Like in all zebras, look for type and size. Colour in Marked Whites is the hardest point to perfect. Contrary to what a lot of breeders do, I find your best coloured birds come from Marked White to Marked White pairings. I also recommend to use normals in breeding of Marked Whites to improve the colour of Marked Whites or in Normals In fact Marked Whites bring down the colour in your normals b y diluting the colour on the wings

To breed good Marked White females my experience is that a Marked White male to a Normal female will produce consistent good females. This is providing the starting pair are of good quality. Marked Whites are sex-linked.

I believe that Marked Whites and Chestnut Flanks are the same bird but with Chestnut Flanks being lighter, some breeders may disagree with me here.

Do not breed your Marked Whites to Fawns as it creams up their backs and the standard requires the back to be white. Black tails bars are hard to find. In fact dark, off black would be a better term to define colour in the tail bars. When breeding it is important that you have some dark tailed birds in your flock.

As a breeder of Marked Whites for many years I strongly believe that they are one of the hardest varieties to produce an exceptional bird from.

I had a short period where I was breeding Star Finches, when I was 16. I had bred 1 very nice looking youngster and was looking forward to showing him, when a dog had broken in and to the cock birds aviary. We lost the Star and quite a few of our best Zebra Finch cocks.

Bill Sewell