When I bought many of my first gouldians I did not have there background records so I always just put in what the bird looked like. If I had a chicks that didn't fit what the calculator said I knew I had a split recessive trait. The thing is you need both parents to have the same recessive trait to be able to produce a chick that shows it. For example if you have a female with a purple breast/white breast and a male with a purple breast/ white breast then you will get some white breasted chicks even though neither parents show it. But if you pair the female with a male that has just a purple breast you will never know that the female has a recessive gene for white breast.
Yesterday, I got the shock of breeding. I have bred 3 generations of these RH normals and also 3 generations of some Orange head normals.
Well I paired one of my orange headed purple breasted green backed hens with a OH purple breasted dilute from a different breeders and got a silver. I assume there was the /blue in the line all along now but just never paired any with splits. So you can still get surprizes even after breeding them for a while. For 3 generations and with 2 to 3 keepers being set up for breeding they never in the 3 years threw a blue or silver....so I am totally surprized.
So I guess a lot of those plain looking orange heads that I sold were split to blues
Hopefully the buyers will be pleasantly surprized
Anyway the dad is a BH WB GB split to blue and the mom is a normal YH. What are the possibilities?
