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I need help with the sex of my cockatiel babies. I am not quite sure I understand the dominate and recessive thing. I have a normal gray male and a gray pearl female. I am not sure of the parantage of either. I have two beautiful babies. One is a dark gray pearl and one is a cinnamon pearl. Both are very heavily pearled. My question is how do I tell the sex of them? Both have the yellow tails so I can't tell by the bands. Any imput would be great.
Thanks

As far as I know you can't tell for a while yet. Early on, behavior might give you a clue - generally males being more vocal.

With the pearl mutation, after the first molt- 6-8 months, the males start to lose the pearls and the adult plumage is more of a normal grey. The females retain the pearls for life That's what my Luna is - a white faced cinnamon pearl.

Thanks for the info. Now I am more confused though. Your bird is beautiful but mine looks nothing like that. I will try to get pictures tomorrow ond post them so you can see what I am talking about.
Thanks

These are the best I can do for now. I hope the pics show up.
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Your birds look like cinnamon pearls - they have the yellow markings - and they are gorgeous!!

The females will look like this forever, the males will look more like a normal gray after they molt - except they will be cinnamon instead of the normal gray.

How old are they?

jippypop wrote:I need help with the sex of my cockatiel babies. I am not quite sure I understand the dominate and recessive thing. I have a normal gray male and a gray pearl female. I am not sure of the parantage of either. I have two beautiful babies. One is a dark gray pearl and one is a cinnamon pearl. Both are very heavily pearled. My question is how do I tell the sex of them? Both have the yellow tails so I can't tell by the bands. Any imput would be great.
Thanks

Do you have pictures of the parents as well? If the male is a normal grey, and the female is a pearl, then no doubt the cinnamon pearl is female. Sex linked genes can ONLY be carried on the "X" chromosome... Males being XX, females being XY (opposite of humans, and it's actually ZZ and ZW, respectively). Males need two genes in order to be visual, where-as females only need one, which means females cannot be split.

Have you had any other offspring from this pair? Or has this pair produced any other chicks? I ask because if the father is split pearl then the pair should have normal offspring as well. If the father IS a pearl, then all offspring will be pearls, too. What color are his feet?

From the offspring mentioned thus far we can gather that either the father is a pearl, or he is split pearl. We can also tell he's split cinnamon. All cinnamons will be females. Pearls will be both male and female.


Not ALL males will loose their pearls... some may loose most but not all... some may loose only half... and supposedly there ARE males who never loose ANY of their pearls but are proven males by the fact that they have produced offspring! But on the whole, males do indeed loose their pearls when they go through their first molt, and may take 2-3 molts afterwards to get rid of most, if not all.


You can try sexing them via behavior... as Luna mentioned... The cinnamon ought to be more quiet like a female, and the other pearl, if it's quiet as well (as it gets older) then we can guess it's a female.... however, if it makes a lot of various types of chirps and noises, then we can assume it's a male. Just a note though, there ARE some vocal females just as much as their are quiet males.... but regardless, this should still be a good indicator when young!


Luna Bella, if you look at the first pic of the two birds, the one on the right is a normal pearl, and the one on the left is a cinnamon pearl.... you can tell the difference by looking at the lightness of the wings....

Here's a picture of my own pearl (who I recently adopted out, actually - have another pearl but she's also cinnamon pied)... I'd say she is considered a normal pearl, and the type of pearl offspring you have I have heard called Lacewings (due to the difference in pearls, which you can see between my pic and yours! but it all should still be the same mutation, regardless...)

Wow lots of info! The babies are are 9 weeks old today. I am not sure of the color of the males feet. I will try to take pics tomorrow. This is the first set of babies they have produced for me. The laid 4 eggs and hatched 2. They are setting on 4 eggs now. I am very curious to see what the next babies look like.
Thanks
Lisa

Monica - if a male retains the pearling, could it stay as is when a juvenile? Or will it always fade? Also on the other hand will the females always stay as the juvenile or do some of the females fade?

Jo

Lisa, I'll be waiting for more information then!!! Curious to know however if you purchased this pair from someone else who may have possibly bred them? (hope they aren't related!)

Jo, I have a breeder "friend" in Texas who has mature males with ALL their pearling! Of course I don't really know how old the oldest one is (can't recall, but she had for sure males that were 1+ years in age with ALL pearls!). I've seen some males appear like normals with what looked like faint pearl markings... faded really.. and probably not more than 10 at best... usually located on the wings or back. As far as I know though, females DO NOT fade or loose their pearls. I'd say though that 90% or more of males (and I'm thinking more like 96% +) will loose most, if not all of their pearls, by the time they are 2-5 years old. I have heard of older males in the past keeping their pearls but I never believed the person because none of these birds were breeders, and even if they did DNA sexing, it's still only supposedly 99% correct, thus a chance of failure. Surgical sexing isn't even 100% accurate.

I bought them as a proven breeder pair from a local breeder. So they are not related. I will try to find out if they know the parentage of the pair also. I now am very excited to see what the new babies will turn out to be!

The only way you'll know the sex of the babies before the molt is to DNA them.

If the mom was a pearl, that means dad is split to pearl since you said he was just gray. Now normally, dad being split to gray would mean both those babies are hens, but since mom is a pearl, well, now you can have either sex. The cinnamon pearl one should be a hen, because mom isn't a cinnamon.

Female pearls don't fade. I would say 99% of all males lose the majority of the pearling.

And sexing by the tail isn't accurate regardless. Particularly if they haven't molted. I have a proven male in my birdroom with bands on his tail.