lovebird genetics

[AmyL]

Hi everyone

I am Amy, new to parrotforums.com. I recently own a pair of masked lovebirds. Their sex has been confirmed by DNA testing, male and female. I only have a very basic knowledge of lovebird genetics, and therefore posting this question and see if I could get some info on what their offspring might be.

The male is EF violet...this is what the breeder called. Well...I know SF violet, DF violet, and the dark factor, etc. And how combination of that gives different intensity of violet colour, I never heard of a EF factor...

The female is pastel (dilute) cobalt, female's parents are cobalt and green masked, I guess they each carry the recessive pastel mutation.

I suspect crossing EF violet and pastel cobalt would give all masked? Since the male doesn't have pastel. And they would be either violet masked and cobalt masked?

Sorry about the long thread, but the genetics of lovebirds is really fascinating!

Thanks and looking forward hearing from all the experts
Amy

 

[cassiepengo]

omg, sounds complicated!! i know nothing about genetics too!

 

[AmyL]

Yes, very complicated indeed. Well...I guess we will find out by crossing them amd see what happen then

 

[Kimma]

I googled EF violet mutation, and this thread was one of the highest results, so it can't be very common. That said, I did find it mentioned in a South African article about lovebirds. They used EF violet and DF violet. I just asked google translate and the Afrikaans word for single is "enkele".

http://agapornissa.co.za/pdfs/Article%20Violet%20mutation%20Avizandum%20April%202012.pdf

It's the 2nd article in the pdf, though the first one is interesting too.

 

[AmyL]

Hi Kimma,
Thanks for the pdf file! In the article, it says "Blou +(plus) een violet geen = Blou EF Violet" and "Blou +(plus) twee violet geen = Blou DF Violet". I think EF possibly means single violet factor...

 

[crimson]

this drove me nuts!!!!...EF?? I had no clue about it, never heard of it either.
by no means I am no expert!!....still learning this gibberish about genetics....it truly makes my head spin....
thank you for asking this question...I researched many many web sites, and finally found out what it means....victory!!

It stands for 'Early Feathering" according to this link, even though it's talking about chickens....yeah I know.

Apparently from the other links I looked up,(not about chickens) I could only find the term being used in the DF(dark factor) mutations, cobalt, indigo etc....

Figure 2: Difference in the Ct values of homozygous early feathering (EF), heterozygous... - Open-i

If your male carries the pastel gene, then some of your chicks will be pastel, violet, and cobalt....either way they are going to be truly gorgeous!!.....lucky you!!

for some reason google is not working at the moment, but you might try looking up a masked lovebird genetics calculator.
Beth