Pastel rainbow color is weak or unable to live long ?

[Jogie]

Hi there.

I lost my budgie who was pastel rainbow last month.
Pastel rainbow color is a weak health or something than original one ? 
Has your Pastel rainbow lived  for ten years more?
 

Tell me about your bird's age of Pastel rainbow budgies.


Thanks . 

[yellowfacedviolet]

There is absolutely no correlation between rainbow mutation and budgie health or longevity. None. Period.

[Jogie]

Thank you so much for your reply.

[tweetiepiesmom]

My vet once told me that if you get the normal green wild budgie colored bird, that will be your best chance of getting a healthy bird that will live long. She said all the fancy colors are bred for color and health is a secondary concern.

[yellowfacedviolet]

There's an issue with your vet's logic. Normal greens are produced in the same clutches along side the "fancy colors." For example, you can breed a lutino to, say, a cinnamon violet sky recessive pied clearwing--two "fancy colors"-- and have a clutch of all normal greens. Conversely, breeders who specialize in normal greens are, in your vet's view, breeding for color.

Furthermore, in my experience, most breeders from whom we get our birds do not breed specifically for color given how complicated and unpredictable budgie color genetics are what with all the splits. And even exhibition breeders have a lot more on their plate, priority-wise, than color.

[tweetiepiesmom]

I tend to believe what you said yellowfacedviolet. I'd guess most breeders are just breeding the budgies to sell the babies and they hope they get attractive colors. I'm sure there are competition breeders who are trying to get budgies with the next new exotic color so they can win a competition. Most of us would never run into those breeders. Reading your posts about genetics, it does seem very confusing.

[skysmum]

Jul 11, 2021 18:30:28 GMT tweetiepiesmom said:

My vet once told me that if you get the normal green wild budgie colored bird, that will be your best chance of getting a healthy bird that will live long. She said all the fancy colors are bred for color and health is a secondary concern.

I have to agree with your vet TPM , the small green wild type budgies have certainly been the longest lived for me over the years and that's 55 + years, in that time ive had 5 normal greens that have lived 15 plus years and had no health problems during that time so i firmly believe this to be true.

[yellowfacedviolet]

Jul 11, 2021 22:41:13 GMT skysmum said:

 the small green wild type budgies have certainly been the longest lived for me over the years

I don't think there's any debate that the smaller, 'standard' budgies are generally longer-lived than the larger exhibition-sized birds. The subject under discussion in this thread was about color..

[Marianne Marlow]

Maybe what is happening is that people are not breeding with as many normal greens, so the ones we have are not as over-bred.

But with the fancy colours they breed them like mad to get pretty birds for sale or to show.

That said, I have only had one normal green budgie and he had to be Put to sleep at 2 years old due to a seizure, he couldn't even lift his head to eat or drink.

With the exhibition birds my longest lived was 6 years 8 months (he was a normal grey) and with pet type I had a Sky blue Dilute live until 12 years old.

I may have contradicted myself

[yellowfacedviolet]

Jul 12, 2021 8:15:12 GMT Marianne Marlow said:

I may have contradicted myself

Not really. All of our personal experiences, interesting as they may be, are anecdotal. If there were a bonafide, scientifically sound link between color and health/longevity, we'd know about it. Instead, if you research the subject you get people's musings, personal experiences, and thoughts. My personal experience is similar to yours Marianne Marlow; my record-holders, age-wise, were all blue series and many of them were violets, one making it to 16, while the greens I've had (one of the best ways to improve a violet is to breed to a green that masks violet), while not short-lived, didn't make it to their teens.  BTW, that 16 year-old was the result of a mating between a standard ('pet') budgie and an exhibition-type bird.

[Marianne Marlow]

yellowfacedviolet 16 is a great age, I wish that all of mine would live that long.

Hector was quite big for a pet type, so he may have been a pet type crossed with exhibition, he lived until almost 11 years.

Hector (sorry, any excuse to show his photo, I miss him dearly)

[tweetiepiesmom]

Marianne Marlow I love your new avatar picture. Sorry this is a bit off-topic but related. Who are you holding on your finger? He's huge compared to my two little petite boys (they are both around 30 grams each)!

[Marianne Marlow]

It's Blithe, he is quite close to the camera, but I'd guess he weighs close to 50 grams.

Jul 13, 2021 14:38:56 GMT tweetiepiesmom said:

Marianne Marlow I love your new avatar picture. Sorry this is a bit off-topic but related. Who are you holding on your finger? He's huge compared to my two little petite boys (they are both around 30 grams each)!

[yellowfacedviolet]

Always happy to provide you with an excuse to post a picture of Hector.

[ariella]

What a handsome chap Hector was. He looks like he knew so too.