In 1967 I went to my first bird show and I can remember being attracted by a Skyblue budgerigar with a white stripe around its middle. I discovered that this was known as an Australian Dominant Pied. This variety has fascinated me ever since, although it was to be several years before I actually possessed one.
My informants were 'non-pied' fanciers as I was advised to leave this variety well alone and concentrate on the more usual varieties. So for several years I avoided pieds when buying birds. As they became more popular and more articles were written about them, I realised that the advice given was to pair the pieds to the best lines in your stud in an effort to up-grade the pieds produced. I decided that if the pieds available had been bred from the best lines in a stud, then obviously they could be used to upgrade 'non-pied' lines - whether one wishes to keep the pieds produced or not. This was good enough for me - at last an excuse to buy a pied! Good pieds without spots were often sold by fanciers much higher up the ladder than I was - and as the fact they (the pieds) are quite capable of producing Normals with spots they seemed a very useful buy.
Being a dominant variety, the theoretical expectations are 50% pieds and 50% non-pieds (and obviously being a dominant variety the non-pieds cannot be split pied). They can be produced in all colours and with all combinations of sex-linked and dominant patterns such as Opaline, Cinnamon and Yellowface, but multiple colour combinations are best left to the true hobbyist if good show birds are your aim.
These days the pieds seen on the showbench have improved so much that a good one is quite capable of taking Best in Show in top competition - and quite often does! The Pied standard today calls for a bird that is equal in quality to the Normal varieties but with Pied body markings - yellow in the green series and white in the blue series.
The earlier Standard required a half inch band of contrast across the body of the bird, but the revised Standard states that preference for the band should only be given if the two best birds are of equal quality. Obviously the band marking is harder to produce as the Pied factor produces the patches in a random fashion and not to any set pattern, and it is just a question of luck as to where the patches appear.
The tail feathers can be clear or dark although in years past dark tail feathers were penalised. The wing flight feathers should also be clear but the odd dark flight is allowed. The eyes are the same as in the Normal varieties. There is usually a head spot of colour which is more visible in the Normal than the Opaline varieties.
The hardest feature to obtain is the full set of throat spots. With the pied pattern being produced in such a random fashion it seems that the 'gremlins' take great delight in erasing the throat spots with Pied patches! this usually applies to the best Pied in the nest! As Pieds without spots seem to be very heavily penalised, these birds are not usually shown. Although only 10 points are allocated to mask and spots it seems, based on the placings that some judges make, that sometimes the spots are more important than the quality of the bird!
Normal and Opaline Pieds seem to make the showiest birds. This is not that the Cinnamons are lacking quality, but the muted effect of the Cinnamon seems to take away the "sparkle" of the contrast in colours. When pairing it is usual to pair the Pieds to the best birds you have available and as it is a dominant variety the chicks produced will be 50% Pied and 50% non-Pied. Obviously some nests will not contain Pieds at all while others make up for it by producing perhaps as many as four out of five. If the Pieds that you possess are of a good standard then a Pied to Pied pairing can be useful because among the resulting chicks there should be some double factor Pieds. These though can only be picked out by test mating. These double factor birds can only produce Pieds and if paired to a very good partner should help upgrade the Pieds produced. In addition you will have more of a selection for the next years' matings. The only drawback of a Pied to Pied mating is the fact that some of the Pieds seem to have an over-abundance of Pied patches which sometimes extend to the back and the main part of the wing. One interesting feature of Pied chicks is that they can be picked out in the nest even before their feathers appear, as the Pied head spot and wing markings show up quite clearly on the flesh itself.
Many fascinating colour combinations can be produced and if one does not wish to produce top class show birds, much fun can be had from attempting to combine the brighter varieties in the various sex-linked, dominant and recessive species.
Apart from an understanding of colour and variety production, all that is needed is patience and luck! I wonder how many pairings it would take to succeed in breeding a Crested, Opaline, Cinnamon, Yellowface Violet Pied Spangled, Clearwing? Perhaps the same number of permutations it takes to win the Pools!
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