Cockatiels(pics and breeding question and what colro are these guys)

[taraann81]

Here are my 2 new tiels. I *think* I have a male and a female.

I would really like to eventually have one clutch of babies(assuming I have a male and female). I currently have 4 teils. 2 are definate males(I have a lutino male and a grey male) I think out of the 2 pictured the one with the solid whiteface is a male and the one with the grey face is a female.

I am currently researching breeding, but thought I'd throw out a few questions to the knowledgable BYCers.

The boys range in age from 2years to 4 years. The female is 3 years old(if she is indeed a female). SO all at good breeding age. All are healthy.

How would I go about pairing them up? Just pick the 2 I'd like to be a pair and cage them seperately with a nesting box? Or do I allow her to pick her mate? If so, would I just cage them all together and see who she bonds with and then switch them to a breeding cage?(with longer day light, soft foods, frequent baths...the works).


Also can anybody tell me the color/mutations of my 2 new fellows? I know they are both white faces and are both pied. But was told the "male" may be a cinnamon or a silver... I'd like to know in actuality what his color is called.

These 2 have been caged together(along with another male grey, until recently). Have never laid an egg and have never been seen breeding. I'm not sure if that rules out the possibility of one being a female. Or if not having a nest box and also having a third tiel in the cage would have stopped "her" from ever laying.

Any advice is very much appreciated, also stories or others experiences breeding tiels would be helpful.
Thanks in advance.

 

[vanalpaca]

I'd say he was a cinnamon as I hadn't seen any silvers when I was breeding 10 years ago.

If you breed a whiteface boy to a whiteface girl, you will get whiteface offspring.

If you breed the lutino or the normal grey to the whiteface girl, the offspring will carry the whiteface gene, but will probably all turn out to look like normal greys. The pied gene would also have to be in both parents to get pied offspring.

I'm stretching my memory here, but I bred 'tiels for 10 years in California before relocating to OHIO and now I just have a whiteface boy and a parakeet to keep me company (along with alpacas, and now maybe chickens.)

They need 14 hours of daylight to lay eggs. They will breed on the perch. We always offered lots of cuttlebone for calcium because if a hen lays too many eggs she will get weak and could eggbind. I offered a cage with a standard tiel breeder box, wood floor with 2 inches of woodshavings in the bottom. They are usually easy breeders.

There should be plenty of info online.

Cheers

 

[taraann81]

Thanks! My normal grey is split to pied, so if he as the cock they may have pied offspring?

I think I'd really like more white faces. So will seperate the 2 of them into a seperate breeding cage. She is not bonded to any of these three males. How long shoul I suspect to wait before they bond and begin to breed(assuming conditions are right)?

 

[AquaEyes]

The bird in the first picture looks to be a cinnamon pied whiteface. It could be a fallow, but it's hard to tell in that one pic. Cinnamons have black or almost black eyes, while fallows have more of a red or brown tint in the light.

The bird in the second picture looks to be a pied whiteface.

Neither is silver (there are actually two different silver mutations....one is dominant and occurs in single or double factor, and the other is recessive) because silver cockatiels have gray feet, not pink. I can't tell their sex because they are pied.

Pied cockatiels are the hardest to sex visually, because the pied gene affects distribution of pigment. In non-pied cockatiels, adult males have clear faces and adult females have gray faces, but pied males can have gray in the faces, and pied females can have clear faces (many show-quality pied cockatiels are "so pied" that the only colored markings are across the wings, with the rest of the feathers being white and/or yellow, regardless of sex).

Either could also be pearl, because adult males lose their pearl markings. If either turns out to be a female, however, then you know it's not pearl. Your birds could also be split to other mutations.

Cinnamon, lutino and pearl are sex-linked. If your cinnamon turns out to be a male, you can pair him to any non-cinnamon hen and be able to sex the babies as soon as they feather out. Any cinnamon babies will be female, and the non-cinnamons will be male (they will be split to cinnamon). The same would apply to your lutino male, if you bred him to a non-lutino female (in this case, lutino babies will be female, and non-lutino babies will be male).

If you don't want to use DNA sexing, the best bet would be to judge behavior (though it's not 100%). See what happens when either of the new birds is caged next to one of your known males. If they challenge each other in the same "boyish" way, then you likely have to males. But there's also the chance that they won't challenge each other, in which case you won't know if you have a female or a friendly male.

Hope that helped "somewhat."



~Chris


ETA -- I forgot that with pied, any color can have pink feet.....so I guess they COULD be silver, but silver is not as common. If they ARE silver, the recessive silvers have reddish or brownish eyes, and the dominants (single-factors) have dark eyes. Double-factor silvers would be very pale in the body and darker around the skull.

 

[taraann81]

Thanks AquaEyes! That was one of the most easily understood genetics lesson I've ever had! By behaviour I do believe my original assessment was correct. The one with the whiteface is very loud, whistles and showy. The grey face one makes quieter sounds and I haven't heard her whistle yet!

Thanks so much.

 

[AquaEyes]

Quote:
Well, then I'll agree with your guess about the clear-faced one being a male. I've never heard of a female who was very vocal and showy. Yes, some do learn some vocalizations, but their general "demeanor" is more docile and "sweet." The boys are showoffs.

The second one could be a female or a quieter male. These birds are new, so it's possible that he's still getting to know his way around (if it's a boy) and is just being shy. When everyone is getting along, see how the gray-faced bird behaves with birds you know to be boys. Oh, and if you find an egg in that bird's cage, well....then it's a girl. And that's my expert opinion.

 

[taraann81]

Thanks agian! Yes egg laying is an incredibly good sex determiner

 

[Poultrybonkers]

They look like wf pied split for pearl I read somewhere you shouldn't pair like mutations like wf to wf Lutino to Lutino its better to breed a visual wf to a split for wf.

 

[AquaEyes]

Quote:
Hmmm....I didn't know that you can tell by looking what cockatiels are split to pearl. In any case, only males can be split to pearl -- it is a sex-linked mutation, like cinnamon and lutino. Males that are pearl as babies and lose their pearl markings when they reach about a year old are still genetically pearl (they don't become "split to pearl" when they no longer look pearl). As for breeding like-mutations together -- that is generally good advice when a mutation is new, because there is some inbreeding used to breed more in the beginning and outcrossing to unrelated birds is necessary to prevent problems from coming up down the line. When a mutation is new, chances are that birds of like-mutation are related, but these mutations have been around now for a long time, and there isn't much danger of inbreeding anymore. With lutinos, there was an associated "baldness" trait that was popping up from time to time, but it has been largely bred out. A more important issue is that with so many birds being given up after people lose interest in them, be sure you have people who will want your babies BEFORE you breed them.



~Christopher

 

[taraann81]

She is now paired up in a breeding cage with my normal grey/ split to pied male. I originally seperated her with the other whitface but her and the grey male kept calling to each other from across the room. She stayed at the opposite side of the cage as the whitface male. Once I put the normal grey in with her she goes right to him and gets close to him on the perch. He is becoming more interested and they have styarted to preen each other. She was originally in a cage with a normal grey(along with this whitface) which she was paired up with(assuming shes a female but either way they were bonded, they cuddled and preened each other). But he was sold to another home the day before I got these 2.

Anyways, I only plan to allow them to set one clutch. One is already spoken for by a good friend of ours. we plan to keep the rest. we have the room and don't plan on selling any of them.