Eductaief

Educative

Race impure.....
Who will see.....

Unfortunately, it happens fairly often, and many people don't even know.
The catch is, that the people who know, don't tell, and that's the worst thing that can happen to our hobby.
With a lot of interest for tragopans, I travel around often, checking out the people who love tragopans and bird parks. During those visits it occurred to me that there were much cross-breeds in those collections. People often weren't aware that they had these cross-breeds, but often they saw when they were pointed to the fact.
More often then not, the answer is: "I didn't knew", or, "I have bought them from a 'real' dealer.
As said, sometimes the salesman will know, but often they really didn't know. Later generations will show what went wrong in the past. Consciously or unconsciously Temminck tragopans have been coupled to Satyr tragopans and with that the wrong steps have been done.
At best, all would be checked DNA-wise, but I reckon that isn't doable on a large scale for a while. In the meantime time doesn't stop, and people still make the wrong choices. In this text I would like to try to give you some handles to clearify this matter.

Much has been written about female Tragopans and their looks. I will try to give a supplement on that, see the next comparable pictures:

The female Satyr has a darkbrown/black back with in the feathertips an ocre-brown pointshaped drawing with here and there a black-like spot. The rounding of the wing seems reddy, and the tail is brown/black with irregular rusty spots.
Under the beak light of colour going to the chest rusty brown seamed, going to brown at the legs, furthermore the underside is rusty-brown, covered with white drop-shapes spots which most desirably will be lightly black seamed.
Also, the egg can be a measure. The egg is reddy with brown/red points and spots. The size of the egg is around 58 mm long, 43 mm in width. With a cross-bred Satyr, you will see too small eggs, and plainly coloured eggs.

The female Temminck on the top-side is varying red-brown to grey-brown, but not as dark red as with the Satyr. A lot of grey-white V-shaped drawing is present on the upper back.
Throat and chest are browny with black spot-like drawing proceeding to the belly with is covered with drop-shaped whity spots mixed with black-like spots.
The eyelids are a clear blue colour, around the eye you can see a clear blue skin during the headmoult, see picture. Temminck-females can produce very different amount of eggs. The eggs are reddy to light red-brown with dark spots and points. An egg will be around 54 mm of length and the width is around 40 mm.

The female Cabot has a dark back with grey/red-brown colouring with here and there dirt-white spots, the most at the top. The chest is grey-brown with arrow-shaped whity spots. Further to the underbelly a more whity feathers.
At the eyelids you can clearly see an orange-like colour, the skin around the eye is as orange as the eyelids. This can be seen well during the headmoult.
Newly-borns have a somewhat darker head and a lighter underside then the Temmincks. A Cabot lays less eggs on average some 4 to 7. Their eggs are orange/brown, are shorter and rounder then a Temmincks egg. They have an average size of 48 mm long and 36 mm width, they weigh around 33 gram.

What can a practices eye see for what's right or wrong?
All too often you see too small Satyrtragopans, to low on the feet and a wrong flat stance. One fault with satyr-females is the blue skin around the eye, which is seen very well during the headmoult. This blue must be visible with the Temminck-female, but NOT with the Satyr. The underbelly must never be drawn like a Temminck-female.
One can debate on dark or light coloured female Satyrs, but in nature, they coexist, more important is their build and length that a certain animal should have.

Have you ever looked at the length of the tail?
The middle tailfeathers of a grown female Satyr (3 years old) must be, at the least, 195mm long.
This length will not occur with a too small female Satyr, simply because such an animal will have a shortage of natural length. A tailfeather of a Temminck-female is only, or could be 175mm.

The male Satyr can get a tail-length of even 300mm. And a male Temminck will get a length of 230mm.

This all to say that the proportions must be correct. When you know that a Satyr is elongated, and walks in a somewhat upright stature, you can see at the animals if this is the case with you. A Temminck, in contrary, walks somewhat flatter, and less upright.

So, relatively simple knowledge gives a totally different view of right and wrong. And everything can be seen with the naked eye, so don't tempt to something that looks like it.

In a large and famous bird-park in Germany my eye saw something what looked like a Temminck, but also had the characteristics of a Satyr-male. See photo on the left:

So, a cross-breed, and the caretaker: "Och, das seht man ka nicht."
Well, I can assure you I was disappointed seeing this bird. I haven't driven that far just to see that, but it got me a picture to show you how to NOT do it.
Consider the head of this bird, it must be completely covered with black feathers, if we have a Satyr here.
Only during the moult a Satyr will show some of his blue underskin on the head. But never completely bald as with this bird, of as with a Temminck-male.

Also consider his chest. With a Temminck, one has drop-formed spots, without a black line around it. With a male Satyr, he has a black line, but the spots are round. This bird has both.

Talking about pictures, the next pictures show that it also happens, in our surroundings. An un-suspecting Tragopan-lover bred this Satyr-male that was bought as being pure, but as you can see, I will try to help you out.
A long tall bird (Satyr), good to see are the long legs, but the spots on the back are slightly oval (see the feeding picture). The orange crest is too big for a satyr, but much too small for a Temminck. The blue of the head is not Satyr-like, but also too dark for a Temminck. The orange under his throat is typical for a Temminck, but too light for a Satyr. When you look up close, you will find that not all the spots are lined. In short, these pictures show how a Satyr or Temminck should not look.

For this material there only is one solution. Discard and do not continue.
I hope find some useful material in here to breed these beautiful animals.
One point is very clear, we should not continue this way, or we will get to very difficult times with out beautiful Satyr- and Temmincktragopans.