# I think I picked wrong...



## BirdCrazyJill (Jan 12, 2011)

*sort of  our new baby is sounding more and more like a boy every day! I know people say you can't tell a cockatiel gender by the noise level (boys whistle, girls don't :S ) BUT, I don't think it's very common for girls to sound like this 

At least someone is happy it's snowing! 





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## FaeryBee (May 9, 2011)

*Happy as a little lark! Singing to the snow is so cute. *


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## jckeets (Jun 15, 2014)

Happy little guy. We actually wanted a boy and DNA came back girl, we kept her anyways but I will miss the noises boys make.


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## BirdCrazyJill (Jan 12, 2011)

*We love him just the same  I was trying to avoid bringing home a boy just because of possible future breeding, but Chewy doesn't have the same nesting (obsessive) issues that Muffin had so hopefully it will be an ok situation. He's got a great personality and that's what matters to us! *


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## Jonah (Feb 3, 2013)

Sound's an awful lot like my boy Shiloh...


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## Budget baby (Jan 1, 2013)

How lovely , I am sure everyone appreciated the singing form the looks of things.


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## Kate C (Oct 15, 2007)

I can't tell the mutation properly from the video Jill but he appears to be a normal. But normal colours are easy to sex even as babies. If you look under the wings a normal female will have spots all the way up to the equivalent of our armpit and a male will only have spots halfway up. This applies to any normal mutations regardless, normal grey, normal cinnamon, normal whiteface, normal platinum etc. Of course after the adult moult the face colour comes in.


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## Bernard (Dec 31, 2014)

*That's lovely. Don't we all love the snow*


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## BirdCrazyJill (Jan 12, 2011)

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Kate C said:



I can't tell the mutation properly from the video Jill but he appears to be a normal. But normal colours are easy to sex even as babies. If you look under the wings a normal female will have spots all the way up to the equivalent of our armpit and a male will only have spots halfway up. This applies to any normal mutations regardless, normal grey, normal cinnamon, normal whiteface, normal platinum etc. Of course after the adult moult the face colour comes in.

Click to expand...

I have heard that but is this true even before the first molt? "he" is 12 weeks (and yes he is a normal split to pied)*


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## nuxi (Oct 28, 2014)

What a cute bird!


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## Kate C (Oct 15, 2007)

Definitely true before the first moult. That is the only way to sex a juvenile normal cockatiel before the first moult except than by dna as even surgical sexing at that young age may not give an accurate sexing as the organs are too immature to tell. I have watched many surgical sexings of birds and depending on the species and their rate of maturity surgical sexing cannot always give you a difinitive answer. My friend had one of his Red Tailed Black Cockatoos surgically sexed every year for 5 years and still didin't get an accurate answer.

I have also hand raised and bred many cockatiels and with the normals the spots under the wing was the most accurate way to sex them. The other easy ones are Sex Linked colours when you know the mutation of both parents. So if you breed 2 visually normal birds and you get for example cinnamon, pearl or lutino babies then those babies are automatically females as only the male can carry the sex linked gene as a hidden gene. 

Full Pieds cannot be sexed by the spots as the pied mutation removes all the sex markings from the juvenile bird. Even with Lutino and Albino if you look very carefully under the wings you can sometimes just see the spots. If you breed Lutino to Lutino or Albino to Albino both sexes will be hatched as both parents are carrying the gene visually.


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## BirdCrazyJill (Jan 12, 2011)

*Thanks for all the info Kate! This baby's parents were a normal grey hen and GORGEOUS pied ****, I wish I had taken a picture, his colors were so vibrant! So obviously mine and his 2 sibling were all normal grey. I am slowly learning about cockatiel mutations in terms of passing down to offspring  I knew that you could tell some gender because of genetic mutation combinations, but had no clue as to what mutations would create that!*


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## PipSqueakZ (Nov 24, 2011)

*Aww what a cute and happy little fella! *


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## Kate C (Oct 15, 2007)

