IndianRingNeck.com

Hi everyone,
This might ruffle some feathers, pardon the pun.

Firstly, I must state that this is not an exercise to prove who is right or who is wrong. Both Ron and Willy have vast experience in mutation breeding and are very knowledgeable in what they do. However, we all know that the photo of Ron's deep green raised some eyebrows. It caught everyone by surprise, and personally I thought that it was possibly a deep dark green instead of a deep green.

All of us who have experimented with different structural combinations know that a point is reached where identification becomes complex and very difficult. What complicates matters further is the variations we have in phenotypes of any given mutation. Is it at all possible then that Ron some how misidentified one of his birds, and therefore lead him to incorrectly classify his bird as a deep green? I assume that Ron keeps detailed breeding records, but any records are only as good as the accuracy of the information being recorded. A misidentification of past results will produce future surprises.

This post is merely offering another alternative possibility as to what the phenotype of a deep green might be.

I know I'm going over old ground, however since Willy's article on deeps in Bird Keeper Magazine, I decided to revisit and revise all the information I collected in-regard to my deep greens. I took comparison photos over time with my deep green and a wildtype of the same age, and even took uv photos of them to try an identify any differences. I shared my findings with a fellow breeder of deeps and he also doubted that Ron's deep green was an accurate representation of a deep green.

Things changed very quickly for me when he confidently and without hesitation took one look at my juvenile deep green and identified it as such. Furthermore, he went on to state that it looks exactly like his mature deep green hen. I asked him how he could be so confident in his decision and he pointed out that it has the blue green sheen/shine over its wings which is typical of a deep green. Something that is very difficult to make show in photos.

So here are some of my photos

Deep on right. Fledgling photos


.
Deep on left



Juvenile moult . 7-8 months.
Deep in foreground.


Under uv. Deep much brighter.



Any thoughts?
Regards,
Kappa.

Hi Kappa,



I must admit, I too was surprised by Ron's Deep Green phenotype being rather dark.
However a couple of weeks ago i have spoken to John Friske, he has had the Deeps many years ago and amongst other things he said
(paraphrasing here): "and they bred these really dark greens darker than the dark greens" .

I have a few theories on this but i'd rather wait till after this breeding season as i have about 7 pairs of Deeps and the results of these pairs will tell us more.
(Most of my Deeps were bred from Martin's Deep he sold to Mark years back)
** One thing i don't have and hope Willy and or Ron can help.
DF Deep Blue that parents came from 2 diff. sources (breeders) 1 from QLD & 1 from VIC
DF Deep Blue X Blue a few of these to be paired up. What we could see is some unexpected results like deeps of 2 diff. colors & blues being bred & if that would be so it'd prove my suspicion that we have 2 types of Deeps. <= Suspicion not fact!

or pairing DF Deep Blue X DF Deep Blue is another good pairing for this test

More work is needed to be done before we can conclude anything concrete IMO.

Hi Ben,

Your information from JF about producing birds that darker than dark green, could plausibly mean that it would be possible to produce darker than dark blue from the genes such birds. Now that would be nice, and imagine that in df.

I can see whee you're coming from. I have personally seen variations in the deep blue phenotype that goes from birds that are very light, almost normal blue, to birds that are nearly as dark as an EU cobalt.

On top of that I have seen birds in df deep that are what you would expect, a darker blue, and some df deep, that without any reference birds could be easily mistaken for a violetblue.

What makes matters worse is that some of this extreme variation occurs in clutches of the same breeding pair over time.

Also what I find interesting is that some of the deeps have a characteristic shine about them and others don't.

So I guess there is no reason then that the same can't be true in the green series birds. We could have a wider range of phenotypes going from light (like mine) to dark (like Ron's).

I can't wait to see what your season brings, and what questions can be answered.

Ring0Neck wrote:(paraphrasing here): "and they bred these really dark greens darker than the dark greens" .

This, along with the blueish tint on the coverts close to the flights and the lighter blue than a dark green main tail feather, for me, are trademarks of the NT violet. The one remarkable thing for me is that, in the green series, they are darker than a dark green, yet in the blue series, they appear the opposite and are lighter than a cobalt.

And I agree, there is still a lot to be learnt from them.

Ring0Neck wrote:my suspicion that we have 2 types of Deeps. <= Suspicion not fact!

And one of those will most probably be the NT violet.

Kappa wrote:On top of that I have seen birds in df deep that are what you would expect, a darker blue, and some df deep, that without any reference birds could be easily mistaken for a violetblue.

Kappa, I'd love to see those two next to one another.

