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My
adventures with recessive pieds
I will explain to you how I have improved the Recessive Pieds in my small stud.
I am not a big breeder because I only have room for nine breedingcages. My
adventure started in 1978, caused by the fact that no Recessive Pieds were to be
seen at shows in my country. If I wanted to see Recessives, I had to go to the
petshop where there were only the very small miserable Recessive Pieds you all
know of. I knew that better Recessives were around in Germany but I was not in a
position to go there so I decided to buy some petshop birds. I understood that I
had to go a long way before I could breed Recessive Pieds of good show quality.
However, I thought, time doesn't matter--it may take a lifetime but it seemed to
me a great challenge. Before I started to breed Recessive Pieds, I had given it
serious consideration. In fact I only needed colour from these small birds to be
transmitted into my own bigger birds. But how could I do that?
No knowledge of inheritance of the physical features.
What is the inheritance of the physical features of our standard birds today,
dominant, recessive or intermediate? I didn't know and nobody could tell me
about this inheritance. I had to work it out for myself. So I decided to use my
own arguments which are the following: I think that getting bigger birds
probably depends on more than one hereditary factor and I think that most of
these hereditary factors will behave in a recessive manner. In that case it must
be possible to breed small birds which are split for size. I think it is very
important that to get the Recessive Pied colour from my small Recessive Pied
birds into my better showbirds, I will have to use unrelated Recessives and I
will have to combine them with closely related better normals of my own stud. In
this way you will get Normals which are split for Recessive Pied and split for
size. Both the Recessive Pied factor and the factor for size will inherit
independently of each other. So when you pair Normal/Recessive Pied and big to
Normal/Recessive Pied and big, then it is to be expected that you will get 25%
Recessives and only a few of them will also be big. So, to get one big and
better Recessive Pied, you will have to use a lot of pairs. Diagrammatically I
will show you the result of my first pair, which consist of a small Recessive
Pied cock and a big Normal hen.
Asking a lot of fanciers, what size will the chicks of this pair be?, most of
them answered "something in the middle of both parents". But they were
wrong as the youngsters here grew only 5-10% bigger than their small father.
After I had bred several larger Normals/Recessive Pied from different pairs in
this way, I paired these together. Only a few Recessive Pieds were bred and
these were as small as my first bought-in Recessives. Disappointed but not
discouraged, I went on with my owner bred Recessives. Again I paired these to
Normals of my own stud. The bigger Normals/Recessive Pieds I got from these
pairings were possibly larger than from my first effort. Not significantly
bigger but nevertheless a little larger. I paired these together but again the
Recessive Pieds I got from these pairs were almost as small as my original
Recessive Pieds but somewhat more solid. Again I didn't want to be discouraged
and I paired these Recessive Pieds to my best Normals. This time I was lucky,
the Normals split Recessive Pieds which possessed size which arose from these
pairings took the medium size of both of their parents. I paired these larger
Normals split Recessives together and these pairings gave me better chicks than
their parents, among them some good Recessive Pieds! From then on the Recessive
Pieds I bred were continuously better and now my Recessive Pieds belong to the
best birds of my small stud. That created for me a new problem, from now on I
have to look at better Normals and these are not often for sale. Possibly I will
have to exchange some Recessive Pieds for good Normals. These better Normals are
necessary because I want to breed better split birds and in the future a
Recessive Pied show winner!
Summary
1. I have always paired the larger Normal/Recessive Pied cocks to another Normal/Recessive
Pied hen.
2. To breed good split Recessive Pieds, it is necessary to use closely related
Normals but unrelated Recessive Pieds.
3. The last years I sometimes paired the larger Normal/Recessive Pied to
Recessive Pied.
4. The pairing, Recessive Pied to Recessive Pied has been undesirable for a fast
improvement of the physical features of the bird.
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