Pictures Do Male genes dominate in breeding ?

[lexalayne]

This guy is a character ! The one above is my yellow dominant female with all yellow tail feathers.


I have always heard baby chicks inherit their father’s characteristics. For those of you who breed parrots do you believe this to be true or a myth ? I’m not a breeder. I think about it sometimes but that’s as far as it has gone.

When breeding cockatiels and parakeets of different colors are you able to predict the babies colors based on the fathers colors ?

Or when breeding B&G macaws of different personalities or body types do the male genes or characteristics appear more in their offspring ?

Or hybrid breeders does this seem true?

I have heard this about the male genes for so long I always assumed it to be true.

It’s way past time that I just asked all of you that do breed. Because when I think about breeding I worry about birds without a home and it’s not anything I want to contribute to.

I have two beautiful yellow dominant Camelot Macaw females and two gorgeous scarlet males. Hybrid macaws that are yellow dominant would never lack for a home. They are sought after. Red dominant hybrids are less sought after.

This is why I’m asking this question about male dominant (possibly) genes.

 

[Zara]

I don't know about macs, but when breeding lovebirds they get whichever (colour) mutation is dominant. So if the hen is Normal (green) and the cock is Turquoise, the chicks will be Normal split to Turquoise and visually will look like the mum.
So we can predict offspring colours based on the parents mutations and what is dominant and what else they carry.
I'm not sure how helpful that is as they are different species.
I hope you find the answers

 

[lexalayne]

@Zara thank you !

 

[melissasparrots]

With simple color genetics such as green vs. blue parrotlets, the female matters just as much as the male. I've read a well respected macaw hybrid breeder claim the male was a better predictor of chick color than the female. I don't know if maybe in the case of hybrids there is something like a greater tendency to silence the mother's chromosome in order to conserve functionality in not quite compatible DNA. I've heard of cases like this and someone that knows more about genetics than I do might be able to explain better. I'm still a little bit skeptical about the male contributing more to color than the female.

 

[aooratrix]

Barb and Tracy both believed that the male "supplied the paint job."

 

[Monica]

I have always heard baby chicks inherit their father’s characteristics. For those of you who breed parrots do you believe this to be true or a myth ? I’m not a breeder. I think about it sometimes but that’s as far as it has gone.

When we are talking first gen hybrids where both parents are a pure species, it shouldn't matter, necessarily, which parent is what species. They all would, more or less, look the same.

When we get into multi-gen hybrids, then that's where things get tricky. In multi-gen hybrids, you can get offspring of different colors... hence some hybrids being "red dom" or "yellow dom" or even "green dom". That is, a hybrid pair can produce different colored offspring. If the male was always the one to be the main contributor to color, then the offspring should always appear similar or same regardless. They don't.

When breeding cockatiels and parakeets of different colors are you able to predict the babies colors based on the fathers colors ?

You can't compare breeding MUTATIONS to breeding HYBRIDS. I have a friend with a lutino cockatiel. Her father was a whiteface pied, mother a pearl. So where did the lutino come from?

Whiteface and pied are recessive genes. This means that cockatiels require two genes in order to be visual.

Pearl and lutino are sex-linked. This means that females can only have one gene and they are visual. They cannot have two sex-linked genes, only one. Males require two to be visual, one means they are split for the mutation.

This means that the lutino cockatiel got her coloration from her dad and is split whiteface and pied.


When it comes to hybrids.... the first-gen offspring are 50/50 each species. When we get into multi-gen hybrids, the lines get blurry and they may get more genes of one species over another, which could account for the different colors we get in the offspring, even from the same clutch. This thus means that it doesn't really matter *that* much on which parent is which so much as it matters what genes the offspring receive. If you breed a miligold to a catalina, theoretically speaking, the offspring would be 50% B&G, 25% military and 25% scarlet. Apparently, offspring vary between something that looks like a miligold to one that looks like a miligold with a red chest. Some might even have a partially green chest.

Or when breeding B&G macaws of different personalities or body types do the male genes or characteristics appear more in their offspring ?

I'm not a breeder, nor do I have a macaw, so that question I would have to defer to someone with more knowledge. There is a hybrid macaw group on FB that might be able to further answer your questions.

 

[lexalayne]

I put this question on fb too in a hybrid group. There were many different opinions. But the consensus seems to be nobody knows for sure. And they were talking about yellow dom Camelot’s x scarlets. Some had the male as the yellow dom and the female as the scarlet and vice versa. But the only thing I could see for sure was there was never in a group of offspring that was either all red dom or all yellow dom.

 

[Monica]

I'd say that's because we're speaking from a multi-gen hybrid of camelot x scarlet so no guarantee on color of offspring... and I guess it's the same group I was referring to!!!