Mostly breeders when start the bird keeping so as ussual they face the Inbreeding
situation of their pet birds, the breeding of related birds is the worst of bad ideas!
This includes breeding sibling pairs, parent-child pairs, half-sibling
pairs, Uncle-neice or aunt-nephew pairs, or first cousin pairs. Inbreeding
leads to many genetic problems including deformities, stunting, lack of
resistance to illness, and others.
If you feel that you cannot bear to destroy this nest unhatched and the
babies survive, count your blessings and sell them with the clear
understanding that these are inbred birds who should never be used in a
breeding situation. Then immediately separate the parents so that they
cannot breed again. It is true that experienced breeders will use a
limited amount of close line breeding to fix new mutations and especially
desirable traits but this is done according to a careful plan which
includes immediate out crossing to maintain genetic health and with the
willingness to cull unhealthy chicks and redirect the program when
problems occur. This should be left to experts who know exactly what they
are doing.
If these babies survive and appear OK you may wonder why I'm making
such a big deal of the possible problems. However, even if these babies
appear OK there has been damage done in the specie's genetic diversity.
Once diversity is lost it is lost permanently
and cannot be restored. By breeding our birds we take responsibility for
the future of the species as a whole and we must realize that our actions
today affect what our Lovebird population will be like not only in the
next few years but in the next century. Inbreeding leads to weakness.
I learned the lesson on inbreeding the
hard way.
The generation time in Lovebird is longer than that of guppies but
over the generations of inbreeding the same thing will occur. The birds
will be weakened, genetic diversity will be lost, and tragedy will occur.
The only way to prevent it is to stop it before it starts.
