I think we all have personal preferences, even when we protest that all we want is a good budgie – preferably one that will win the Club Show.

But despite our wildest pipe dreams, we don’t usually get that far. So I would suggest that it would be a good idea for most fanciers to focus on one or two particular colours or varieties, where, with care and persistence, a degree of success can be achieved.

I have made the mistake of liking Greywings.

The original source of this preference was that my first pair, purchased in 1951, was a Greywing Skyblue cock and a Yellow hen.

I bought them from a local fancier, Wilf Hacker, whose family fruit farm, and veritable menagerie of birds and small animals, was situated next to the Cambridge Crematorium. This was an easy, and in those days safe, two mile bike ride from my home. These days no-one in their right senses would attempt to ride a push bike on that stretch of the A14 between Cambridge and Huntingdon!

They were put into a breeding cage in June and, by the time of my return to school, in September there were five chicks in the nest.

None, to my intense disappointment, was a Greywing, nor was there one in the next round. All were either Yellows or Albinos.

What is more, the four Albinos were all hens and only one of the five Yellows a cock bird. This was a minor disaster for a young lad hoping to be able to supply the Christmas market for pets and recoup a bit of seed money.

Introduction to the Complexities

I tried pairing the Yellow cock bird with a Skyblue, with the resultant expected mix of Skyblues and Albinos, but not another Greywing in sight.

The experience was, however, a good introduction to the complexities of breeding recessive and sex-linked colour varieties, and I enthusiastically studied basic Mendelian genetics, buying a copy of the then current edition of “Budgerigar Matings and Colour Expectations”.

However, I never did breed a Greywing in my first period as a fancier up to 1960.

Then in 2007, having restarted in budgies in 2001, without even trying, I bred three from two separate and seemingly unrelated pairs. Since then I have been trying once more to breed them, with almost no success to date.

Why should it be so difficult?

Years ago Greywings were relatively commonplace. You have only to look at the prominence they are given in the pairings in “Budgerigar Matings and Colour Expectations” and in “Genetics for Budgerigar Breeders” – two Budgerigar Society publications.

Firstly, there are very few birds available and when breeders produce them, usually by chance but from good stock, they seem very loath to part with them, but retain them for showing but not breeding.

Their rarity is, I believe, also a result of them being superseded by the Clearwings, which have a more intense body colour, but which, in the European version, have wing markings which are not dissimilar to the Greywing.

In my view, the Greywing is an honest colour and has the colour of markings which its name implies.

I understand that they are also used by Clearwing breeders, resulting in birds called full bodied Greywings. These are too intense in the body colour for the BS standard for Greywings and too grey in the wing markings to be good Clearwings, with ensuing confusion in both Clearwing and AOC classes, sometimes giving rise to their being wrong classed in either category.

Shown in the Same Class

Secondly, there is the complication of the Cinnamon factor.

In an article prepared by Steve Amos some twenty years ago, he mentions that in the past the two colours were often shown in the same class. Indeed, it was not until 1958 that a separate class for Greywings was introduced at the Club Show.

Despite the common appeal of the muted subtlety of the body colour of the two varieties, the cinnamon, having a sex linked dominance and also seeming to impart a desirable quality of feather, seems to have squeezed out the Greywing.

A two pronged attack on the position of the Greywing.

A breeder of Greywings has also to contend with another hidden genetic gremlin, the dilute factor.

Greywing being dominant to Dilutes, Dilutes can be and are used to produce Greywings.

Recounting my personal experience since 2007 may help to illustrate the problem.

In one nest I bred a visual Greywing Skyblue cock from a Dark Green / Blue / Opaline type 2 cock and a Cinnamon Skyblue hen.

The chances of doing this were remote.

To start with a Skyblue would be one of the exceptions from a type 2 Dark Green / Blue whose sire was a Light Green and mother an Opaline Cobalt. From where did the Greywing come in as there was no evidence of Greywings in the studs where I had purchased my initial birds?

In the other nest I bred two Greywing Grey cocks.

The sire was a Cinnamon Grey Green / Opaline and the dam a normal Skyblue.

When the chicks started to feather up I assumed that they were Cinnamon hens and was more than a little pleased to have bred two hens with what seemed to me very promising head qualities.

They turned out to be cocks.

In this case the stud where I had bought the sire said that occasionally they had bred Greywings in the past. All three birds were split Cinnamon and proved also to be split Opaline.

I started the season late next year having shown the better Grey at the Club Show coming second in the Any Age AOC line-up. I gave the other Grey to Steve Amos.

