Why recessives have regressed

Mistaken judging priorities have led the recessive pied far astray in recent years, reckons FRED WRIGHT – and GEOFF CAPES has reached the same conclusion about the variety

- FRED WRIGHT and GEOFF CAPES

YEARS ago, I bred recessive pieds and after about 10 years I seemed to be getting over-run with them, especially the splits. So, reluctantly, I sold the lot in one hit. They went overseas and for several years I followed their progress with interest.

Whenever I go to a championship show, I always check out the recessive pieds. I look for the numbers benched, the quality, who has been showing them and – perhaps even more of interest to me – the way they have been judged. I will admit that for anyone who has never bred them, it can be a bit of a challenge to judge them.

A couple of decades ago, the Budgerigar Society (BS) changed its scale of points for birds and introduced 30 points for “variety markings”. I believe it was all about trying to give the specialist varieties an advantage when it came to awarding the major specials. In fact, it’s working in completely the opposite direction because the BS was unable to award 30 points for variety markings for the specialist varieties and not give the equivalent to the normals. The way it works now is that a normal gets 30 points for variety markings and, unless it is blemished with opalistic markings, it has to gain the full set of points – but it’s always easy to deduct points for all those specialist varieties. In my book, that works against the specialist varieties!