Johan S wrote:

Ring0Neck wrote:my suspicion that we have 2 types of Deeps. <= Suspicion not fact!

And one of those will most probably be the NT violet.

Kappa wrote:On top of that I have seen birds in df deep that are what you would expect, a darker blue, and some df deep, that without any reference birds could be easily mistaken for a violetblue.

Kappa, I'd love to see those two next to one another.

I think we are making progress.


That's one thing that is probably most frustrating, the fact that some look like violet .
I think the Deeps from Jack & Martin are such birds but Willy's most deeps are of the other type which i think is more consistent, Ron has both types as well (Assumption based on where they acquired the Deeps from and breeding results).

Perhaps we would need Green Deeps be bred to establish the type (if indeed there's 2 types)

Here's the pic from Martin or Jack (can't remember as i got the pic from Willy) and the DF Deep looks rather violet like IMO.

DF Violet, Deep, DF Dark, DF Deep Blues

Willy said in email:
"... have yet to breed a Deep Green but hope to this year. I will confirm that there are varying shades of Deep Blue in my flock. Some could even be darker than Cobalts. I will be imaging as many comparisons as I can over the coming month. Interestingly Martin says the original Deep Greens are not as dark as what Ron has imaged either. He sent me a pic attached of what he says is a Deep Green which does look like Kappa’s. If we do in fact have multiple Deep Blue look a-likes we still have only one Deep and need to separate them out as Ben says and hopefully identify by different DF phenotypes a different new mutation. ..."

Hi Ben,
Thanks for that info from Willy. It substantiates what I have seen in the flocks of others, and yes I agree that these different variants need to be matched together and see if any df offspring are produced form such pairings. This would help narrow down the true deeps, and possibly identify anything else at play.

I must say that I had some blues bred from parings of blue and deep, and IMO the deep had some influence on them by producing a better coloured blue. They weren't deep, but a nicer blue. There was a slight, but definite darker shade of blue in the flights and the tail. I wonder if some of these could be out there mistakenly labelled as deep.

Kappa, there is a bit of talk of these nicer, slightly darker blues over here too. What I'd like to see is what two of these birds produce together. Would a double factor emerge? What would it look like?

Johan,

I had two such blues. They were brothers, but I have moved them on, so I won't be able to answer your question.

Hi Kappa, with the pic of your 2 chicks, deep green and green respectively, does a green bird show flourescence under uv light and if so, how much compared to a deep green?

Thanks
Lushen

Hi Lushen,
If you go to the start of the thread you will see a uv photo of the deep and wildtype. The deep is much brighter.

Hi Kappa, thanks for the reply, I have a green hen, that I'm still trying to figure out what she is cos she doesn't look like a normal green, here is a pic of her right wing under UV light, tell me what you think



Thanks
Lushen

Hi Lushen,
I can't really comment because I only have looked at juveniles under uv. So I don't know the extent of the fluoresence of an adult green hen. Do you have another adult green hen to compare with? I don't have an adult green hen. I will however, take some photos of the deep green cock under uv this weekend and see what happens.

Has anyone got photos of an adult green hen under uv? I wouldn't mind seeing the results myself, but they also may help Lushen with his question. Thanks.

Kappa,

Can you give us info on your Deep Green's history?
parents? and did you get the deep parent/s from Martin directly?
I know you have told us this info in the past but i don't remember which thread etc.

Thanks
Ben

Hi Ben,

The history behind my birds is as follows:
The original sire(df deep green) of these birds was purchased from JS by a breeder in Victoria called Ross Nickoli. He paired him to a turquoise blue hen and they had 3 chicks. 2 cocks and a hen.

Martin purchased the cock and three juveniles. Martin never got to breed with the df deep green cock as he was killed by a hen he was to be paired with. Martin did breed with the 2 young cocks for one season, but they proved to be split ino so he moved them on. In the mean time Martin moved on to deep blues and sold the deep green hen to another breeder I know. This other breeder bred my deep green cock from her and the following year paired her to a blue split pallid cock which produce my deep green pallid hen. So purchased indirectly from Martin.

Great stuff Kappa.

It is best to know what bloodlines breed what type of Deep greens, so your info is valuable.

I have most of my birds paired up.
I have a Deep Blue hen paired to a Violet Green /poss Opaline and she comes from Martin's Deep Blue birds.
The other Deeps are all paired to Blue/Parblue series partners.
We'll see what they throw this season.


I'm sure that Willy is onboard to breed a few Deep Greens this season perhaps Ron as well and hopefully after this season we can answer
some of the Qs in relation to the differences in phenotype.

