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• BELOW: Red Head White Breast, Red Line Species Finches.

• BELOW: Red Head, Purple Breast, Yellow Back, Finches

• I have always bred my Gouldians in larger cages as individual pairs. I have tried breeding them in larger cages with 2 to 3 pairs, but was not as successful with that arrangement. Some other breeders have reported great success breeding Gouldians in colonies. Probably the best arrangement for colony breeding would be in a larger aviary with four or more pairs. While a mostly peaceful bird, they can begin to pick on each other to defend their nest territory.

• BELOW: Mixed Masked Cobalt's

• BELOW: Mixed Masked Cobalt's

• Some Gouldian pairs can be notorious chick tossers. Often incubating well, but then ejecting the young soon after hatching. It is usually the male that ejects the young, but not always. I feel that these are mostly young pairs or birds that are not yet in full breeding condition. I have found that it is a waste of time to return the chicks (if they are found alive) to the nest as they will most certainly be ejected again. The young can be fostered to another pair of Gouldians or Society finches. If possible, try to pair up an older bird with a younger bird and wait until the birds are in top breeding condition before providing a nest box. I check the beak colour of the pair as an indicator of breeding condition. Males should have pearly white beaks with a red tip and females should have an almost completely black beak (note: mutations can mask these beak colours).

• BELOW: Lutino Fischers

• BELOW: BELOW: Mixed Masked Cobalt's

• Colour Mutations

  There are three naturally occurring colour morphs for head colours that exist in the wild (Morph is used here instead of mutation because it is a naturally occurring variation). The Black Headed form being the normal wild state. The Red Headed variety is dominant to the Black Head morph, but is still far outnumbered by the Black Head variety in the wild. The Yellow or Orange Head variety is rarely seen as it is a recessive mutation and also requires the presence of the Red Headed gene to be visible.

  The mutations developed in aviculture include the White Breast (replaces the normal purple colour with white), the Yellow-backed (eliminates the blue & black colour), and the Blue-backed (eliminates the yellow colour). How these mutation act on the birds and the combinations can be confusing for many Gouldian breeders.

• BELOW: Lutino Fischers

• BELOW: Mixed Masked Cobalt's

• Head colour - Black is the normal state. The Red-headed variety (RH) is sex-linked dominant morph that can be held as single or double factor in the males, while females only need inherit one gene from their father to show the red mask. Males that are single factor RH can produce both BH and RH hens. Yellow head (or orange as it is really a rust orange colour) is a recessive morph, but it requires the presence of the RH gene to be visible. If the bird is a YH (has two genes for YH), but is genetically Black headed, then the head mask will be black. The tip of the beak will be yellow rather than red, however. Red head and Black headed birds that are split for YH show no visible signs of the hidden gene.

• BELOW: Lutino Fischers

• BELOW: Lutino Fischers

• Breast colour - The White Breast mutation is a recessive mutation. It eliminates the purple colour leaving a clean white breast. This is inherited separately from head colour and can be combined with any of the three morphs. The Lilac breast mutation seems to be tied to the White breast mutation in some way. It is unclear as to it's mode of inheritance and may simply be the incomplete suppression of the purple colour by the White breasted gene. Males with a lilac breast are sometimes confused with hens. The deep yellow coloration of the belly will help differentiate these males from normal females.

• BELOW: Red Billed Long Tailed Finches

• BELOW: Mixed Finches

• Back colour - The Blue-backed variety is a recessive mutation. It eliminates the yellow colour on the Gouldian and alters the colours accordingly. The normally green back is changed to blue, the yellow belly is changed to a dingy white and if the bird is either Red or Yellow headed, then this is changed to a salmon colour. The beak is pearly white without any tip colour so there is no way to distinguish between RH and YH Blue-backed birds. The mask looks the same. Only if the genetics are known can you say for certain. I paired two normal YH Gould's split for Blue-back to produce true YH Blue-backed birds. These looked identical to other Blue-backs exhibiting salmon collared heads. Some of which were surely RHs genetically.

• BELOW: Gouldian Purple Breast

• BELOW: Male Orange Breast Finch

• Yellow-back is a Sex-linked Co-dominant mutation. The mutation works to suppress the blue and black colour from the bird. The normally green back is changed to yellow, the black face ring is removed and genetically BH birds will have a grey face mask. Males that hold the Yellow back gene in the single factor (only one gene inherited) will have a diluted appearance. They still have green on their backs, but this is diluted and the black face ring is eliminated or reduced. There is a twist here, if a single factor Yellow-backed male is also a White Breasted bird, he will be visually a Yellow-backed. There is often some flecks of green on the back, but he certainly is not a dilute. Females cannot be split for sex-linked mutations so they only need inherit one Yellow-back gene to be visually Yellow. Therefore, dilute females can never be produced regardless of the breast colour.

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