They do tend towards mauve, yes, but they aren't fully there yet. I wouldn't push a bird to have more than three of these mutant genes, other than perhaps for academic purposes. Luckily the feather structure of the ringneck is stronger than that of white eyering group lovebirds, as with them our mauves (only two genes) already sometimes gave 'crawlers' with such brittle feathers that they broke soon after fledging. This hasn't happened with our ringnecks yet, but the feather is bound to reach a point where structural integrity fails if one keeps modifying it with mutations. Will it be at 4 mutant genes? I don't know...trabots wrote:In fact as I am convinced that Cobalt is a dead end I am going to get rid of most of them. Cobalt starts destroying the structure as does a Mauve when more than 2 structural mutations are present (not counting Blue). Johan has DF Violet Cobalts and can confirm this.
I will upload some more pictures early in the new year to show how they have progressed.
