Fallows – Part 4: colour Varients
FALLOWS
Colour Varieties/Colour Production/Genetics & History
Colour Varieties:
Fallow Yellow (Light Green): Mask: yellow, ornamented by six evenly spaced large round brown throat spots, the outer two being partially covered at the base by cheek patches.
Cheek patches: violet.
General body colour: back, rump, breast, flanks and underparts, yellowish green.
Markings: on cheeks, back of head, neck and wings, medium brown on a yellow ground.
Eyes: red or plum.
Tail: long feathers, bluish grey.
Fallow Dark Green: As above but with a light laurel green body colour.
Tail: long feathers, darker in proportion.
Fallow Olive Green: As above but with a light mustard olive green body colour.
Tail: long feathers, darker in proportion.
Fallow Grey Green: As above but with a dull mustard green body colour.
Cheek patches: grey to slate.
Tail: long feathers, darker in proportion.>BR> (It should be noted that there are light, medium and dark shades of Fallow Grey Green).
Fallow Skyblue: Mask: white, ornamented by six evenly spaced large round brown throat spots, the outer two being partially covered at base by cheek patches.
Cheek patches: violet.
General body colour: back, rump, breast, flanks and underparts, pale Skyblue.
Markings: on cheeks, back of head, neck and wings, medium brown on a white ground.
Eyes: red or plum.
Tail: long feathers, bluish grey.
Fallow Cobalt: As above but with a warm cobalt body colour.
Tail: long feathers, darker in proportion.
Fallow Mauve: As above, but with a pale mauve body colour of a pinkish tone.
Tail: long feathers, darker in proportion.
Fallow Violet: As above but with a pale violet body colour.
Tail: long feathers, darker in proportion.
Genetics:
The Fallow is actually a mutation of a Green/Blue Budgie that had dark brown wavy design on a golden yellow background. The rest of the bird was olive yellow, the eyes were dark red and the legs were pink. This description shows that there is only a small difference between Fallow and Cinnamon. The Fallows brown is darker than the Cinnamon. Fallows have one easily distinguishable feature, namely their dark red eyes. The red is darker than that of the Albino and Lutino. The hereditary factor for Fallow is recessive to the factors of normal Budgies. That means, you lose the features of the Fallow when you cross them with other colour variants. To describe the Fallow factor we can compare it with Albino and Lutino. With the latter, it is a case of an absent melanin factor, the one that produces pigment. The melanin factor is double, it consists of black and dark brown pigment. Switching to Fallows, in their case there is a color change in the melanin, where the black is apparently pushed aside by the brown. The recessive Fallow factor is not sex-linked.
The rules for inheritance follow:
Fallow x Fallow: produces all Fallow.
Fallow x split for Fallow: produces half Fallows, and half split for Fallow.
Fallow x Normal: produces all split Fallows.
Split for Fallow x split for Fallow: produces 25 percent Fallows, 25 percent Normal, and 50 percent split for Fallows.
Split for Fallow x Normal: produces half split Fallows, and half Normal Budgies.
Color Production:
Comparatively few people now breed the Fallow variety. They never enjoyed more than a passing popularity. At one time it was thought that the judicious use of Fallows improved colour in some of the Normals — Cobalts, for instance — but I think this was more theoretical than practical. With exceptions, they have never been as good as the old varieties in size and shape, and I am afraid that if one did improve colour by crossing them into Normals, that which was gained would be but poor compensation for a deterioration in type which would be likely to occur. Be this as it may, the suggestion that Fallows were useful to Normal breeders was not carried out by many fanciers, and nowadays it is rare for anyone even to refer to the theory. It is possible to breed a White Fallow and a Yellow Fallow (actually light green/yellow), but few specimens of either kind have ever been exhibited. Of those I remember the Whites were in no way better than Albinos, and the Yellows were inferior to Lutinos. The breeding of Fallows in their different colours should be conducted on similar lines to those recommended for the breeding of Normals, Greywings, etc.