Neither of the birds did much for me in the breeding shed other than producing a small number of Opaline Cinnamon hens and poor ones at that.

The Cinnamon Factor Interfered

The Skyblue was placed fifth in the Novice Any Age line-up at the Club Show the following year, beating the Grey which has subsequently won a couple of CCs.

I had hoped to at least breed from each Greywing some normal split Greywing hens that I could pair back to the other Greywing, but the Cinnamon factor interfered.

Steve Amos was not able to help as the bird I had given him had either passed on or been passed on.

I did eventually breed a Light Green hen, a “WYSIWYG”^*, free of Opaline or Cinnamon factors from the Skyblue at the end of 2010.

Full of hope, I paired her up to the Grey only to find that they were to put it mildly “not compatible”.

In the meantime, I had done some research on the background of my birds and came to a common factor on the dam’s side of each of them.

They came from a common line which has since then once more produced in the original stud a Greywing.

Accordingly I let Ghalib Al-Nasser have a cousin of the Skyblue in the hope that it might be split Greywing.

Ghalib paired this to a Greywing Light Green. They produced two Light Green cocks and the perhaps inevitable Cinnamon hen. Ghalib let me have a Light Green cock back which, once again full of hope, I paired to the Light Green hen in the expectation that two normals with a Greywing parent each would be split Greywing and produce at least some Greywing chicks.

They produced six chicks, none a Greywing but one was a Grey Yellow.

Time for more research. I started looking into the dilute background, the genetic gremlin.

The problem lies in the fact that a normal coloured bird cannot be split for both Greywing and Dilute.

I came to the conclusion that both my Greywing Skyblue and Ghalib’s Greywing Light Green were split for dilute. My bird’s dilute factor would have originated on the side of his sire, part of which came from the stud of Alec and David Woan who have produced some good dilutes in the past.

The Added Twist

For the genetic colour background of my bird there is a 6.25% chance of a cock bird, which is reduced massively with the added twist that the bird should have been a Cobalt – the normal colour that I had set out to breed with that particular pairing.

When my Skyblue Greywing was paired with a Light Green, half of the visuals would be split Dilute and half split Greywing – and the one that I had bred was split dilute.

Ghalib’s bird with the parents’ colours reversed must be the same. That is a visual Light Green masking a dilute factor and not the Greywing factor.

Whether this is a correct analysis may be shown in the Skyblue’s current pairing, to his daughter the Light Green hen referred to above. This assumes that he breeds successfully and that the picture will not be overwhelmed by the Opaline and Cinnamon factors lurking in his background.

The Light Green cock is now paired to a Grey Yellow dilute.

The picture as regards the Grey is still obscure because of his reluctance to breed, but I have a number of birds related to his dam which may mean that the Greywing factor carries on in its subterranean manner and pops out in the future.

The effect of this dilute factor goes some way to explain my original experience in 1951, though then I was unlucky not to produce any Greywings even allowing for interference by the Albino factor.

I am now having to work with birds that are all probably split Dilute which will make the process that much slower.

We bring trouble on ourselves because of our personal preferences but at the same time indulging those preferences, is what makes our lives worthwhile.

Note: ^* WYSIWYG – “What You See Is What You Get”

Lütolf has that special eye that sees far ahead of the current ideal representations of the day. He sees what is beyond what is currently being bred and winning on the show bench. Harry Bryan in the UK had that ability, as does Jo Mannes in Germany and Henry George in Australia, to name a few.

Lütolf is 42 years of age and has been breeding birds since he was 11. A great deal of time and money was spent with little success until he purchased birds from Heinrich Ott, a top Swiss breeder. Heinrich Ott treated him very well, selling him stock, which bred superbly and produced his early winners. The pedigree background to Heinrich’s stock was based on Omerod and Sadler blood.

Lütolf’s career is as a teacher, he teaches senior pupils in maths, geography and history. He travels extensively, going overseas to far off places so that he can pass on his experiences to his pupils, but he never forgets his birds at home and the friends whom he trusts to look after his birds safely, and he gives a big thank you to them.

The Lütolf aviary is split into three levels because of the steep gradient of his home. It is modest in presentation, but the birds are exceptional in quality…but difficult to buy if you strive for the best.

Lütolf realised early, that he needed to design a bird to be ahead of others. This came from his ability to carve and paint.

DL: “I like big birds in proportion to their length. I knew that the 8 1/2 INS, small Budgerigar, in today’s exhibition world (216mm) was useless.

