Baby cockatiel mutation help

I have two 4-week old cockatiels, one is pied cinnamon and the other is lutino. But I think the lutino is pied! I'm not sure, but the bands on the wings that are supposed to be white are yellow, the rest of the wings is white with a yellow spot where the wing attaches to the body on both sides. Belly and back are yellow as well. I think the white on the wings is the pied showing itself:


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Sorry that the image isn't totally clear, had trouble with the lighting.
What do you think?

For mutation interests:
Mother is pied cinnamon
Father is normal split lutino x1, cinnamon x2, opaline x2, pied.
I didn't know he had split pied until I saw it in his babies, because the fathers mother isn't visually pied, and the fathers father a uniform in color ...
If you want to see pics of the (grand) parents or brother/sister I can upload them as well.

Thanks! Shanna

beautiful baby!

I had one turn out exactly the same. baby male was lutino with white feathers.
the rest were cinnamon, pearl, which were female....never had a clutch quite like that before.

I'm sure there will be other members along to explain the genetics.

Look at the flight feathers. A lutino will still have bars on the tail feathers and spots on the flights. A lutino pied may be missing those very bars and stripes.

Here's a couple of photos from Susanne Russo that may be of interest.

@crimson: Thanks :3! Always good to hear! I'm Very content about their genes, and this one has a beautiful feathered head, no bald patch! I would say grandmom comes pretty directly from wild stock, since granddad did have a bit of baldness and they still get beautiful young .

@MonicaMc: Wow what a beautiful images <3. Thanks for sharing!
So you'd say that the pied makes the feathers yellow and not white? Because I have seen yellow lutinos... I just checked her, and the outer flight feathers are yellow; no spots there! The tail is very difficult to see, I saw some stripes on the normal feathers, but couldn't see any on the tail feathers and she also had a couple of yellow feathers in between the white. Maybe it's better to see when they've grown longer(?).

Brother, or sister (can be both according to the calculator):

Mother and father (Bella and Silver):

It's clear dad has some splits lol (he has a bunch!)
Grandmother (Pearl) and current lovers:

Pearl has two completely white feathers on the back of her head. Strange thing is, I've only seen them recently and I have her for YEARS! She has also gotten darker in the past half year, so maybe that's why...?

I thin I see "piedness" (which could in fact be indication of being split pied) around the fathers head.

Typically, when you see yellow lutinos, this is an indication that the lutinos are carrying other mutations. A pure lutino, no other mutations involved, should be white birds with yellow heads and orange beaks.


If this chick is carrying a mutation other than lutino, that would account for the extra yellow feathers.



From the sounds of it, she is a lutino pied!

Yup, the father also has more feathers like that on the back of his neck. I thought he had them because of the split opaline.... and I though I had it all figured out!
Nature keeps surprising me. I hope it'll surprise me with a very nice (new) mutation while it's at it! :41:

Any idea if the yellow tail feathers in Pearl are because of the pied factor?

Nope! There is no way to tell if a male is split pearl or not... you can only tell whether an adult male is pearl or not. My male, Pistachio, is also split pearl, and I know for a fact he's not pearl because he does not know the indications that he was ever pearl.

Those markings that you see indicate pied!

Any idea if the yellow tail feathers in Pearl are because of the pied factor?

Click to expand...

I assume you mean the grandmother. I'm guessing that she is split pied, but she is not a visual pied and does not have clear tail feathers. Her feathers are yellow because she *IS* a pearl, but they are still the tail feathers of a pearl - not pied.

Mutations can come in different degrees, such as pieds. You can have lite pieds, normal pieds, heavy pieds and clear pieds... so the same can be said for other mutations.


Sunshine, the pearl hen I had (Pistachio's daughter) had the bars across her tail feathers, as seen in the below images.









I've never seen anyone explain this until I saw a photo from Susanne Russo. Her image explains it the best!




And a photo that shows my favorite kind of pearls! (drop dead gorgeous if she was also whiteface! lol I'm partial to whiteface pearl hens with white tail feathers)
may30 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!



Here's another shot of a lutino pieds flights.




The dots may be harder to see in lutinos, but if you don't see these dots, then I'm pretty sure we can say she's a lutino pied

My girl is a Lutino split to pied and or WF. She's got the blue eyes. Unfortunately she is infertile but she makes a great adoption parent with her hubby.

MikeyTN said:

My girl is a Lutino split to pied and or WF. She's got the blue eyes. Unfortunately she is infertile but she makes a great adoption parent with her hubby.

