Hello folks!
Nice pictures everyone! Glad to see so many longtail enthusiast : ) In regards to pictures, I got tons! Haha.
It is rather redundant to reload them here (big files anyways) when I already have them on my homepage:
http://www.TommysPetParadise.com
Please feel free to check it out guys
As I was going through the thread and looked at some comments and pictures, I would like to clear up a few things.
1.) There are two closely related breeds that often get misunderstood from one another, or perhaps, everyone was just simply misleaded from bird poultry corporate groups like McMurray, Cackle, Ideal, etc.
There is the Phoenix and there is something called the Onagadori. Well, there are no pure-bred Onagadori here in the U.S. so anyone claiming they do is misleading you. However, there are Onagadori decendants called the "American Onagadori". That is what Mr. Hyde of New Jersey and I breed to preserve the rare genes of what is left of the Onagadori that were brought to the U.S. (legally)....anyways, I will talk about this more later on down the road.
Often times, those large hatcheries and even many smaller ones put a very "attractive" label on the Phoenix that says "grows 20 feet tails and longer" but as far as I know, there's not been a single person who got the Phoenix "hatchery stock" that had gotten over 4ft. tails, and if they do, not proveable.
So! If you can get your Phoenix's tail to be 4ft. or longer, consider yourself very lucky or a very good breeder and caretaker for these wonderful looking birds. I am sure there are good lines out there floating around. A friend of mine in the west breeds specifically for the Phoenix only and he had gotten good and strong 5ft. + tails and from what I know, that is from intergrating German lines and lots of refined breeding methods. I lost his e-mail but still have his AIM...
2.) I saw a couple pictures of "non-grey legged" Phoenixs and I just wanted to point out that Grey is a standard color for all Phoenix regardless of size or color (unless there is room for impurity), if you have whites then, thats another ball game because recessive whites will produce sort of like a white/pale pink leg color.
3.) Phoenix almost basically have a set limit to how long their tails can grow so even if you feed them gold, their tails will stop once it reaches a certain hormone level. Building a box like a "Tomebako" will help the tail grow stronger and cleaner but it won't really do that much good as far as length unless you have the Onagadori or "American Onagadori" I should say, that has the potential to outgrow their Tomebako box : )
I once had a very nice Champion Phoenix pair that I had bred from parents that had gotten 4+ ft. tails but then I sold them off to move over to the American Onagadori.
Well...I hope that helps and would love to see more interesting photos.
- Tommy
