Ask Lafeber

Cross breeding

am going to pair up with violet mask and olive mask
What is the result will be there

Hi Sebi.

These are both color mutations of the Black Masked lovebird, so breeding them with each other is not considered cross breeding. You are merely breeding two different colors of the same species of lovebird. This is how all of the different color mutations were achieved in the first place. As to what the offspring may look like, I don’t know. Genetics are very complicated when you are dealing with color mutations. Some colors are considered sex linked and can only come from one gender. Some colors are more dominant than others, so you would be likely to only get the dominant color, other than an occasional one of the other color. It also depends on the parents and grandparents and so on of each parent. If each parents came from two different color mutations, they could be what you call “split to” the color they are not showing. This can mean they end up producing that color. It could be you end up with normal green Black Mask offspring. There are few who are experienced in lovebird genetics. There are some calculators, but even those are very confusing to try to use, and again, you need to know what color some of the past generations were. So go ahead and breed them, and see what you get. Again, they are the same species, so it is OK for them to breed as long as they are not related to each other. And you may not get the same results each time.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda