Is it possible to make an English Budgie from parakeets?

[scottischicken]

How did the British 400 years ago turn captive parakeets into English Budgies, and can you replicate the same results today?

 

[ShrekDawg]

@BantyChooks @oldhenlikesdogs @muddy75

 

[Rosa moschata]

How did the British 400 years ago turn captive parakeets into English Budgies, and can you replicate the same results today?

It wasn't 400 years ago -- it was the early 19th Century when Budgerigars first made their way to England, and not until a few decades later did selective breeding start the road toward the exhibition -- aka English -- Budgerigar.

But what seemed to make a big difference was the longflight mutation. While the characteristic long wing feathers is considered a disqualifying fault in a show bird today, the first birds with this mutation also had much wider heads and larger overall size. Breeders used this mutation, then selectively bred away from the long flight feathers while trying to retain the body confirmation as much as possible. This means that in many lines the longflight mutation persists, but modifying genes reduce the actual lengths of the flight feathers. Occasionally, the original phenotype pops up again -- see below.

Aside from the long flight feathers, the rest of the confirmation is often great. So rather than exhibit these birds, breeders pair them with birds considered "shortflight" -- they have wing feathers shorter than what would be allowed on the show table. These "shortflight" birds likely have too many of the modifier genes that would shorten longflight wings to exhibition lengths, OR they have the modifier genes but lack the longflight mutation. Offspring between the two are often winners on the show table -- they have the right balance of longflight mutation and "shortflight" modifier genes.

My point in sharing this bit of history is to show you that this isn't likely someone could replicate by starting from scratch with non-exhibition "American" Budgerigars. The selective breeding was already going on for a few decades before the longflight mutation popped up, and then the exhibition ideal was more quickly realized. So while theoretically you could selectively breed "American" Budgerigars over many generations toward larger size and exhibition form by finding variations that inch toward that ideal, without the longflight mutation popping up again, you'll get only as far as they did in the mid to late 19th Century. And at that time, the differences between what the English put on the show table and what Americans had as pets were much more subtle. What you see today as far as size and confirmation differences are largely due to breeding from the longflight mutation.