In Cockatiels Pied is a Recessive Gene so if one parent is Pied then about 50% of the offspring will be carrying pied if I remember my genetics correctly, I think sometimes it is also called semi dominant. But I know I am right about the sex linked genes. In my mind it is probably the easiest to remember. Many breeders don't put 2 sex linked birds together so as to make it easier to sex the offspring. That is unless they want sex linked males. But saying that they will breed 2 cinnamon's together so that all the babies of both sexes will be cinnamon. But because of some bad genetic traits it is not wise to breed albino to albino or lutino to lutino. Bald patches is probably one of the main reasons. It has to do with the way they were originally bred so that people could get more money from them. I know when the Lutino first came about in Australia they were worth about $5000 each and the same with the Albino. People invested lots of money in the original stock so they wanted to recoup their money quickly. Also they were trying to breed the palest Lutino's together in the hope of getting a nearly white bird, it didn't work. It wasn't until the Whitefaced was bred that is was possible to get the white bird they wanted. A good Lutino should be a bright buttercup yellow. It is also possible to get what is called 100% pied, which is a buttercup yellow bird with black eyes and not the red of the lutino. It may have one or two grey feathers. It is also called a Reverse Pied. Very hard to pick from a Lutino unless you shine a light into they eyes.

Personally I find genetics fascinating, but so many breeders just seem to shut down when the word genetics is mentioned.


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## eduardo (Jul 24, 2011)

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Kate C said:



In Cockatiels Pied is a Recessive Gene so if one parent is Pied then about 50% of the offspring will be carrying pied if I remember my genetics correctly, I think sometimes it is also called semi dominant. But I know I am right about the sex linked genes. In my mind it is probably the easiest to remember. Many breeders don't put 2 sex linked birds together so as to make it easier to sex the offspring. That is unless they want sex linked males. But saying that they will breed 2 cinnamon's together so that all the babies of both sexes will be cinnamon. But because of some bad genetic traits it is not wise to breed albino to albino or lutino to lutino. Bald patches is probably one of the main reasons. It has to do with the way they were originally bred so that people could get more money from them. I know when the Lutino first came about in Australia they were worth about $5000 each and the same with the Albino. People invested lots of money in the original stock so they wanted to recoup their money quickly. Also they were trying to breed the palest Lutino's together in the hope of getting a nearly white bird, it didn't work. It wasn't until the Whitefaced was bred that is was possible to get the white bird they wanted. A good Lutino should be a bright buttercup yellow. It is also possible to get what is called 100% pied, which is a buttercup yellow bird with black eyes and not the red of the lutino. It may have one or two grey feathers. It is also called a Reverse Pied. Very hard to pick from a Lutino unless you shine a light into they eyes.

Personally I find genetics fascinating, but so many breeders just seem to shut down when the word genetics is mentioned.

Click to expand...

This is very interesting, Kate!
Actually, I find normal greys to be beautiful  Just simply the "original" color is sometimes the best.*


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## Kate C (Oct 15, 2007)

I do to Dee. But unfortunately a true normal grey is exceptionally hard to find now over here. They are all pretty much split for something. I was lucky enough to have some good normal greys when I still had cockatiels. They were so dark as to be nearly black in the body colour. They were over 20 years old when they passed. I only lost my last cockatiel last year, a dark normal grey and he was pushing 30.


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## eduardo (Jul 24, 2011)

*Wow! I can only hope mine live that long *


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## BirdCrazyJill (Jan 12, 2011)

*wow that's amazing information! I have heard that it is hard to find a normal grey that has no splits in their lines. It's so fascinating, all the information out there!

The lutino price is kind of funny to me, I know they were rare back then, but it's like when our pet stores call anything but green a "fancy parakeet" just so they can charge a couple bucks more for them *


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## Kate C (Oct 15, 2007)

Jill they were not pet shop prices, which we all know are over the top. Those prices were from breeder to breeder. I collected 4 Albinos from the airport that came from Queensland to New South Wales. Because I was not working I picked up birds for 3 other people as well as myself. And those people payed $3000 each for the Albinos. Mine obviously were not Albinos but just more normal colours that came from a breeder whose bloodlines I wanted. One of the top breeders in the Country. And that was in around 1999/2000. So that was not really that long ago.


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## BirdCrazyJill (Jan 12, 2011)

*that is so exciting! I hope mine live that long too *


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