[tasheanne]

This could get a little confusing so bear with me.

Basically I have two cockatiels, the female is WF cinnamon pearl pied. Her parents were as follows: mum was a cinnamon pearl and dad was a pearl pied.

The male I have is WF grey pearl pied. His mother was the same as him and his father was WF cinnamon pied.

Now if I'm understanding all this genetic stuff correctly, this means that my male is WF grey pearl pied split to cinnamon... right? Pairing him with my WF cinnamon pearl pied female is confusing me because (i think) this means I'll end up with a bunch of WF cinnamon pearl pied babies that I wont be able to sex without DNA testing. Is there any way to sex the babies if I'm right? I'm super confused. :frown:

 

[yasser157]

all the offspring will be whiteface pearl pied.....50% of them will be cinnamon and the other half will be grey in color(since the father of your male is cinnamon, he passed the cinnamon gene to your male, so he is split to cinnamon).....for sexing it will be difficult since all of them will be pieds, but i think the underwings spots can differenciate the females from the males even in a pied bird....

 

[CloudySkies]

Since my bird is pied, I actually looked that up, about using the spots for sexing. From what I understand (may be incorrect, so please correct me if I'm wrong), male pieds will lose their tail bars and wing spots, however it can take a long time to do so. Some will lose them with the first molt, others will keep them for years. Years! So for pieds, I think the only way to be sure about gender is with a DNA test or obvious male behaviors (when they get older). Of course, there seem to be some males who don't do a lot of male behaviors and we've all read about some females actually whistling a little bit, so even behavior can't give you a 100% accurate answer.

Using the genetic calculator (gencalc.com), your babies will be :

BOTH genders will be 50% cinnamon WF pearl pied and 50% grey WF pearl pied.

So yeah, sexing is gonna be hard when they're young without DNA testing. But they'll all be gorgeous!!

 

[tasheanne]

Thanks guys I appreciate it. I'm wondering if I should try to breed them both with other birds to avoid the sexing confusion. If you have a second could have a look at the other thread I've started about my boy and a Lutino female? Genetics are so awfully confusing