The Story of a Violet Opaline Ringneck Hen That Refused to Go Away

The year was 2016. The story of Pakistan’s first Violet Opaline split Cleartail ringneck female begins long before she ever reached our aviaries at #MardanAves Farms. She was bred in South Africa by the renowned ringneck mutation breeder Kiepie Herholdt and even as a young bird she carried the kind of rarity breeders only saw in photos. She was later moved to the farm of another friend of ours, Lee Naidoo in Durban, who was helping us arrange a shipment of rare ringneck and alexandrine mutations for Pakistan and that is where her legend began.

She was a yearling at the time. One day at Lee’s farm, she mysteriously escaped from her enclosure and vanished into the surrounding orchards. For days she lived freely, completely out of sight. Most birds never return from such adventures. But she did. Drawn back by the calls of the ringneck flock, she returned on her own.

Even before she left South Africa, she had already shown she was no ordinary hen.

When she finally arrived in Pakistan and we received her, she was a breathtaking bird, the first visual Violet Opaline female ever imported into the country. At a time when very few breeders even knew how to identify an Opaline ringneck, her presence alone represented a leap forward for mutation breeding in Pakistan.

Violet Opaline / CT female with her mate Turquoise Cobalt / Opaline / CT at my place in Faisalabad in 2016

But her arrival was only the beginning of her story.

In 2017 about a year after settling into her new home at my place, she disappeared again. Our caretaker claimed she had escaped, but the circumstances were unclear. Despite searching and questioning, she could not be found. With no other Opaline split CT in the country at the time, her loss felt final. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and eventually a full year passed. The rare hen was gone or so everyone believed.

Meanwhile, the mutation world was changing rapidly.

The Opaline Cleartail mutation combination in ringneck parakeets was gaining massive popularity worldwide. Social media groups were full of breathtaking new birds and breeders everywhere were hungry for knowledge. In Pakistan, there was no dedicated platform for such discussions, so Saad Sheikh from Haripur created a Facebook group and invited me, Prof. Khalid Khan sb and Robert Hendricks from South Africa to be its admins. That group, which later became known as the Pakistan Asiatic Parakeet Society, quickly turned into a hub of excitement for ringneck parakeet mutation breeders.

Those were the golden days of ringneck mutation breeding. Breeders kept special collections of photos in their devices, full of rare mutation combinations. “Mutation guessing games” were the trend… someone would post a picture of a new mutation combination and everyone would try to decode it. It was fun, competitive and incredibly educational.

Around this time, I was introduced to Muhammad Jumman Baloch through Prof. Khalid Khan. He was also asiatic parakeet enthusiast and deeply invested in mutation breeding, with a sharp eye and a strong network among aviculture community in Pakistan. I remember during our first interaction, Jumman showed me some rare ringneck mutations combinations so unusual that even today I couldn’t confidently identify them.

Time passed and we almost forgot about our lost ringneck hen as we focused on our other Asiatic collection… and then, one ordinary afternoon, everything changed.

A trader from Faisalabad posted a short, poorly lit video in our Facebook group. Yup the same facebook group P.A.P.S. that I was admin of. The bird was labelled simply as “Violet.” The video was dark, shaky and filmed inside a dim cage nothing that would normally catch anyone’s attention. But the moment the clip played, something sparked inside me.

Even through the terrible video quality, her Opaline markers were unmistakable.

It was her. The same Violet Opaline split Cleartail hen who had vanished a year earlier.

I called Khalid bhai straight away, showed him the video and he agreed it was indeed a Violet Opaline bird. Panic and excitement hit at the same time. If the trader realised what he had, he would either hide her or sell her instantly. The window to act was dangerously small. A recovery plan had to be made quietly, without raising suspicion.

That’s when Jumman stepped in.

As soon as he heard the trader’s name, he said he knew him! It was a stroke of luck that felt almost unreal. Without wasting a moment, he travelled from Islamabad to Faisalabad to verify the bird. When he reached the trader’s place, he checked the leg ring number, recorded a video and sent it back to me for confirmation.

It matched with the ring number of the bird that we had bought from Kiepie. It was her our lost Violet Opaline split CT ringneck female.

He paid the trader on the spot and brought the hen back to #MardanAves farm… the same bird who had escaped in South Africa, vanished in Pakistan and now, against all odds, had been found again.

Violet Opaline / CT female after being recovered in our large flight @ MardanAves Farms, Mardan 2017

Her return marked the beginning of a new chapter.

The hen who had survived two disappearances went on to produce the first Opaline Cleartails ever bred in Pakistan in 2018. It was a beautiful Turquoise Violet Deep or Dark Opaline Cleartail female chick the most adorable thing we had ever seen in our collection. What an achievement and what a twist of fate that ringneck female had brought with her. I asked Khalid bhai to take some photos of the Opaline CT chick and we proudly presented it to the world through social media, the first Opaline CT ringneck chick locally produced in Pakistan at #MardanAves Farm.

Turquoise Violet Deep or Dark Opaline Cleartail Female bub, 1st Opaline Cleartail locally bred in Pakistan, Mardan 2018

Turquoise Violet Deep or Dark Opaline Cleartail Female bub, 1st Opaline Cleartail locally bred in Pakistan, Mardan 2018

For nearly a decade, her offspring both males and females have been distributed among many of the country’s top breeders. Her bloodline is instantly recognisable: clean Opaline expression, strong colour and the unmistakable quality that comes from a bird with a story as rare as her mutation. Her daughters carry her strong genes and usually increase their clutch size to six eggs per clutch when they are 3 to 4 years old, which is an amazing advantage when breeding rare mutation combinations.

In the years after we brought her back, it became clear that she carried an old shoulder injury, likely during the time period when she was lost, which limited her flight. She was moved to a medium‑sized cage for comfort, where she continued to breed and raise chicks with remarkable consistency.

Today, she remains a living symbol of resilience and legacy, a bird born in South Africa, escaped into orchards, returned on flock calls, travelled across continents, got lost again in Pakistan, vanished for a year, was miraculously recovered and then went on to pioneer one of the most iconic ringneck mutation combinations in the country.

Some birds are rare because of their genetics. Some become valuable because of their offspring. But a few very few become legendary because of their story.

She is one of them.