Breeding Rares in a Normal stud

I guess I should first openly state that I disagree with the idea of calling a group of budgerigar varieties Rares…… Why in the UK at least the majority of varieties that fall under the heading of Rare are in truth some of the better - supported classes at most shows. Lutino, Albino, Spangles and clearwing are amongst the highest entries at most shows so how can they be called Rare! But saying that we have had birds that fall into these classes for as long as I can remember.

My younger brother and partner Michael started out his side of our stud with Lutino’s many years ago and Albinos followed a few years later. Our father his had dominant pieds in the stud for as long as I can remember and at one time also had Recessive pied and he had grey wings and dilutes to add to the mix. When I joined the partnership I was told I had to have a variety to develop for myself and the only two varieties I was prepared to consider where Spangles and yellow faces. The spangles where a great hit but after breeding one yellow face hen in the first season, we paired her to one of our best grey cocks the following year only to find the cock with half his head ripped off, and that was the end of the yellow face trial for a few years. Recently we purchased two golden face hens and their integration into the stud has been a great success. So in this article these are the Rares I will deal with, I would think the same principles can be applied to other varieties. Given all this variation how do we run these Rares in with our stud of Normal….! Simple the Rares have to earn their cage in the breeding team, no sentimentality is given to a variety. If they are not a good enough exhibition bird they will not stop in the stud. But remember we could if we wished pair up in excess of 100 pairs, not exactly a normal stud of birds I would suggest.

So to answer the question of breeding rares in a normal stud I would suggest that most breeders would have to limit the number of rares they would keep. Why….. To be successful, one has to dedicate at least 6 if not 8 cages to breeding each variety. This is necessary not only from a numbers point of view but also from a genetic diversification point of view. I think too many breeders forget this vital point when breeding all varieties of budgerigars. Small studs of birds have to be managed very carefully to ensure genetic diversification. If forgotten within a very few years the breeder can find themselves with a stud of birds that are all getting closer and closer related which can and will lead to genetically inherited problems that they never remove from their stud. So my first piece of advice is that if you wish to breed rares as part of a normal stud, almost treat the rares as a separate stud from a genetic point of view and ensure you keep a good diversified gene pool.

Which rare to select

This is the sixty four thousand dollar question, and at the end of the day it comes down to personal taste, but two issues that should be considered are, those of dominant or recessive gene types. What I mean by this is, will the parent bird reproduce its colour type in the first breeding season if paired to a normal, i.e. a dominant gene type as with the dominant pied and spangle, or does the gene type require the gene to be in both parent to produce the variety as with the recessive pied or grey wing i.e. a recessive gene or as its commonly known in our hobby a split. If these varieties are to be bred the breeder must understand that to produce, a lets say, recessive pied both parents have to have the recessive gene in their make up. This can either be in the visual form or in a split form, so if a recessive pied is paired to a none split normal the offspring will only be normal, but of a split genetic make up. To generate the visual recessive pied these split normals (which carry the recessive gene in there make up) must in the second year be paired to recessive pied. The same theory goes for Grey wings and various other colours. Obviously from the above the integration of these recessive gene type birds into a normal stud does take much longer and in truth the ongoing planning of breeding seasons is something that should be considered.

Expect the un-expected.

This is something we learnt a good few years ago. When Michael and I where young lad our father had always had grey wings and dilutes in the stud. The two I remember where a father and son, both opaline olive yellow. During the show season we would rotate them in the show team a week about and they were so identical that most people could not tell them apart. These two birds were stolen when our stud was broken into a good number of years ago. As they where the last of the visual dilutes in the stud we did not attempt to breed the variety again. Many years later we agreed to try and breed a few grey wings, and we managed to purchase two grey wing cock. The intention was to pair them to at least a couple of normal hens each in the first year to produce splits. Then in the second year pair the split hens back to the opposite grey wing cock. (See what I mean by planning for recessive gene types). To our surprise, from the first pair a grey wing grey popped out. After much scratching of heads and tracing the hens bloodlines back many generations we found she descended from the

Opaline olive yellows. The lesson is that the recessive gene can be passed on for many generations in a hidden form and will only ever be seen when it meets the other half of the genetic formula.

The other example of the un-expected is a cock we currently have in the stud. After over fifty years of breeding budgerigar he is the first of his type we have ever raised. (see the two photo’s inset) I assure you they are of the same bird. On one side he shows as a normal spangle light green, on the opposite side, well we cannot agree, he is either a cinnamon or oplaine cinnamon spangle light green. Which ever the case the description of him is a half side. How we bred him we have no idea. His bloodline traces back to the first spangle we ever had in the stud, which we had thought when we purchased him was a spangle grey. When he produced in his first year, the none spangle greys looked very different to our normal greys. After much studying we realised the spangle was a grey violet and so where the none spangles greys. To this day I can pick out greys from the bloodline in our flights without looking at records. To me this just shows that you never really know the make up of any bird you purchase and this is normally even more pronounced in the Rare. We have a very long-standing friend who over the years has produced some very good birds, which normally fall into the rare bracket. He is currently showing a bird that has won a number of best of colour awards, and on each one the description of the bird is different. He recently asked me to describe it, when I gave my opinion he said no it has pink feet so it must have cinnamon in it…. Ok was my reply but what was it off. When he told me the parent its no wonder people have problems describing the bird.

