Cinnamon Scaley Breasted Lorikeets


The data below is a very simplified probable explanation of how our Scaly lorikeets have probably produced different colour offspring. We have worked on the basis that the cinnamon gene in our Scalies is sex-linked as dna sexing the cinnamons and what we know of the parents appears to point to sex-linked inheritence. (of course we could be totally wrong and it could be recessive)

Starting with our original pair of breeding Scalies where the female was visual - yellow or mustard, and the male a normal green. When we bought this pair we also obtained five green and two olive scalies that were all supposed to be their offspring. These were all quite young birds and at least two of them were under three months old. Two of the greens were males.

A visual yellow female with a normal green male will produce males that are split and normal green females only.
The evidence we have supports this as the original pair never produced any yellow/mustard/cinnamon visuals either male or female. All their offspring were either green or olive. This raises the suspicion that the visual hen was in fact a mustard and this is how olive (grey/green) chicks were produced.
(mustard being cinnamon and grey/green) Of the known offspring two of the greens were males, these should both be splits.

One of these split males was sold (mistake!) and the other paired up with a green female (who also came from a visual yellow/cinnamon female) although she would have been a normal green - split to nothing.

This pair, a split to cinnamon male and normal green female have produced four offspring in 2001, two are cinnamon and two are green. The two cinnamons are females (dns sex tested), one green is sold and the other could be a green male or female or a split male. (pending dna sex testing).

The simplified rules with sex-linked colour mutations used here are:

Cinnamon female with normal green male will produce only green-cinnamon split males and normal green females.
Normal green female with green-cinnamon split male will produce normal green males, green-cinnamon split males, cinnamon visual females or normal green females.

The cinnamon colour variation with green birds such as these scalies results in plumage that is yellow and green, the green tends to overlay the yellow. Other parts that are usually black are instead brown to a lighter horn colouring. This includes beak, edging to flight feathers, feet skin colour and toenails.


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Last modified: 21 February 2002.