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I was recently given a pair of Peachface lovebirds. I have no idea what their genetic make-up is . The folks who gave them to me had no information other than they "thought they were fairly young breeders, but had never laid eggs" for them. (I don't know if the pair is related in any way)
The male "looks" like a normal peachface, and the female "looks" like a normal colored pied. Within 45 days of getting them home, they were hatching their first clutch.
I was recently given a pair of Peachface lovebirds. I have no idea what their genetic make-up is . The folks who gave them to me had no information other than they "thought they were fairly young breeders, but had never laid eggs" for them. (I don't know if the pair is related in any way)
The male "looks" like a normal peachface, and the female "looks" like a normal colored pied. Within 45 days of getting them home, they were hatching their first clutch.
That first clutch of 3 turned out to be 2 dutch blue babies and one dutch blue pied.
Now the same pair has hatched out three more babies. I just pulled them today to start handfeeding. the oldest is about 2 weeks and the youngest is about 11 days old. Since he hatched the youngest has been covered over his entire body by bright orange down!
I have never seen another peachface baby that color. The middle chick has mostly normal color (yellowish-white) down, with a few strands of orange. The oldest (who is getting enough pin feathers to tell me he will be pied) has mostly normal colored down but, on his head is the same bright tangerine color!
I have never seen another peachface baby that color. The middle chick has mostly normal color (yellowish-white) down, with a few strands of orange. The oldest (who is getting enough pin feathers to tell me he will be pied) has mostly normal colored down but, on his head is the same bright tangerine color!
Feel free to post a comment if you want to venture an (educated) guess as to what color-mutation might develop!
P.S. I was recently asked if the parent birds could have been feeding them something that might cause this color to develop, or if their bedding could have possibly "stained" them. No to both! They hatched that way! And the parent's diet pre-mating, during egg laying, and after chick's hatch, doesn't include that much beta carotene etc. to affect a color change.
3 comments:
We had never had this phenomenon until we started with a pair that included a normal green (with a red face). Many of our babies also had this orange down and as it turns out, orange down usually means you are going to get PFs with a red face. They could be normal or pieds for example with that red face. You won't know if they are a normal or if they are pied until their feathers come in, but they will have a red face of some sort!!
Check out what they look like (we have several feathered babies like that right now-- go back in the archives for baby pics):
http://www.trueloveaviary.blogspot.com
I received a pair of yellow peach faces last Christmas and they have just hatched out two babies. they only have their pin feathers so far, but how cute are they?
I just had my first 2 babies from a pair where the female is a normal red faced and the male is an orange headed but both are normal other than the colors of the head feathers. The babies also had the orange down when hatched. Their pin feathers look like a tangerine or bright redorange color. They are beautiful. I was hoping for that bright orange head though....Mg
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