History of Fallows:
The Fallow has never achieved any degree of popularity, and only occasionally are specimens seen in the Any Other Colour classes. As the Standard indicates, it is bred with all the Normal body colours. Then there is a light form of Fallow corresponding with the Greywing series, and there are Fallow Yellows and Fallow Whites. The markings are dark brown and the eye is red. The body colour is lighter than normal. The Fallow is not sex-linked. The Fallow was reported from California, USA in 1931. In December, 1932, Mr. Shrapel and Mr. Kurt Kokemuller purchased Fallows which had been bred by Mr. Schumann, of Magdeburg. Mr. Kokemuller described these birds in Der Wellensittich, Hanover, on 26th January, 1934, and this article was translated by Mr. F.S. Elliott and published in March, 1934. An interesting note on Fallow varieties appeared in The Budgerigar Bulletin of June, 1935. In the course of an article headed “The Material Foundations of the Various Colour Varieties of the Budgerigar and their Genetic Significance,” Dr. H. Steiner, of Zurich, said:
“As regards Fallow Budgerigars, I should like to begin by giving an historical note. The yellow birds with brown undulation markings and dark red eyes, which were bred by Mr. Schumann, of Magdeburg, in 1932, do not appear to have been the first occurrence of this mutation. Before this, in the year 1929, a Swiss fancier, Mr. Augustin, of Biel, bred a brown Budgerigar which according to the description given to me must have been a Fallow. It came from a mating Olive X Greywing Green. Like Mr. Schumann’s birds this was also a cock, i.e., the opposite of the genuine Cinnamon which appeared first as hens. It was exhibited at a bird show in Biel in 1929, and purchased by a well-known fancier, Mr. Zaugg, of Solothurn, who had to hand it over to the municipal aviary of Solothurn in 1930 for a short time to be looked after, and unfortunately, this bird died there in the summer of 1930 without leaving any progeny.” Mr. Kokemuller expressed the opinion that the Fallow was not due, as in the case of the Albino, to the absence of one of the two pigment-forming factors (the agents for the formation of the black colour) but that it was only a question of an alteration of one of these factors, that it was a form of dilution, that is to say, of an equal reduction of the melanin, and that therefore it was better to describe it as the Fallow Budgerigar rather than Cinnamon. Fallows were first imported into Britain about 1933. It is recognised that there are two types of fallow, the German which had an eye iris and the British which has a solid red eye colour.
The Fallows
 English Fallow |
Three characteristics are associated with this mutation; red or plum eyes, medium brown wing markings and diluted body colour. The feet are pinkish grey and the cere in cocks is fleshy pink. All markings on back of head and neck are of medium brown.Over the years three different types of this mutation have been established; the English, German and Scottish fallow. The German fallow differs from the other two by having a white iris ring around the eye. The Scottish fallow seems to be very rare. It was found that when pairing the English to the German type, only black-eyed birds resulted that are split for both types. The German fallow was established in 1929 while the English was in 1937. It is quite possible that the Australian fallow (with the iris ring) may have been an indigenous mutation, which resembles the German strain. |  German Fallow |
Other claims as to the origin of this variety came about in 1931 from correspondence by Mrs. A.R. Hood of California, U.S.A. stating that she had bred from two pairs of green birds offspring fitting the coloration of the current fallows; yellowish green, cinnamon wing and tail marking and the deep red eyes.
Logically, Mrs. Hood’s new mutation of birds with red eyes appearing in 1931 indicates that this mutation is recessive and must have occurred earlier on a half of a chromosome pair and been passed on to the green birds in the stock. We now know that when two birds carrying a new recessive colour are paired together then the actual new coloured bird will appear. This indicates that Mrs. Hood’s new fallows must have appeared at the earliest in 1929. Sadly this strain was not followed through, as her initial fallows were sold to other breeders and records were lost.
Other recorded facts of this mutation appeared in 1929 at Herr Augustin’s of Biel, Switzerland, but the bird did not survive to establish its kind. Fallow mutations were also bred by Herr Schumann of Magdeburg, Germany, in 1932 and by Herr C. Balser, of Germany at about the same time. The German mutation was well established and examples arrived in Britain in 1934 to the studs of H.R. Scott, B.S. Campkin, F.G. Simpson and W.P.C. Unwin.
It is believed that a similar mutation also appeared in Australia as well as South Africa at about the same period of time. The Australian strain first appeared in the aviaries of Mr. O’Brian of Newtown, Sydney during the early part of the 1930s. The Australian mutation was later on established to be the same as that of the German mutation; plum eye with a white iris ring. This mutation is very popular in Australia and the best fallows that I have ever seen were those of Ian Hannington at the 1994 Australian National. They had the desirable size and the beauty of the variety.
