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Dutch Blue & Blue Pied Peachfaced Lovebirds

Blue Mutation of Peachfaced Lovebird

What a poser! Baby Blue is a tame beastie of mine,  full-grown sibling to the lovebird babies shown below. Dutch Blue lovebirds take about a full year to reach their jewel-like bluish green coloring. These are not “true blue” birds like you get with Fischer’s – for this reason you won’t get an albino peachfaced lovebird (which is a blue-based bird) but you can get albino Fischer’s lovebirds.

blue mutation lovebird babies

Babies of Remi and Winnie

These are the babies of Remi & Winnie, their fifth clutch These babies were sweet as buttons, just like all of Remi & Winnie’s babies Remi & Winnie were babies raised by me, so their babies are my second generation babies.

Hand-fed lovebird babies

The wild-type coloring of peachfaced lovebirds is green. Blue is the “ground color” mutation – you can have many mutations that vary based on whether the bird is “green” or “blue”. Think of it as a branching genetic tree – with Green or Blue first, then you might have pied – blue pied or green pied, you might have a Blue American cinnamon or a Green American Cinnamon, et cetera. The ground color fundamentally affects everything when it comes to mutations.

You also have “factors” – such as Dark Factor and Violet Factor. The dark factor basically darkens the color of the bird. So a blue mutation with one dark factor would be called Medium Blue – if it had two dark factors it would be Slate (some people call this mauve).

Genetics are pretty complex at first – but a good book should help you get the basics. My Lovebird Handbook does have an introductory chapter, and there are some books that are dedicated to color genetics.

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