...for quality or just a myth

by Steve Holland "The Holland Stud"

Chilly Hollow Aviary

Over the course of my involvement in the budgerigar hobby a number of theories on differing subjects have been put forward and accepted by the hobby only to have them disproved once science has been applied to the theory.

I would, as examples cite the theory that French moult was caused by moth activity within the bird room, this has now been proven to be a virus that is carried in all studs of birds; the stud builds immunity to the virus. So preventing any outbreak of French moult. Only when a new bird is introduced to the stud caring a different strain of the French moult virus will, the stud original strain and new strain of French moult mutate leaving the stud needing to build a new immunity to French moult. Over this period of time the stud is at risk to French moult.

Also the theory that feather dusters where birds with “just a little too much feather,” and birds we should see in our stud. Again once science has been applied to the theory it has been proven to be a genetic fault carried by both parents and only once both parents pass on the genes will a feather duster appear.

Another theory that has for some years been around the hobby is that of birds being pre-potent for quality and I have to say that until a few years ago it was a theory I went along with. If you have never heard of the term let me explain the theory. The term has always, to my knowledge, been associated with cock birds and the theory saws that regardless of the quality of the partner you put these pre-potent birds to the pairing would always produce quality off springs and normally in good numbers. So taken to its extreme “Joey” from the pet shop pair to a pre-potent bird would produce birds as good as the pre-potent bird. It sound too good to be true and I have to saw I now believe it to be just that.

It was not until I studied on a university course mainly on genetic for a year that I realised, in general, the hobby had a good understanding of colour genetics but at our basic understanding of physical genetics left something to be desired.

To understand why I have changed my mind I have to explain a few genetic facts of life. First we have to accept, and I think we all do, that the blue print for all life is carried on the double helix of DNA. Half of the helix being passed on by the father and half by the mother. On each strand of the DNA, known as alleles, are the genetic details of part, in our case of the budgerigars make up. These details can either be in genetic term dominant and expressed as “X” or recessive expressed as ”x”. So any part of a birds make up can be expressed as either “XX”, “Xx” or “xx” dependent on the genes each parent passes on. And remember each allele carries the genetic detail of a specific part of the birds make up.

I first started to question the theory when I realised that each end every feature we desire in the modern budgerigar had to be a double dominant gene i.e. “XX” for the theory to work. Over the years I have been in the hobby these desired features have changed vastly, so I question how these genes could ever be “XX”.

I then started to question the likely hood of any bird possessing the “XX” gene on each and every allele. To me the odds would be like winning the lottery (and I don’t play on the lottery!)  So how could we claim such birds existed!

Next when I thought of the birds that I had been shown that had been described as Pre-potent they were all cock birds, why! If it where possible to have birds carrying this dominant “XX” gene in all the right places why not one hens. Could it be that the phenomena was a sex link issue! If this was the case it put a whole new slant on the claim. With sex linkage the quality would surely only come out on one of the sexes from the pairing and when I had the phenomena described to me there was never a differentiation between the quality of the sexes out of the pairings. So this could not be the case and I still had no answer as to why hens where not described as pre-potent for quality.