Although there are no recognised subspecies, Painted Firetails exhibit considerable variation in many of their physical characteristics. This augers well for the future genetic viability of the species in aviculture as well as providing exciting prospects for those wishing to carry out selective breeding to emphasise whichever attributes appeal most to the breeder. My own interest in breeding Painteds has been heightened in recent years as I have been developing a quality line of birds with emphasis on extending red colour areas on males and enhanced spotting and red colouration on females. I have kept and bred them on and off over many years, but it is only with my interest aroused by the most recent few seasons of selective breeding that I have much more intently observed and experimented with various aspects of their management and breeding. Hence I have learned as much about them in the past couple of seasons as all preceding ones.
The first season or so of my breeding program saw limited progress as I was starting with only a few quality birds. Early matings by coincidence saw my best males paired to fairly ordinary females and my best females paired to only average quality cocks. The number of young produced from these matings was very good, however better quality young birds were only about 1 in 7 or 8 of those produced and none were exceeding the quality of my best breeding birds. Information I had read in magazine articles and discussions with some breeders already breeding red-fronted Painteds led me to initially believe that in order to produce good quality red-fronted cocks you don't need to use better quality hens. Breaking up these initial pairings and mating best cocks to best hens proved the error in this notion. While it is certainly possible to produce some (about 1 in 7 or 8) good red-fronted males using average standard mothers, using top quality hens with top quality cocks produces a majority of top quality young in both sexes. Furthermore, the occasional young bird (about 1 in 10 or more) showed significant improvement over and above its parents. Identifying and retaining these standout youngsters has been the key to improving the overall quality of the strain each season.
As with any serious selective breeding exercise, it is absolutely essential to retain all of the season's young birds until they are fully coloured in order to ensure that you are retaining the best quality young as the following season's future breeders. I'm sure some of those people who have been waiting to buy some of my excess young birds have been frustrated at me continually saying "they should be ready in another month or so", waiting for the last young to moult out. Young cocks which are likely to moult into adult specimens with exceptional red-frontal colour often exhibit tell-tale signs of a significant red belly splash which should be evident from when they first leave the nest. The extent of this juvenile "gut flash", as I call it, is very variable and is generally a fairly reliable indicator of the bird's eventual frontal colour quality at adulthood. I have very recently had a nest of young Painteds emerge containing a young male which, in addition to the gut flash, shows a red throat. The photo below shows this young male on the day he left the nest.
This young male was bred at the end of the 2007 breeding season - a season in which I bred over 60 young Painteds including some fantastic red-fronted specimens. He is the first fledgling I've produced displaying any throat colour so I'm very keen to see how he looks when he moults into adult plumage. The red suffusion he shows on the face is sometimes displayed on my better young males also, but usually slightly less than he has. I am greatly encouraged that the emergence of this bird is a sign that I am making progress and I hope that such specimens become more frequent in the coming breeding season(s).
Any young which emerge from the nest with a brown wash over the entire front and poorly defined spots rarely moult into quality adult birds. From early on I have culled any such young and the parent birds which produced them. All of my young Painteds now emerge from the nest with clean black fronts, well-defined spots and red gut flash on young males. Most also show red suffusion over most of their back, more pronounced on the lower half directly above the rump.
Beyond the fledgling stage, young males continue to display evidence of their eventual adult plumage qualities as every new red feather emerges.
The three half-coloured young brothers in the above photo display typical encouraging signs with intermittent red feathers over a wide area throughout the front of the birds, which I am usually hoping at that stage will develop into a more unbroken red area as the birds complete their moult.
Often red-fronted males display a very large area of red frontal colour but much of the red area is broken up by black feathers throughout it. My goal here is to improve the intensity and brilliant lustre of these red areas by selecting against specimens with such widespread black flecking. Much of the challenge in achieving these further improvements is to have a sufficient quantity of red-fronted offspring from which to select future breeders. Some pairs may produce young which do not display quite the desired area of red colour yet display brilliant intensity in their red areas. I have retained some of these and mated them to female siblings of cocks showing greater red area but slightly lacking in intensity. So far this has worked with a small proportion of their young displaying a large area of more intense red.
A friend of mine who breeds excellent Painteds, and from whom I obtained most of my better quality original stock, also breeds the yellow mutation (autosomal recessive). He generally mates a red (split yellow) to a yellow and credits his use of the yellow mutation for improving the lustre of the red colour in his normal (split) birds. Given the quality of colour in his Painteds compared to most other breeders I tend to think he is probably right, but I still don't particularly like the yellow mutation compared to nature's version so I continue to cull all yellow offspring each year.
