Kicking off for 2014

Our plan for this year is to breed from 4 or 5 pairs. Over the last few months, Yap and I had put in some efforts to get the selected birds ready. Guided by the vision towards producing good captive breds worthy of approval by fellow hobbyists, lots of thoughts had went into the matching up of the pairs.

Funkie had just finished his annual molt and is already well into breeding form. He is matched up with Lady Chiak Nung despite her notorious egg-eating habit. We would be very happy if this pairing could produce a couple of offsprings successfully. Lady CN has very desirable tail feather characteristics. Her tail feathers are of the right texture, not too soft as to render them to be easily worn out before the annual molt, yet well curved. Her two longest tail feathers are always in place, molt after molt, overlapping throughout their entire lengths. This, I think is what is quite lacking in many long-tailed birds. Few super long-tailed birds can carry their long tails well all the time. Skyhawk (owned by DDS and closely related to Lady CN) has always been my model for tail feather perfection and this is one of the desired traits that we had wished to be able to breed into our birds. Of course, there is a high chance that we may not be able to get anything out of this pairing if she continues with her egg-eating habit and since we do not plan on robbing her eggs to artificially incubate. Although we have other proven females at our disposal, still, we would think that the risk is well worth taking.

Our other pairings so far this year are mostly pairings of first molts, including Funkie's son Rock. Rock is paired with another first molt female (supplied by DDS) that we had named Ross. Rock is now about 7 months old and could be too young but sooner or later, we will be able to obtain some linebred offsprings from this pairing. Rock has turned out to be as good as we could wish for and is quite identical to Funkie in many ways, including the character, display style and songs.

I had also obtained an outcrossed male from DDS and named him Mr PK. He is super strong in character and also possesses great tail feather texture. He is now being bred back to the proven line and paired up with Baby Jane, daughter of Flame and one of the finest linebred females I have seen so far from DDS. Mr Pk is a first molt and Baby Jane has just completed her second.

Here is a video of the pairing of Funkie to Lady CN.