My Meyers Sunny

[Pajarita]

Well, according to the descriptions and pictures I've seen, they are all supposed to have dark feet so I guess that the mottled ones that Sunny has are just an individual pigmentation issue. Now, if they both have yellow on the head, they would have to be meyeri, saturatus, matschiei or trasvaalensis but the last one has very little to no yellow so if they both have significant yellow, we can exclude this one. Of the ones that do have yellow, meyeri has a turquoise belly, saturatus a geen belly and matschiei a blue one so looking at their bellies should be the way to determine which subspecies they are. The problem with pet birds is that breeders are not really very picky or even knowledgeable about subspecies so they breed a male to a female, even if they are of different subspecies, and we ended up with a lot of crosses that can no longer be identified as one subspecies or another.

Overall size and beak size can be individual or even blood lines traits... My CAG is what used to be called a 'Cameroon' Congo. Importers and breeders claimed it was subspecies of Gray because they were larger and a lighter, more silvery gray than the norm but it was nothing than a marketing trick (they were more expensive) -same as the famous Longfeathers of the peach face lovebirds.

[seagoatdeb]

The breeder told me Sunny was from Uganda, makeing him a saturatus, but i dont know that can be trusted. Both our Meyers have similar colouring, their belly colours are only slightly different, they are both made up of mostly blue with some yellow feathers, and appear green from a distance. Since they are both juveniles that could change by next moult and colours can change and deepen. When Sunny is sitting beside Gaugan who has green and orange colours on her abdomen, his looks more blue. i will try to get a pic of the two Meyers beside each other one day, if they cooperate....lol

[Pajarita]

Yes, I would wait until they are both done with their second full molt to see what color their bellies are. Did you happen to ask the breeder how she knew that he came from Uganda? There has been no imports since 1992 and she was not even the actual breeder, if I remember correctly, so the possibilities of his blood line been pure Ugandan are actually quite low, wouldn't you say?

[seagoatdeb]

Yes, I would wait until they are both done with their second full molt to see what color their bellies are. Did you happen to ask the breeder how she knew that he came from Uganda? There has been no imports since 1992 and she was not even the actual breeder, if I remember correctly, so the possibilities of his blood line been pure Ugandan are actually quite low, wouldn't you say?

She is friends with the other breeder and asked her. But that still doesnt give me full trust.

[seagoatdeb]

oh and about what i describe as mottle feet, the feet are kind of a skin tone or pinkish with grey mottling, making them appear a light grey from a distance. Sunnys feet are the same colour as Gaugan. My daughters Meyers has very solid colour dark grey feet.

[Pajarita]

Yes, according to all the descriptions, they are supposed to have dark grey feet. But animals have defective pigmentation same as humans. Pinky, a Corgi mix I have, has an obvious leucistic gene because she has nothing dark (her skin, nails, nose, lips, eyelids, etc are all completely pink).

[seagoatdeb]

If you look at a lot of the wild pics you will see most of them have the lighter grey feet that Gaugan has so the different sub species may very well have varying grey feet.