Click to expand...

I really love the look of the blue eyed lutinos! I remember the first time I saw photos of them, and no one could figure out why their eyes were blue/grey instead of red/pink!

I had a pied whiteface hen, but I lost her . She was even smarter than her brothers, and I think she was the one who managed to open the cage and was the only one who escaped through the window. Chased the bloody animal through 3 neighborhoods before she flew off so far I couldn't find her anymore . It was a couple of years ago and I'm still very sad and outraged about it *sigh*.
On the other hand, I have rescued a yellow-cheek and he's still living which is extraordinary for a bird that's been exhausted as he was.
Still, I can't help to think what happened to the hen, but I'm pretty sure she's dead. It was a heavy winter when she flew off . Sorry, didn't mean to ramble.

So I have one pied lutino, and I checked my opaline hen (yes very originally named Pearl) and she has total yellow feathers With the characteristic dark core -which is weird because she used to have some striped feathers!).

Another question... I see that my cinnamon young and the cinnamon mother don't have the same color cinnamon. The young has the color the grandmother's (Pearl) belly has. It's a tad more grey than the cinnamon brown of the mother. Any idea if I happened to stumble upon a mutation or that it's just because it's still a baby?

Probably a combination of being a baby and possibly just a difference in how the mutation is expressed.

Sorry to hear about your whiteface pied hen!

OK, I thought all cinnamons had the same cinnamon color... So apparently not?
We'll see how the chick looks when he/she gets the adult feathers (by lack of a better word) .

I want to breed my lutino hen to a whiteface to get an "albino", but the mutation calculator says that it will only give "naturals", even after playing with it a bit. What the heck? Is this a bug in the program, or what? I'm confused

If you want an albino, both parents must carry the whiteface mutation. They can be visual or split for it.

The next factor, the male must carry the Ino mutation. Split or visual. The hen does not need to carry the mutation in order to produce visuals.

So some possible pairings...

Lutino Male split Whiteface x Whiteface Hen
Lutino Male split Whiteface x Normal Hen split Whitefae
Whiteface Male split Ino x Whiteface Hen
Whiteface Male split Ino x Normal Hen split Whiteface
Whiteface Male split Ino x Lutino Hen split Whiteface
Whiteface Male split Ino x Albino Hen
Albino Male x Normal Hen split Whiteface
Albino Male x Whiteface Hen


And there are more combinations... such as two lutinos split whiteface. The main thing is, both parents must carry the whiteface gene and the male needs to be visual or split for it. Otherwise, there is no way to get an albino offspring unless the mutation randomly pops up.

Lol, and if an albino "randomly" pops up you have some birds with hidden splits!

So it actually doesn't have much use to pair my lutino hen to my opaline whiteface male seeing I don't really have room or money to buy more birds... Sigh. Of course it couldn't be as easy as I thought -_-. Oh well, she's a beauty anyway and a REAL sweetheart too <3.
Thanks for the advise

Not unless your lutino is split whiteface and your pearl whiteface is split Ino...


All normal birds, no splits or visual mutations, have the genetics within them to create all mutations. However, it's typically very rare for a mutation to randomly show up.

Budgies, cockatiels and lovebirds are all small species that can easily be "mass produced" and can be bred as early as 6 months to 2 years old. Because of this, we can easily get new mutations a lot faster than in birds where it can take 3-8 years before the birds will reproduce.

Smaller birds also consistently lay 4-6+ eggs per clutch and can wean as early as 6-8 weeks. It's possible to force these birds to lay up to 6 clutches per year.

Larger birds may only lay 2-4 eggs per clutch and take 16 weeks or longer before weaning. It's possible to get these birds to lay up to 3 years.


The following website shows a picture of a lutino dusky pionus. This girl is the product of two unrelated dusky's who have been bred for years. Since she was born, no other lutino dusky's have been produced from this pair. It's probably safe to assume that the parents are not split for any mutations and it was just a random occurrence.

Dusky Pionus Parrots (Pionus fuscus)


Last I heard, she was paired up with an unrelated male to reproduce, however he has taken a liking to a galah cockatoo in an adjacent cage... so I am unaware if she has reproduced yet. I believe the goal is to get some male offspring from her and then pair those males with unrelated hens. If the breeder has correctly identified the mutation, then her male offspring (which will be normals) should have a 25% chance of throwing lutino offspring (or 50% chance of female offspring being lutino - depending on how you look at it).