IndianRingNeck.com

Hi everybody;

Several weeks ago somebody asked about a relation between colour and size in IRN. In fact the question was about cinnamon IRN being biggers than other mutations. This is not the first time I hear about it, and in fact, mi 'biggest" bird is a female green cinnamon (152 grs). It was answered that size and colour are not related since they are regulated by independent genes. I can further say that size in mammals and birds inherits in a polygenic way, that means that it is regulated by many different genes, some of them being more important (major genes) than the others. It is also known that IRN show a wide range of sizes.

If we assume that a major gene regulating size is located in the X cromosome closely to the cinnamon gen, it could explain that size and colour could be apparently coupled in this mutation... so to clarify this point I proposed to people in the forum to make all togethers a simple experiment: to weight your birds (only birds older than 2 years = adults) and post the following data:

1. Type of mutation and split if known.
2. Sex
3. Weight
4. Place where you live (mainly northern or southern hemisphere, to test if there is a relation to reproductive moment)

I have chosen the weigth as parameter to study the size car the length of feathers, the distance between tips of wings, ... are more difficult to mesure and very variable among strains.

From this data we will have a point of reference to know if our birds are "bigger" or "smaller", we will know if there are sex differences, mutations differences, ... I will collect pulled data and make the statistics to post in the forum. If somebody has acces to wild animals, and he can weigh them, it will allow to know how our birds are evolving from their wild ancestors.
Here I go: my birds:

Male green clearhead fallow/blue .... 131 grs
Male blue-turquoise .... 135 grs
Male lutino .... 120 grs
Male blue-cin .... 138 grs
Male pallid .... 134 grs
Male green/blue .... 142 grs
Male bleu/ino ..... 141 grs
Male green/ino/blue .... 139 grs

Female green gris/ clearhead fallow .... 112 grs
Female blue violet .... 134 grs
Female lutino .... 144 grs
Female green/blue .... 132 grs
Female blue turquoise .... 139 grs
Female green cinnamon .... 152 grs
Female blue-turquoise cinnamon .... 112 grs
Female green/blue ..... 152 grs

I live in France

Expecting your collaboration, best regards

Recio

I would love to help but my IRN's are breeders and i dont think they would let me weigh them

Hi Sheena;

Weighing IRN is simple: you put the bird in a cardboard box and weigh the box with the bird inside. Then you weigh the box without the bird and a simple substraction give you the birds weight. With electronic balances it is even easier.

You can collaborate even if you just have one or two birds .... Everyone could do their small part to help build up the building (grano a grano se hace granero).

Regards

Recio

Thank you Saud,
We have the time, this will be a long experiment that we could update every 3-4 months with the new data incoming.

Best regards