Some breeders attempting to develop red-fronted Painteds are largely disregarding the quality of their hens, interested only in producing red-fronted cocks. Not only are such breeders denying themselves the chance to produce a higher proportion of better quality young cocks, but they are also selling short the attractiveness and desirability of a good quality line of hen Painteds - very attractive birds in their own right. I have found the improvement of my hen Painteds just as challenging, absorbing and ultimately rewarding as any gains made in the male half of my young Painteds. Young hens are not as revealing as the cocks at the early and middle stages of their development. They rarely exhibit many obvious signs of their adult plumage until the final stages of the moult. As alluded to earlier, the need to hold all young hens until fully coloured is especially vital to identifying standout individuals for use as future mothers.
Pictured below are good examples of the two very different types of female Painteds I have been producing. The red-type hen on the left shows strong red belly colour for a hen as well as excellent facial red colour including some red under the chin, which is only evident on the better red-fronted strain hens.
The hen on the right is one of my better spotted-type hens. The size of the spots and the extra spotted area on the flanks and belly make such specimens really stand out. These spotted-type hens generally don't display the same degree of red on the belly or face as the red-type hens. The spots on the flanks are also a little hazy on the edges as they virtually merge into one another, whereas the spotting on the red-type hens although less extensive, usually shows clean white edges starkly contrasting with the black background making the spots which are there appear much more vivid. The spotted area on the spotted-types also merges into the red belly flash, whereas the red-type hens usually have a clearly delineated spotted area and red belly area with a thin black margin separating the two.
As with the difference between cocks displaying greater red area and those showing greater intensity of red, the main goal with my hens is to combine the best attributes of the red and spotted types to hopefully produce a heavily spotted hen with enhanced red facial and belly colour. So far this has proven very difficult to achieve as for the most part my young hens have either displayed spotted qualities or red qualities but little progress toward both in the same bird. My thoughts so far are that the two are mutually exclusive, however this won't stop me from continuing to try to breed a well-spotted red hen.
The last breeding season has resulted in significant improvements in most characteristics - far more so than the previous couple of years. Proof of this is the fact that some of last season's selected breeders are noticeably inferior to some of this season's culls. This has given me extra confidence of similar gains going into the following breeding season. This is not just due to the motivation you get from seeing improvement in your birds, rather due to the higher standard of retained breeding stock going into the following year with the reasonable expectation that these will in turn lift the average quality of next year's progeny above this year's. While I'm happy with the quality of most young being bred now, I still see significant further scope for improvement in most traits and significant further scope for me to learn and understand more about the species as my breeding efforts take new twists, turns and deadends along the way.
I can at this stage make some important suggestions to anyone undertaking a selective breeding exercise with any species:
- Once you have made up your mind which species and which characteristics of that species you wish to improve, be as discerning as you can in obtaining original breeding stock which already exhibit strength in your chosen traits. Be prepared to drive the extra mile or pay the extra dollar if necessary to obtain good base stock as doing so can save several seasons of breeding effort to enhance chosen attributes or eradicate undesirable ones.
- Never be too hasty to dispose of current season's progeny especially if some are not yet fully coloured. Often the stock selection decisions you make are hair-splitting minor details when examining potential breeders in a holding aviary full of young birds. These minor details can result in significant changes for better or worse in the quality of young subsequently produced. It is the identification of those very few (less than 10%) standout quality youngsters which are the key ingredient for improving the overall quality of your stock. If you are comparing fully-coloured to part-coloured birds you are likely to miss subtle differences which could affect the outcome.
- Try not to be disheartened when improvement appears to be very slow or even if you go backwards for one reason or another, as very minor changes at one stage can facilitate further more significant changes later on. Also I've found that my most important lessons in aviculture have come from what appeared at the time to be a failure, mistake or non-result. A long-term view from the start is important if you are to have any reasonable expectation of significant improvements.
- Be prepared to experiment with different matings or different characteristics which may even be outside your chosen few. Sometimes apparently unrelated physical traits can be a key to allowing further advances in your chosen ones as they may have a genetic or other physiological link that we are unaware of until tried and tested.
- When making pairing decisions, work from the top down. Identify and pair the best to the best first, then next best to next best, etc. Include your current breeders when selecting next season's young and cull any mature birds which do not surpass the quality of the young being examined. The decision to cull a bird which lacks the desired standard is just as important as the decision to keep a quality bird. The rate at which you replace current breeders with superior young birds determines the pace of overall progress.
With any species we keep and breed we should always endeavour to improve the most desirable traits and eliminate the least desirable ones. To try to do so certainly adds significantly to the pleasure and knowledge derived by breeding the same species year-in year-out. As a finch breeder, for many years the highlight for me has been the moment I find a clutch of newly-fledged young. However, by undertaking a selective breeding exercise as I have with the Painted Firetail, I can continue to gain just as much pleasure throughout the months that follow fledging as the young birds gradually reveal their eventual adult plumage. This has allowed me to access a whole new realm of enjoyment and sense of accomplishment from breeding birds which I had not previously taken as much interest in. I recommend to all finch breeders to try a similar plan with one of your favourite species. I also very much look forward to giving a later progress report on my Painted Firetails, hopefully giving an account of significant further advances.