sexing lovebirds?

[ifly]

I know the most reliable way is to DNA them but what are some.other ways you can at least guess their gender?

 

[Abigail]

I don't think so.

 

[Marc]

I have never used the DNA test to determine their gender,
The best solution is to watch them for long time;
For example, the Roseicollis females use to shred paper and to put small paper pieces into their tail;
The females use to bend their body to invite the males to mate;
The males use to rigurgitate seeds a lot of more than females and they use to masturbate with the perches.
I love to watch them to understand their gender; it provides me more satisfation than to receive a paper test from a laboratory...
There is also the surgery to determine the gender but it is wrong(in my opinion) ;

 

[ifly]

Any ways to tell between babies???

 

[Lovebird Lady]

Any ways to tell between babies???

It's even more difficult to tell when they are babies without DNA testing, because the educated guess is more accurate when they've reached sexual maturity and you can observe mating behaviours in the different genders as Marco describes above. But males tend to be more acrobatic as babies and adolescence compared to the quieter and laid back females, as a very general rule.

 

[Marc]

Just as Sylvia said, it's harder to distinguish them gender when they are babies;
If you have a sex mutated roseicollis male as parent, then you can use the mutation of the father to distinguish the gender of the offspring;
I'm going to perform an example:
Lutino male(XL,XL) * green female (x,y)
Where:
-XL is mutated lno chromosome
-x is wild chromosome
-y is inert chromosome.
From the pair ino male(XL,XL) * green female (x,y) you can have only the following combination of chromosomes for the offspring:
(XL,x) it's Green Male split lutino or (XL,y) it's lutino female;
Thus all the lutino babies will be female while the males will be born all green.
This rule though is valid only the roseicollis(peach face);for the ring eyes is NOT valid,since it doesn't exist sex linked mutations in these species but they are all simple recessive.

 

[ifly]

Thanks for the info guys!!!!!!!