The English mutation was established by 1937 in the aviary of F. Dervan of Luton. That strain first appeared from a normal green/blue pairing. The late Mr. Arthur Collier recognised that the birds had much brighter red eyes than the German strain, which was also established in Britain by this time. This new mutation appeared to be showing the same body/wing markings as that of the German strain but the difference was with the eye wherein this variety did not have the white iris ring around the plum eye. However, although the Budgerigar Society Colour Standards description specify that there is no white iris ring for the English fallow, in reality there is a very faint pink iris and often some are wrong classed at specialist shows where separate classed for the German and English fallows are provided, as they are mistaken for German fallows.
Records of the Scottish fallow (red eye without the iris ring) are not that well documented. However, Ian Whiteside of Cumnock, Ayrshire’s recently published article in the Scottish Journal traces the story of the Scottish fallow back to the mid 1920s when the late Jim Moffat’s father came across this beautiful variety in the aviary of a Mr. Coghill who was a bank manager in Nairn. Mr. Moffat Snr. obtained examples of this variety from Mr. Coghill and bred with them successfully. Mr. Jim Moffat carried on breeding those fallows after his father passed away. Mr. Whiteside bred a fallow in 1986 from a pair of normal greens. On checking records it seems that the bloodline goes back to Mr. Richie Kerr of Greenock. Both Richie’s father and Jim’s father were close friends so the story is unfolded regarding the Scottish fallow. It seems that two fanciers in Scotland have bred fallows in recent years from Mr. Whiteside’s bloodline. In all cases it seemed that the Scottish strain had some lethal gene in so far as many of the young do not survive beyond 3 weeks. So with this information we know that the Scottish fallow still exists.
The name fallow was initially derived from the German word “Falben” used initially to distinguish new mutations appearing in Germany. Both the German word “Falben” and the English word “Fallow” means “uncultivated” which, when applied to budgerigars, implied that the pigment was uncultivated, or not in its usual finished condition.
The fallows can be produced in all other varieties but for exhibition purposes I feel that they should be restricted to the normal varieties. However, for beauty there is nothing to stop experimental breeders breeding recessive pied fallows or crested fallows for that matter. The production of the fallow will be like any of the recessive characters which acts as a simple “autosomal recessive gene” and the rules of their reproduction are as follows:-
1) Fallow X Normal = 100% Normal/Fallow
2) Fallow X Normal/Fallow = 50% Fallow and 50% Normal/Fallow
3) Fallow X Fallow = 100% Fallow
4) Normal/Fallow X Normal/Fallow = 25% Fallow, 50% Normal/Fallow and 25% Normal
5) Normal/Fallow X Normal = 50% Normal/Fallow and 50% Normal
From the Table above, it can be deduced that there is absolutely no merit in the pairings indicated in rules 4 & 5. A lot of wastage is produced from these pairings and also it is not possible to distinguish the split fallow progeny from the Normals. However, if fallows of good size are to be produced, then pairing 4 might just about be the best. If good quality normals are initially used with fallows as outcrosses to produce the splits as in pairing 1, those quality splits can then be outcrossed back to fallows to produce quality fallows as in pairing 2 or better still using 2 splits together (invariably better quality than visual fallows) as in pairing 4 in the hope that the odd visual fallow produced will be of a better desirable quality. However, the normal black-eyed birds that are produced from pairing 4 can be either splits or normals but there are no visual characteristics to distinguish them from each other without future test pairing.
There are virtually no short cuts in trying to produce quality fallows apart from using quality normals as outcrosses, plenty of patience, dedication and luck. The Australian fallow, over the years, has been produced to such a good standard that I feel our British fanciers should follow suit. More help and assistance can be given by the Rare Variety & Colour B.S. to those who wish to breed fallows.
Sadly, there are not many examples of the variety seen at shows apart from those specialist & rare variety shows around the country (and the B.S. club show) where separate classes for both the English & German fallows are available. At all other shows the variety should be exhibited in the rare variety group catering for the clearbody, fallow, saddleback and slate and, from the 2006 show season, the rainbows will also be grouped in that section. Not many fallows are seen at other shows apart from those specialist & rare shows.
The body colour of the fallow increases in depth of shade progressively downwards from the upper breast to the rump area where the colour is the deepest. We have seen specimens of the cinnamon fallows when the cinnamon has been introduced into this variety. The effect of the cinnamon dilutes the body colour further and in some cases gives the appearance of a lacewing but with the plum red eye without the iris ring. These birds should be penalised on the show bench as they do not conform to the B.S. Colour Standards.