All top birds of today require a longer 9 1/2 ins (241mm) length to get the bird in balance, coupled with the shoulder substance that is required.

The shorter length results in a bird with no substance and is completely out of date if you wish to win on the show bench, irrespective of your chosen variety.

It is your choice, as a beginner, into which direction you go as you breed and as you create YOUR designer bird. You have to focus on that and set higher standards every season. I have always selected birds with big feet, but am careful in my choice of breeding hens.

I select birds with very big bone structure that are thick in the neck area. Interestingly, such birds create a problem that many of us are familiar with. This is the problem of today’s rings being too small for the bigger birds of today, and such rings have to be cut off before serious damage is done! Every year I was forced to cut off rings. I now get rings allocated officially that are larger in diameter at 4.4mm. They are perfect and there are no further problems for the birds and are accepted on the show bench.”

The Colours

The colour range that Lütolf has is broad. There are Spangles, all the Normals and some wonderful Violets, Olives, Lutinos, Texas Clearbodies, Yellows, Dilutes and Recessives.

All have mouth watering quality.

He is now starting to attack the Clearwing variety.

DL: “To improve any variety, you have to pair them at the start to your very best birds. This is what Reinhard Molkentin did, followed by Jo Mannes with the very small Spangles that arrived in Germany years ago.

To improve the recessive varieties, Clearbodies and Lutinos, I pair them to Spangles. The Spangle variety will improve such varieties considerably.

Always remember that if you want to improve a rare variety you have to pair them to the best you have and if necessary go out and find a super bird no matter what its colour happens to be.”

Pairing

Unlike the majority of breeders today, Lütolf breaks away from the conventional way of pairing Normals together.

He mixes many colour factors together continuously. Buying a pure bred is therefore difficult, but if the quality is in front of you, you take a different view. He never breeds two super birds together, or inbreeds, to avoid any feather problems or cysts. Nature does not select pairings as we do as fanciers.

Lütolf also watches the mixed sexes and ages of the birds in the flights. The practice of having the sexes separate in different flights, he feels, encourages homosexuality and the following effect of cocks being afraid of certain hens that are perhaps aggressive by nature. Hence infertile eggs. If he sees a pair making up, then the chances are they will go straight into a breeding cage – and they breed.

Lütolf is also critical of the standard practice we follow of pairing our Greens together and our Skyblues together and so on. He believes in mixing the colours, but in addition he uses the grey factor frequently, across the colours, a view held by Harry Bryan but not Dr. Alfred Robertson of South Africa, the well-known breeders of their period.

To support his views, Lütolf will buy an outcross, breed with it and very often sell it immediately. It has left its blood behind and served its purpose.

Lighting Periods

The breeding room has a very powerful extraction system and recently a superb timed spray system developed by Sigbert Pestringer, to remove dust. The aviary always feels fresh.

The lighting routine is interesting. Lights come on at 07.00 hours. The birds emerge to excrete and mate. They go off again at 13.30 hours and come on again at 15.45 hours. This follows a resting period that the observant will see easily in their own studs. At 15.45 hours they again mate with the light coming on until 23.30 hours.

Feeding

Avoiding discussion about the normal feeding procedures, Lütolf prefers to feed natural products as well as seed etc. Hormova is the only manufactured product used, together with various natural vitamin sources.

Water is often changed twice daily to which is added a small dash of vinegar and lemon.

DL: “This lowers the possible rise in bacterial infections.”

When breeding, the canary seed is increased. When not breeding, the millets have the upper hand. He feels that small sunflower gets the stock too fat.

We now come to vegetables. The range is very extensive and remarkable. Everything comes from the local market. Lütolf checks that none have been sprayed with pesticides and he uses natural food only.
Fennel, peppers, carrots, blackberries, broccoli, cauliflower, uncooked beetroot, grape leaves, tinned maize, and parsley to name most of them. All are chopped and desiccated, and when finished, some 10mls of olive oil is added and mixed in. Apple slices are dropped onto the flight floor.

I wondered what else olive oil could be used for?

DL: “When chicks turn white for no reason I give one drop to the beak and they return to normal colour.

However I do not know why!

The credit for this belongs to Reinhard Molkentin, not myself”

Soaked wheat and oats are fed on alternate days. Tree branches are always in the flights and changed regularly.

Conclusion

Lütolf birds are very big and my concluding comment is that Lütolf’s “quality of birds in depth”, in the top range, is one of the best I have seen anywhere in recent years.