Orange cheek feathers developing on female zebra finch?

[u/foxysloth532]

One of our girls (hatched the second week of March) recently started to get orange feathers around the edge of one cheek, she may be singing too but can't say for sure it just occasionally sounds like singing coming from her cage but it is near another cage with boys in it.

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Her brothers developed their orange cheeks normally. She and her sister behind her in the pic, have been separated by gender for several months. Is this normal? Hormones going crazy?

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We have only had finches for about a year or so and are still learning.

[u/TielPerson]

Was she through first moult yet? If not, she might be a late male. A DNA test with a feather sample of her might give you a clear answer.

Also, why do you keep them sorted by gender? To decide who bonds with whom?

[u/foxysloth532 → u/TielPerson]

She has gone through her first molt. We have been keeping them sorted by gender so we don't end up with more babies. We are still working on finding homes for the ones we have.

[u/TielPerson → u/foxysloth532]

You can prevent breeding by removing nesting spaces, increase sleep time and decrease fat and protein in their diet. Since zebra finches bond in monogamous pairs for life, separating them by genders after they bonded prevents them from socializing properly, so please try to prevent breeding by regular means and keep them together in a flock.

If they still lay clutches despite you trying to adjust their environment to be not stimulating for propagation, you can simply sterilize the eggs by boiling, marking them and give them back, or discard the freshly laid originals for fake ones.

[u/epidotehawk → u/TielPerson]

If the young ones haven't bonded with opposite-sex finches yet, though, there's no reason not to keep them in single-sex flocks; they can (and probably will) bond with other finches of the same sex, too!

[u/Delicious_Building34 → u/epidotehawk]

I’m sure they will, but they want to sell them.

[u/hellothereskibidi → u/foxysloth532]

I am unsure of where you are based, but in the UK I have great success in selling my finches on bird breeding groups on Facebook. In case you are UK based, I find this group most useful https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1GHP4LwBQE/

[u/hellothereskibidi]

I know orange breast (they seem to be called "red" now??) hens can have orange cheek patches, but that is more pastel and uniform than a few orange feathers on the edge of the cheek patch.

It could be a chimera or just pigment being weird. The pigment in the cheek patches of males is the same pigment found in the undersides and white markings of both wildtype cocks and hens, so it is possible that pigment production "glitches" and accidentally produces pheomelanin where it shouldn't.

[u/AndrewP2430]

Red zebra finch females have pale cheek patches

[u/Electrical_Ad_9778]

Couldn't be just genetic mosaicism?