 |
| Breeding hen |
 |
| Suffused or Olive cock |
 |
| One of my breeding King parrot hens and a young normal cockatiel |
 |
| Breeding pair of King Parrots |
 |
| 2010 young |
 |
| Left to right: Cinnamon pied hen, Pearl pied cock and a whiteface cinnamon pearl pied hen. |
 |
| Pastelface cinnamon pied hen |
 |
| Whiteface cinnamon pearl pied hen |
 |
| Young normal cock bird completing his first moult |
 |
| Normal cock |
 |
| Suffused cock |
An interesting case
I have come across an interesting case in a recent breeding pair of cockatiels. The breeding pair is a visual "Australian Olive" or "Suffused" cock and a Normal grey hen split Spangle or "Edged Dilute". Both birds came from reputable breeders, who stand behind their bird's genetic history. This pairing was breed together to maintain a strong Suffused gene, through crossing back to a big normal hen. The split Edged Dilute was circumstantial.
The interesting find is that this pairing produced a young hen which appears to be Suffused, albeit very dark on the flight feathers and the shoulders. Pictures are provided below. No visual Suffused birds should have been produced.
I will be test breeding the offspring of this pair to find out a few things, including whether the hen (mother of this offspring) was in fact double split to Suffused and Edged Dilute and whether the Suffused offspring is in fact Suffused or something more uncommon. It seems very unusal for the hen bird to be double split and in theory, Suffused and Edged Dilute should not form an allelic family.
I am first proposing to breed from another line of Suffused birds to another line of Edged Dilutes to see if you get Normal offspring, which are double split. By taking two different Suffused and Edged Dilute birds and test mating them, this will tell me more than anything else. If they produce normal offspring, even if just in a small percentage, then the two mutations are not allelic.
I will also be test mating the original hen back to a Edged Dilute cock to confirm the presence of that gene as well. In addition, I will be breeding the apparent Suffused hen offspring back to a Suffused cock bird and then breeding this offspring back to Edged Dilute.