I personally think the darker deeps come from a diff. bloodline not JS's /Martin but bred by someone here in QLD as Friske said that they were darker than Dark Green.

As Johan says, one type could well be the same as their NT birds. wouldn't surprise me.

Hi Kappa, sorry, I don't have another green hen to put under UV light as I recently sold 4 pairs of greens that I had to make way for better mutations, I kept this green hen with a plain green cock cos she looked different from other green hens, would like to see from others what an adult normal green hen looks like under UV light

Thanks
Lushen

Hi Lushen,
I can't really comment because I only have looked at juveniles under uv. So I don't know the extent of the fluoresence of an adult green hen. Do you have another adult green hen to compare with? I don't have an adult green hen. I will however, take some photos of the deep green cock under uv this weekend and see what happens.

Has anyone got photos of an adult green hen under uv? I wouldn't mind seeing the results myself, but they also may help Lushen with his question. Thanks.

Hi I have a photo of a Violet green under UV lighting

This is the same hen 2006 Violet green

Ben,
That's good to hear. I think going back to basics and starting from scratch will prove to be the best option here. I hope that there is more to this than we expect.

I have split up my deeps this season. The deep cock is with a df violet hen and the deep hen is with a blue cock. No df deep green this season . I needed to expand my range of colours

Hi Lushen,
Here are some photos of my deep green cock under uv.








Hi John Shannon,
I was just wondering what kind of uv light you have used in your photos? I just can't get that intensity of flouresence from the one I have been using.
Thanks.

Hi Kappa
It is just a 240 volt UV black tube light I bought from a local computer shop.

Hi John,
Thanks for that. I will have to chase one up. I've been using one I purchased off the shelf from Bunnings, but I don't think it filters out the light enough.

Hi Kappa

There are flashlights now availabe that go up to 150 nm of uv light intencity . I just googled uv flashlight and found a shop in the city , Peter was kind enough to collect it for me .
The flash light is handy cause I dont need extra hands when I inspect the birds or take photos

Regards
Robert

Hi Robert,
Thanks for the info. I will check it out.
Cheers,
Kappa

Back on the Deep color variation, Willy has taken pics of 5 SF Deep Blues to portait the variance already exists.

Age abviously play a role in their final phenotype.

Willy said:

The 5 Deep Blues show the range of variance in my SF Deep Blues. The cocks generally appear slightly greyer on the back when mature however the not yet mature cock in the images doesn’t have it yet.

Great set of pics- do you think Willy could throw sfDark and Euro sfViolet Blues into the mix?

That's a really nice pic. Ben, do you know whether all these birds were bred from a single source, or are they from more than one source?

The two darker males are dead ringers for the NT violets this side. The mature cock at the bottom (lighter phenotype) seems different to anything I've run across over here. That's a good "half cobalt", and perfectly explains the DF not being mauve (given the mechanism of reducing the width of the spongy zone was the same).

do you know whether all these birds were bred from a single source, or are they from more than one source?

Willy has told us that he sourced his Deeps from 3 breeders if i remember correctly.

Ron & Martin,
& a QLD breeder; which is the type of deeps i believe are darker in green. since Martin has told Willy that his deep greens are also lighter in color.
Ron pretty sure has from both sources also. that being the reason IMO why some DFs are darker while others are rather light colored but deep nice blue to them.

I guess it is now a matter of working out which birds are from which bloodine.

Ok, Ben, so when you say a picture showing 'variation in deep', we could also be looking at two different (but very close) mutations or alleles, and not necessarily variation (like juvenile turquoise expression). The difference of course being, variation is the difference in expression in phenotype in the same bloodline, while different expressions in phenotype from different bloodlines could be caused by variation (same mutation from different sources), or by another allele of the locus or by a completely different mutation (different locus) with a very similar expression (take the two ino mutations, or edged and cinnamon). I believe this also links in to your observation that there might be more than one type of deep.

Has Willy et al. shown that the two phenotypes are alleles, or have they only recently started picking up on this difference?

I personally think we have 2 types but that's just me.

Only recently, since the green deeps were bred and the 2 types were clearly visible
Willy is working on this which is great as he has both types

Another allele of the locus or by a completely different mutation (different locus) with a very similar expression

time will tell
in saying that, what has been noticed is that the color seems to evolve somehow.
imagine if all are just 1 mutation but showing a huge range in expressivity, much more than opaline in birds do

here is a good example of mutation progress (opaline in this case) in Turquoisine Parrots & selective breeding at work

http://parakeet.me/irn/m/em/P4141256.JPG

Ring0Neck wrote:

Ben has interchanged one of Willy pics. So here is the correct second one. Now the three males look nearly the same beside small deviations which should be caused by the blue base color. Furthermore the bird in the background isn't exposed by sunlight:

Interestingly enough, Martin's deeps come from only one source and he still gets variations in colour. He has told me that the colour can vary between clutches of chicks from the same pair.

