The Green Cheek Conure Homepage
Fallow Green Cheeks


The fallow green cheek is a color mutation of the normal green cheek.  Fallow is a diluting mutation - all of the green cheeks naturally lovely colors are muted to pastel shades, creating a bird that is also just lovely in color!
This is a fallow
named "Allison".

Photo is curtesy:
Allie Caet

Click for larger
version.

Fallow in green cheeks is a sex-linked mutation.  Confusingly, fallow in cockatiels and other birds is recessive, while cinnamon is sex-linked.  So, technically, the fallow green cheek should be called cinnamon - but people call it fallow, so fallow it is!

For anyone new to mutations, a "visual" bird is one that is that color - a visual fallow is fallow in color.  But birds can also be "split".  This means that they are carrying the gene for that color, but are visually indistinguishable from a normal bird.  They can pass that gene onto their offspring however, and may have visual babies.

A sex-linked mutation is passed on differently from a recessive mutation.  One thing that many people get confused about is that ONLY males can be split.  The females cannot be split, but they can be visual.  I have seen several people selling females that were supposedly split to a sex-linked mutation, which is impossible!

If the male bird is carrying fallow - if he's either split or visual - and the female is not carrying fallow, meaning she is a normal green bird, than you will get fallow babies... but all of the visual fallow babies will females!  Some or all of the males will be split, depending on if the father was split or visual, but none of the male offspring will be visual fallows.

Only if BOTH the male and the female are carrying fallow, will you get both male and female fallow babies.  This means the female must be visual, and the male can be either visual or split.  Here's a chart better explaining the babies you'll likely get from different pairings:
 

Normal M x Normal F = 100% normal babies
Split M x Normal F = 25% normal F's, 25% visual F's, 25% normal M's, 25% split M's
Visual M x Normal F = 50% visual F's, 50% split M's
Normal M x Visual F = 50% normal F's, 50% split M's
Split M x Visual F = 25% visual F's, 25% normal F's, 25% split M's, 25% visual M's
Visual M x Visual F = 100% visual babies

Fallows are more expensive than normal green cheeks, but when you compare them to, say, blue mutation Quaker parrots, the price difference isn't that much.  And it's going down!  Visual birds may cost as little as $200, though usually they are around $300.  Splits may not cost much more than normal birds, usually running about $175-$250.

Sex-linked mutations are much easier to outcross than recessive mutations, so they're not prone to the same problems with inbreeding.  Fallow green cheeks are just as large, hardy, and prolific as normal green cheeks.

Fallows aren't yet very common, and there hasn't been the same interest in them from breeders that there has been in blue or cinnamon Quakers.  But, there are a large number of breeders working with them, including many smaller hobby breeders, and they are available as pets quite routinely.  So if you're looking for something a little more unusual than your "normal" green cheek, maybe a pet fallow would fit the bill?
 
 

This page is copyright © 1998-2000 Lara deVries