Lovebirds Genetic Calculator 2.0

How the calculator works

Pick the father's colour and the mother's colour, including any hidden genes they carry. The calculator works out every combination of genes the chicks can get from the two parents and shows the expected chicks, with a percentage for each.

Sons and daughters are listed separately. Some genes, like Opaline, are carried on the sex chromosome, so the same pair can give different results for sons and for daughters.

You can save any pairing you're planning and come back to it later.

Words to know

• Visual: the bird shows the mutation in its colour.
• Split (written after a slash, like Green / Blue): the bird carries one hidden copy of a gene. It looks like the colour before the slash, but can pass the hidden gene to its chicks.
• Recessive: a chick needs two copies, one from each parent, to show it.
• Dominant / incomplete dominant: one copy is enough to show it. Two copies show it more strongly, so we write SF (single factor, one copy) and DF (double factor, two copies). For Dark Factor this is D and DD.
• Sex-linked: the gene is on the sex chromosome. In birds, males have two copies (ZZ) and females have one (ZW). A female either shows a sex-linked mutation or doesn't carry it at all, so she can never be split for it.

The mutations

These are the lovebird mutations in the Genetic Calculator 2.0. Every one of them can be combined with the others in a single bird.

The Blue family

Blue, Turquoise (Parblue), Aqua and Blue 2 are not four separate genes. They are four versions (alleles) of one gene. A bird has two slots for this gene, so it can carry at most two of them, and a mix of two shows a blended colour:

Dark Factor and Blue travel together

Dark Factor and the Blue family sit close together on the same chromosome, so they are usually inherited as a pair. They only separate in about 14% of chicks (crossing over).

This is why a D Green / Blue father with a Blue mother doesn't give an even 25/25/25/25 split. Most chicks are D Green / Blue or plain Blue, and only a few are D Blue or Green / Blue. See the worked example below.

Inheritance at a glance

Example results

These results come straight from the calculator in the app. Percentages are out of the sons, and separately out of the daughters.

Two green birds that both carry Blue. A quarter of the chicks come out blue.

A recessive mutation is hidden in the first generation: every chick looks green but carries Blue.

Sex-linked: an Opaline father gives Opaline to every daughter. His sons carry it hidden.

The same colours the other way round: no visual Opaline chicks at all. Sons are split, daughters are plain green.

Two single Dark Factor birds give a 1 : 2 : 1 mix of Green, D Green and DD Green.

The Dark Factor and Blue link in action. Without the link this would be 25% of each; instead the two "crossover" results are only 7% each.

A single factor Violet passes it on to half the chicks.

Two alleles of the same gene: every chick gets one of each and shows the blended colour.

They look alike, but they are different alleles, so the chicks are Parblue rather than Blue.

All chicks look green and carry both Blue and Ino, ready to produce Albinos in the next generation.

Ino here is not sex-linked, so sons and daughters get the same results.

Two different fallow genes don't combine: the chicks look normal and carry both.

Several genes at once. Dark Factor and Violet each go to half the chicks independently, and Opaline follows the sex-linked rule.

Accuracy

We checked the lovebird calculator against about 1,425 real pairing records, and 95.6% of its results matched. Two things made the biggest difference: treating Blue and Turquoise as one gene, and including the link between Dark Factor and Blue.

Want to try your own pair? Get the Birds Galaxy app and open the Genetic Calculator.