertain the subtle nuances of what you have, then you can tweak the breeding process towards the direction you desire.

Hope you understand all this cause I think I confused myself.

[joemau]

thanks Nagdabit...a friend suggested an obbf...to make good color

offspring...

a little confused...but i learned more from your explanation...

[Nagdabit]

Ob / Bf would certainly would work to spread the color. If you haven't already, check out Roy Beckham's explanation over on efinch.

http://www.efinch.com/species/ffzeb.htm

Under the subheading, Combinations, he explains very nicely how the color progression can pan out depending on how the mutations are paired together

[joemau]

thanks again Nagdabit...