Hopefully this article will educate all novices who are working with or considering working with any of the crested varieties of canaries.

Recently there was a post on an Internet canary forum that contained some erroneous information. Does that surprise you? Remember folks, just because something appears on the Internet does not always make it factual or correct! I’ve decided to cut and paste two key paragraphs of that posting in order to help the reader and especially the novice canary breeder the ability to better understand and assimilate this article. I feel if one is considering getting started with the Gloster or any of the other crested breeds, they need to have factual and correct information and not "observations/results" made by what I assume can only be attributed to questionable and poor record-keeping, poor management of livestock or just lack of basic facts as relates to genetics.

I’ve written this particular article to make sure "old wives tales" such as these are nipped in the bud.  I have also taken the liberty of correcting the grammar in the two paragraphs that follow for ease of comprehension by the reader: "I also have had two consorts produce a corona in several occasions. Twice from birds where there were no coronas for three generations (I do not prefer them). Thus, I have concluded that as long as there is corona blood in the birds, you may get a corona.
The other thing I found with the corona/consort birds is that even when you mate two coronas, you will not always get a corona youngster. In fact, when I mated two corona birds I have not gotten any corona babies, all the young have been consorts. The other part of this is that I may not get live birds in a nest at all or maybe just one."

I have to say that the absolute only way one can get a corona from two consorts is if one has mismanaged their pairing and a corona cock actually mated (serviced) within the prescribed time with the consort, which produced the corona!!  In the case of the above writing, it not only happened once but twice!!
First, may I say that there is no such thing as "corona blood" in any bird including the Gloster!!!  "Blood" has absolutely nothing to do with genetics.
The only things found in blood are what constitute the ingredients of blood itself!  There are no genes or chromosomes in blood.  Blood is a mixture of two things: cells and plasma. The heart pumps blood through the arteries, capillaries and veins to provide oxygen and nutrients to every cell of the body. The blood also carries away waste products.

Blood performs two major functions:

• Transport through the body of

• Oxygen and carbon dioxide
• Food molecules (glucose, lipids, amino acids)
• Ions (e.g., Na⁺, Ca²⁺, HCO₃⁻)
• Wastes (e.g., urea)
• Hormones
• Heat

Personally, I believe that it was ignorance of later established facts that an effort was made over the years to convince breeders of livestock that the genetic makeup of every living being, including birds was found in the blood. The "information" in the two paragraphs above is another of what are referred to today as "old wives tales" which continue to pollute the minds of people to this day! Information that was based for the most part by shoddy stock management and record-keeping. 
The understanding of basic genetics is required to understand the concepts behind the production or non-production of a crested or corona-bearing bird of which the Gloster Canary is one variety. Information relating to blood is of no relevance, sorry to say. 
In one of the first books printed in the UK on the Gloster Fancy Canary in 1978 by John S. Cross, he states the following:

"The crest formation in the Gloster corona is responsible for more people being attracted to the Gloster Fancy than any other single factor with the breed.  Little information on the actual first crest formation found within the canary breed has been related in early literature, but the earliest mention of the mutation was in 1750, amongst canaries bred on the Continent.
The actual crest is caused by a malformation of the skull causing the feathers of the top skull to radiate in a circular array which has been brought to its present state of perfection in the Gloster by selective breeding by discerning fanciers over the last fifty years of the breed's recognition as a type canary.
The crest factor has been proved a dominant factor and the Gloster corona is able to pass it on to 50% of its off-spring whether the pairing consists of a corona male x consort female, or a corona female x a consort male. Because only 50% of the offspring show the crest manifestation we are able to recognize that although the crest factor is dominant over the plainhead factor, the corona is heterozygous for crest so that even when two coronas are paired together, plainhead offspring are produced. He goes on to illustrate that crest factor with a couple of drawings which I will attempt to provide here:

(CREST Cc) CORONA X CONSORT (cc PLAINHEAD)
                                          l
                                          l
  _________________________________________________
l                        l                    l                     l
l                        l                    l                     l
Cc                  Cc                cc                    cc

