Genetics help with the flock

[gamermouse]

So far it’s been guessed that this baby may be pearl cinnamon split to pied.
I will include photos of his parents and what I know of their genetics.

Dahlia (lutino pearl cinnamon split to pied?)- red pupil only, iris appears green under a flashlight.
Starlight (male white face split to pied)

Dahlia has a cream body with heavy golden markings but they aren’t clear pearl marking. At least, I didn’t think they were. She has a single cinnamon feather on her shoulder and a few on the tail.
Starlight had white tick marks on his neck when young and also has a stripe on his beak which seems to be split to pied markers.

Starlight’s breeder showed me the grandmother bird when I picked him up. She was truly all white. That’s all I know of his genetics.

I’m really enjoying learning about all of this but googling has only gotten me so far.

 

[sunnysmom]

Cute birds!

@Monica ?

 

[ParrotNuts]

They are very cute!!!
Sorry, but genetics is Greek to me

 

[Monica]

Any chance you have a black light, or could get a hold of one?

I would actually guess that Dahlia is a heavy pied. If there are in fact pearl markings on the feathers, this would indicate lutino for sure.


Chick is indeed at least split pied... and I could maybe see cinnamon, but not seeing pearl.

 

[gamermouse]

Any chance you have a black light, or could get a hold of one?

I would actually guess that Dahlia is a heavy pied. If there are in fact pearl markings on the feathers, this would indicate lutino for sure.


Chick is indeed at least split pied... and I could maybe see cinnamon, but not seeing pearl.

I don't have one but if it isn't too pricy I can get one. (edit) I ordered one off Amazon just now for all of $10. Not sure if it's yellow markings or pearl markings. They look just plain yellow to me and I'm not having an easy time of photographing it.

 

[Monica]

Black lights can make pearling colors on a lutino or albino show up a lot clearer!

But they will not show up on pied feathers! I have a cinnamon pearl pied hen... tried it out on her as well as two Ino (lutino/albino) cockatiels. The inos were just normal Ino hens, not pearls, but they still had the other tell tale signs of hens.. that is, bars on tail feathers and rump area, spots in wing areas. These do not appear on pied feathers of my hen.

 

[gamermouse]

My friends laughed at me because of how “into” learning this I’ve gotten but I can’t help it. It’s like getting to take biology without the anxiety of test failure.

 

[sunnysmom]

You might be interested in this book: Cockatiel Mutations: A Bounty of Color by Susanne Russo | NOOK Book (eBook) | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

It's by one of our members (although she's not active anymore).

 

[gamermouse]

Bought it and glanced inside. Thank you! It'll be a nice read to start on while we wait at the vet today for our checkup.

 

[budgieluv3]

Beautiful!

 

[gamermouse]

This book helped a LOT. Thank you. While reviewing it I read things that I noticed about my male white faced now that I’m curious about. He molted them out but he has white dots on his chest and back of his neck when he was about 4 months old.

I’m not sure if I’m looking at incomplete or poor pearling on the mother or not, too, but I took the black light photo along with a couple of the dads wings with and without flash. If I’m reading it right, the dad (my white face) is split to pearl?

 

[Monica]

Love the black light photo of Dahlia! So cool!

Yeah, she's still a heavy pied! A cinnamon pied. Not a lutino as she would not have those grey feathers.

How old is Starlight? Do you have more photos of him? Do you have any molted tail feathers of his? I would guess that he *might* be an incomplete pearl. Or, there's another possibility, but I don't know the chance of it occuring...


You've done a lot of hard work raising baby! Looking cinnamon more and more! Well done!

 

[gamermouse]

I sometimes save the good feathers that they don’t play with or ruin so I’ll go track down our bag of feathers and see.

in the mean time i dig deep into my camera history and found these from months ago. I had no ideaat the time that cinnamon also had a red pupil flash and was so curious about why my other male gleamed red when he isn’t a lutino. Her iris is a weird pale green-gray but it’s hard to photo it and hold a light and keep her attention at once.

Loki seems more cinnamon every day but I’m confused because Starlight definitely is the father and he doesn’t seem to carry cinnamon genes. I thought a bird needed two parents with the gene? Starlight should be year old next month. In some older photos you can see the white dots on his chest.

 

[gamermouse]

 

[Monica]

Okay... considering age, Starlight isn't even a full adult yet... he's still a juvenile bird. That means that he may not have his full adult plumage yet. The white specks don't necessarily indicate anything, although females are more likely to have them than males - or more *OF* them.

He does appear more normal whiteface as an adult... flash makes it look like he could be cinnamon.

SO....... he's split cinnamon.

Cinnamon is a sex-linked mutation. In females, it's a "dominant" gene as they can only carry one cinnamon gene and are automatically visual cinnamon. In males, it acts like a "recessive" gene. One, they are split for the mutation. Two, they are visual. Females can only get the gene from their father, so if the mother is *NOT* a cinnamon, then all offspring that are cinnamon are automatically female. If the mother *IS* a cinnamon, then any visual cinnamon offspring could be male or female. In other words, dad does not need to be a visual cinnamon in order to get visual cinnamon offspring.

 

[gamermouse]

Got it! That makes more sense. I thought his brown eye there meant he was a normal white face for sure.
The diagrams in the cinnamon chapter of the book were a little difficult to read and I was like OH NO but this is the part I need!

Starlights age is what startled us so much. He’s just a baby himself. We didnt think we had anything to worry about breeding wise after she’d shared a cage with Helios for so long. Then one day my youngest came into my office like “mommy, Dahlia and Starlight are doing it!”

So my buddy Starlight may just carry the gene and show nothing. When I checked the chick out next to the window the chest plumage was sort of a soft taupe color more than gray compared to his father.