Johan, I will see if I can organise some photos of the variation I have seen in his df deeps. I don't know if he will, I can only ask.

I have a picture of a deep green hen that I got the other day ,( pic not bird )
I could ask the owner if he doesn't mind me sharing the pic
If you's are interested.

Hi Snake,

Absolutely yes. The more info we can gather on deeps the better. Also see if your friend can provide some background history on the bird not only parentage, but any details they can trace back, of breeders this hen came from. If they don't mind of course.

Hi All, just a novice so hope you don't mind my input here, but I'm as intrigued as the rest of you regarding these Deeps and their variations.
Madas, even accounting for the variance in sunlight on that last pic, it still appears to me that (going from front to back) Bird 2 and Bird 5 are of similar shade, and then Bird 1 and Bird 3 are alike, but different to 2 & 5 - Bird 4 appears 'lighter', even slightly 'greenish?' maybe through the back/wings?

Thanks Ring0neck (and of course Willy), for showing these pics - it's great to have quality photo's to use as reference and as a comparison tool.

Bookmarking this thread

Hey Kappa ,
Forgot all about it , I will message him now ......
I think you might no the history on it , as its one of Martins .......

His green deeps have coloured the same as the originals ,
Looking like a normal green but with a blue sheen .....

Martin said it was fine for me to post his pic , but I can't upload it says it's to big and I have no idea how to make it smaller ......

If you message me your email will send them to that ..

Hi Snake,
I will send you my email in a pm. I can then post it for you.

No worries

Martin resized them for me

Same bird

Snake & Martin Thanks for the pics.

It seems at this stage that we do have 2 types of Deeps as suspected.

Could this Deep type be the same as the SA Deep ?
I can see the same features in both birds, color seems different but that could be lighting/camera etc

Tienie, your opinion is welcome also if you're reading this.

Hi Ben,
What do you reckon, anything in this?
For those who aren't aware theses are photos of Ron's deep green juvenile and a NT violet green from SA, Johan's bird.

Kappa,


It's a taugh call, young v mature there's room for error.

My deeps are the same bloodline as Martin's so i will need to get some of the darker ones.
Ron & Willy has both types if indeed there's two.
Perhaps Willy & Ron could look at the mature birds from J.S./Martin's V Qld line to pick if there's any difference in phenotype.

Depends on the lighting , both pics I put up are of the same hen
One looks like the bird in the top of the post and the other similar to the sa deep..

I'm not sure about 2 types of deeps , some breeders have put deep with dark and this might be the second darker ones ....
Martin has never put his deeps over dark , for this reason I would go by his for colouring .

But in saying that I believe Martin has produced the odd deep that is darker than a euro cobalt .
So might be possible of 2 types of deeps .... Lol

Correct me if I'm wrong Martin

Snake wrote:But in saying that I believe Martin has produced the odd deep that is darker than a euro cobalt .
So might be possible of 2 types of deeps .... Lol

Correct me if I'm wrong Martin

If Martin bred a very dark Deep then it points back to 1 single Deep mutation with a large variation in phenotype because we know
Martin did not acquire Deep birds from QLD source.
Willy & Ron have also reported variation in Deeps including Ron in DFs.

I'm looking forward to see what I get this year

DF , green , pastels

Willy Said :

For what its worth, I checked my records and the lighter of the Deep Blue cocks in front in the 1st image was the only Deep I have sourced from Martin. Unfortunately I find myself with no Green series bird to pair it with so that will have to wait. I do have a Deep Blue hen bred from the Qld birds with a Green Dom Pied set up for this year. I have the Martin Deep Blue cock set up with a DF Deep TurquoiseBlue (Qld) hen for this year. The two Deeps will be found in half the young, hopefully without Turquoise. If it turns out there are 2 mutations after the respective DF birds are bred, the name Deep will be ascribed to the darker type as that is all I have bred. Martin’s (Smith’s) lighter type will need a new name. I am excited however, if the mutations are compounding in their expression then I’ll have yet another structural colour to further darken these birds. I do believe, on Martin’s evidence of light and dark Deep Blues being bred, that there is just a variation in the Deep mutation. Obviously selection will play a role in selecting for the darkest.