As I said above Michael has had a stud of Lutino’s and Albino’s for as long as he has kept bird. Our advise on these two varieties is simple, try and keep them as pure as possible to ensure the red eyes do not pick up the suffusion (Blue on albino’s and green on the lutino’s) that has become such a problem in recent time. If size is an issue use greys and opaline greys as outcrosses to the albino, never use any blue. For the lutino’s use dark greens or grey greens as the outcrosses. Remember in the ino’s the variety is sex linked so if you pair an albino cock to a normal hen only the hens can be albino’s and all of the normal offspring will be split for albino’s. The other issue to remember with ino’s is the time period that it take for them to reach full maturity. Normals will be fully grown and mature within 9 months. This is not the case with ino’s they will be sexually mature in the same time frame but will take another 6 to 9 months to be physically mature and fully grown.

Yellow faces and Golden faces 

These are varieties we are still learning about, but the truth is we are using them as a normal. With the fact that yellow faces produce yellow faces the only rule we are using is that we pair them to white faces. (it is possible to have yellow face in the green series but obviously its not visible).

In terms of the variety there are two mutations of yellow faces, mutation 1 and mutation 2 and in truth two forms of golden faces, single factor and double factor. Yellow faces paired together, contrary to common belief, cannot produce golden faces but golden faces can produce yellow faces.

In terms of identifying mutations, in the mutation 1 the yellow stay on the faces alone, in mutation 2, the yellow in the face bleeds into the body colour.

The single factor golden face as a bar head looks identical to yellow faces (see inset picture) but at their first moult the body colour changes. In a golden face blue the body colour changes to look very much like a light green, only by lifting the wing can the blue body colour be seen. In the golden face grey the adult body colour look very similar to a grey green (see the two inset photos of adult golden faces).

As we started our breeding programme with two sisters to date we have been unable to produce a double factor Golden face but it is an aim later in 2009, so I will attempt to give you a description if we are successful.

Spangles

This is a variety I personally love, possibly because the first cock bird I breed won best in show for us on a number of occasions and his grand son was out voted for best adult in show at the BS world club show. Many spangle breeders argue that the spangle should only be shown and breed in the normal form. I have a problem with this, to say the cinnamon and opaline forms should be outlawed is, to me, is like saying that only light green, sky blue, grey green and grey that are shown should be shown as normals and that we should outlaw all forms of cinnamon, opaline and opaline cinnamon. Sorry our show benches would be very empty and a lot less enjoyable.

Remember the option of double factor spangles gives an addition enjoyment to the variety.

I believe the spangle is an ideal match to the normal stud of birds, as it seems to be able to be produced in a bird of quality that also gives a good outcross normal for use in the normal stud. (see the inset cinnamon grey spangle as example of what can be achieved).

Recessive Pied

As the name indicates this is one of the recessive gene type and to obtain visual Recessive pied birds can be paired in three ways.

The first pairing is recessive to recessive which given the gene on both parents and would produce a visual recessive pied only.

The second option is to pair a visual recessive pied to a split normal, which has been produced by pairing a Recessive pied to none split normal in previous years. This pairing would produce visual recessive pied and further split normals (but in a lower theoretical percentage than the first year recessive/normal pairing).

The third pairing option is split normal to split normal. This is the pairing my father always called the wasteful pairing. The theoretical percentage of visual recessive pied is lower, and you produce split normal and none split normal. The obvious question is “which of the normals is split and which is none split”. This is where the waste comes in, the only method of finding out is to pair all the normal offspring’s to recessives, the following year and see which produce visual recessive pied.

This wastage factor and that we found the normal studs quality suffering from being paired into the recessives was the major reason for the removal of them from our breeding programme. It does seem to be a fact that the recessive pied does have a problem accepting “quality” as part of its make up and takes a great deal of dedication to produce a winning formula. Even when it is seen as a quality exhibition bird, it too often is seen with flecking.

For these reason I do admire anyone who dedicates themself to breeding recessive pied.

Remember all the above can also be applied to the grey wing. (see the opaline grey wing sky blue inset as an example of the colour type achievable).

Dominant Pieds

As the name indicates the dominant pied is from the dominant gene type and will produce dominant pied if paired to a normal in the first breeding season. For this reason we treat them as a normal in the breeding team.

A couple of technical point from the show point of view. One of the major faults in the dominant pied is missing spots. One of the tell tale signs of missing spots in the nest feather bird is that the white or yellow element of their marking breaks through the blue or green band below the mask. This seems to have the effect of washing the spot off the feather because if you look very closely you can see a very faint spot on the feather.

Some breeder will try and not use such miss marked dominant pied in their breeding teams. The obvious reason being that they will pass on the fault. Our view is, that if we are using them as normal, any resulting normal offsprings will be perfectly marked. We have never breed raised a miss spotted normal from a miss spotted dominant pied.

Using Dark factor in Rares

Most of the birds classed as rare (even those I have not covered such as white wings and yellow wing) have a great colour difference between their body colour and their wing colours (light against dark), and as such the introduction of dark factors into these birds does accentuate the light to dark comparison and makes for a striking bird to look at. This can also be the case with Yellow faces. A simple understanding of colour genetic will assist with the introduction of this feature.
Again one point to remember is that dark factor birds tend to take longer to reach full physical maturity as with the ino’s varieties.

A simple set of rule to follow

1/ Keep the number of types of rares that suit your size of stud.

2/ To be successful you need between 6 to 8 breeding cages (minimum) for every rare variety you keep.

3/ Understand the genetic of the variety you keep (dominant or recessive).

4/ Always be mindful of the genetic diversification of your birds (in a small stud in particular).

5/ With the recessive gene type planning breeding season a couple of years in advance is essential.

6/ Some varieties of the rares can provide excellent out crosses to your normal stud.