This article was written by Leon Saad, and published in the January/Feburary issue 2008 of the ABS magazine.  Leon is an ABS judge and experienced breeder of the violet variety.  His article is used by permission.  We at the MBS are thankful for his contribution. 

It is not for nothing that purple was regarded as the color of royals for centuries past.  The ancient Phoenicians, a sea faring merchant people, prospered by monopolizing the market on purple dye and cloth.  Purple accordingly was exclusive and associated with royalty. 

Purple or Violet budgerigars are truly stunning and cherished by many in our hobby.  They are somewhat scarce and harder to breed because they require the combination of multiple factors on a blue bird.  I sought in vain in my early years in the hobby, before I was able to purchase my first violet budgie.  This was an older, but good quality violet cock I got from Greg Ruth.  I was ecstatic when I bred my first violet chick.  The first sighs of the emerging dark pin feathers on violet (and cobalt) budgies as they feather up in the nest, never ceases to evoke a sense of excitement.  Once ascendant on the show bench some years ago, the conventional wisdom in more recent years is that violets are no longer able to compete for top honors.  Yet at the world’s premier show, the BS Club show in England, in 2006 a violet hen won BIS.  Let us hope that this will herald the dawning of a new age of competitiveness for the glorious violet budgerigar.  In deed, in recent years here in the USA the sight of quality violets (and cobalts) on the show bench is becoming more and more frequent as fanciers indulge their passion for this royal color while pursuing success on the show bench with an increasingly competitive variety. My experience breeding violets from the get go was very different from what I was lead to expect from the literature I read.  The established doctrine was that it would be very hard to breed violets and only a very small parentage of visual violets would emerge statistically; that the odds of breeding violets was very low.  There was the widely disseminated theory, stated as fact, that double factor violets did not exist, due to a lethal gene which prevented their survival.  To say nothing of the weird formula predicting cobalt and violet production according to whether the dark factor is Type I or Type II, depending on whether it comes via green or blue ancestors.  Complex yes,  Helpful and true?  I didn’t know; but, to borrow that line from the famous movie, “frankly, I didn’t give a damn”.  I just proceeded to pair visual violets to skyblues with the hope that I might produce violet or even cobalt.  Contrary to expectation, I always produced a good number of violets.  The first violet I ever acquired, paired to a sky opaline hen, produced one chick only for me from that pairing, a violet!  I paired the same original violet cock to a grey hen and got one more chick, and yes it was a violet also!  I brought in a cinnamon violet cock a few years later, and paired to a sky hen, in the one and only round I took, it produced a visual violet cock, a cinnamon cobalt hen (or sky violet, I find it hard to distinguish them), and a cinnamon opaline cobalt hen (or sky violet).  More recently I paired a cinnamon cobalt (or sky violet) hen chick in one round.  I have regularly bred a good number of visual violets, when I set out to do so.  Why is this?  I believe the answer lies in the fact that there are double factor violets, contrary to the widely propagated view in the traditional budgerigar literature on violet breeding. Much of the traditional literature one reads about breeding is misleading and wrong.  I would strongly encourage anyone interested in breeding violets to read the excellent articles of Peter Bergman of Australia on the subject.  This can be accessed on the internet (just do a word search with “budgerigar” violet” and “Bergman”) or read his recently published articles in Budgerigar World.  My own experience makes me readily agree with much of what Bergman has expressed in his insightful analysis, and I make reference to many of his views, to give him deserved credit.  I intend to share my own experience breeding these beautiful birds and offer some practical tips based on opinions I have formed in the process, and in light of Bergman’s insights.