Button & Ava

[Vampiric_Conure]

Nothing beats that poop of approval .

 

[wrench13]

I wish my Salty would be more egalitarian in his like of toys. He only shows interest in baskety type toys and ones with thin small wood pieces. Ones with big blocky pieces of wood get ignored and pooped on! Nice job, you!

 

[nkrbkr]

Most of the big blocks are very soft balsa wood. Ava generally doesn’t chew hard, although she’s been chewing on pine more and more. She does like snapping hardwood beads though.

 

[nkrbkr]

Here’s my beautiful little Button this afternoon. On the topic of color mutations (posted in another thread), I was told by his breeder that he is an “Opaline Turquoise Ino.”

Here are his parents. The yellow bird is his mom, and the blue bird is his dad.

 

[onamom]

Very nice looking toys! And a very handsome Mr. Button!

 

[Vampiric_Conure]

With the sun hitting Button in the one pic, I mistook them for a Quaker! LOL! Obviously, they're NOT.

 

[wrench13]

Lovies have such beautiful color variations!

 

[nkrbkr]

They really do have beautiful variety! Button had three other birds in his clutch, and they were all beautiful. Here’s a picture of him (front and center) with two of his siblings. There also was one other that looked like the dad, and was very blue.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

Beauties!

 

[nkrbkr]

Interestingly, the other turquoise ino is a boy as well. @DonnaBudgie , you said it’s uncommon for males to be ino’s?

 

[DonnaBudgie]

It's uncommon because males need two ino genes and femsles only need one, and for some reason two ino genes makes a bird that isn't as healthy and strong as one ino gene. Theoretically it would be easy to develop a pure breeding line of albino or lutinos just like opalines (both are sex linked recessive traits). All you would need to do is breed ino females with males that carried ino and then breed the ino male offspring to another ino female. Then all babies would be ino. But it hasn't worked out like that in practice. If it could be done successfully breeders would have done it because ino birds are so desirable. I read that inos can have very poor eyesight when they have two ino genes. Maybe other genetic problems, too.

Opaline males are half as common as opaline females. Males need two opaline genes and can be bred with opaline females with one gene with strong healthy all opaline babies, no problems, so opaline males are much more common than ino males.