CREST    CREST   PLAINHEAD   PLAINHEAD

(CREST Cc) CORONA X CORONA (Cc CREST)
                                          l
                                          l
  _________________________________________________
l                        l                     l                       l
l                        l                     l                       l
Cc                  Cc                  cC                   cc
CREST    CREST         CREST   PLAINHEAD
Homozygous
(Pure)
Non-Viable

Cross's comments regarding the illustrations above go on to state: "If we represent the crest factor with a capital C and the plainhead factor with a small c we are able to easily, but correctly, illustrate the formation which the novice Gloster breeder requires to bring about correct pairings to produce the coronas. 
The corona male produces in equal numbers sperms carrying C the crest factor and sperms carrying c the plainhead factor.  The corona female produces
equal numbers of eggs carrying C and eggs carrying c.  Given these facts, we are now able to illustrate the hereditary constitution of the Gloster corona
as Cc irrespective of what sex it might be. The Gloster consort is a homozygous canary for the plainhead factor and is true breeding, producing consort genes only.  These we illustrate as cc.  At this point the novice should remember we have illustrated the only dominant crest gene with a capital C.  Once this point is grasped what follows is easier to understand. Whenever the C gene is coupled at fertilization with the c gene, the youngster inheriting this combination must develop into a corona.  Let us illustrate this in the following way, If we pair a corona male to a consort female we have a pairing which we illustrate thus Cc x cc.  The progeny from this pairing must be as follows:

A sperm carrying C from the corona male may fertilize an egg from the consort female which must be c as she carries the plainhead factor only. Obviously this combination of genes will produce corona offspring; or a c gene from the corona male may fertilize an egg carrying c and in this case consort progeny will result.  Therefore, we arrive at our 50/50 corona, consort expectancy.
At this stage the observant novice may deduce that by pairing corona x corona he will produce a larger percentage of coronas because he is using a pair of Glosters that both have the combination Cc.  Also he may expect to produce a CC individual which would be a pure or homozygous corona which would, of course, be an extremely useful bird in the breeding room. Unfortunately, the laws that govern inheritance are not that easy to use. If we pair together two coronas we can expect to produce four combinations in the progeny.  We would expect to have CC, Cc, cC and cc, and it would be the CC individual we would be looking for. When we bring together two dominant genes, we also produce a lethal factor. The youngster inheriting this combination proves  impossible to rear and usually succumbs just before hatching or soon after, giving us a 25% mortality rate in the pairing of two coronas. Of the combinations remaining, the Cc, cC and cc, individuals have inherited nothing more than if they had been bred from the orthodox Cc x cc pairing, and so the corona x corona offers the breeder no advantages at all."

There have been other books written specifically about the Gloster Canary in order of appearance in the UK; THE GLOSTER CANARY, Keeping, Breeding and Showing by Joe A. Bracegirdle in 1989 and THE GLOSTER FANCY CANARY, A Guide to Keeping, Breeding and Exhibiting by N. J. Barrett and C. Blackwell in 1990. Joe Bracegirdle's book does not elaborate anywhere on the genetics of coronas and consorts while there is but a rather brief paragraph on the subject in the Barrett/Blackwell book.

G. B. R. Walker in his book, COLOURED, TYPE & SONG CANARIES, does mention the "Head - plainhead or crest factor" as one of the "five main factors involved in type canaries" in the Introduction of Chapter 3 on Inheritance which also substantiates the above theories by Cross while using the "Punnet Square."

I plan on having several pages on all aspects of genetics in Glosters which will detail established and proven guidelines and theories to insure the success of all with the breed in my soon-to-be-published book NINE STEPS TO SUCCESS BREEDING CANARIES, Using the Gloster as a Model.
I hope this article will assist the newcomer to the fancy in differentiating between factual and false information that is sometimes appears on the Internet and in publications worldwide. Hopefully this article will be of particular value to all who are interested in exploring not only the Gloster but also ANY crested breed of canary.

For further reading on the Gloster Fancy Canary, please visit my House Of Crests website.

All the best!

Donald Perez
birdmanofillinois@msn.com
Phone: 847.338.5660
www.houseofcrests.com

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