[Ricky Anderson]

I currently keep and breed exhibition budgerigars ( I have approx 100) I'd like to start breeding cockatiels and the variety i like is the white face! I've kept cockatiles previously but never bred them. The plan is to keep them in with the budgies! All my breeding is cage breeding I don't colony breed.
Just after any advice, Is the whiteface a sexlinked, recessive or dominant variety? I also seem to recall reading somewhere that you shouldn't pair two of the same mutation together! is this correct?

 

[tielfan]

Whiteface is autosomal (ordinary) recessive. It's exactly the same as the blue mutation in budgies, caused by the same gene. It does the same thing in both species (removing all the yellow/red color), but the visual effect is different because budgies are normally green and cockatiels aren't.

It's fine to have both species together in the same room in different cages, but don't try to breed them in the same cage. In general, budgies are more aggressive than cockatiels, and keeping them in the same cage might not work out even in a non-breeding situation. Trying to keep them together when they're breeding is downright dangerous, because budgies are notorious for staging violent takeovers of a cockatiel nest if they decide they want it for themselves. They may break eggs and kill or injure tiel chicks that have already hatched.

 

[tielfan]

It's generally considered best to pair a visual with a split instead of pairing two visuals together, to reduce the risk of inbreeding issues. All birds with the same mutation are descended from the same original ancestor, and are probably carrying some other genes from that bird too. We all have thousands of genes and everyone is carrying a few bad ones, so when the descendants of the same ancestor do a lot of breeding together it helps concentrate these bad genes.

But this isn't a hard and fast rule, and it depends on the circumstances. For example, if you have two whiteface birds and you know that all their ancestors for the last few generations were visual whiteface, there's more of a risk of bad genes and you're better off pairing them with a split. If you have two good-quality whiteface birds and you know that all their parents were normal grey split to whiteface, the outcrossing has already been done and the risk of problems is lower.