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I'm trying to figure out the colors of my cockatiels based on their babies.
I'm also wondering what color exactly the dad and one of my babies is.
I have pictures of most of the birds here:
http://www.mywingsbooks.com/temp/BirdColors.htm
The parents are:
MALE: pearl and pied, except that in the picture on the site, you can see
that his chest looks more patterned and silvery than a normal gray, and his
back has a few white patches.
FEMALE Normal gray in appearance
The babies they have produced, in two separate clutches are:
Light Pied
Pearl
Pearl
Medium Pied (with distinct speckles on chest, NO pearling on back)
Normal Gray (with faint of speckles on chest, NO pearling on back)
Normal Gray
If I'm understanding the genetics correctly, the father (who was pearl as a
baby) must have two pearl genes, and every daughter will be pearl, but no
sons will be pearl. The father displays pied, so must have two pied genes,
and the mother must be split to pied, since pied is recessive but they are
producing pied babies.
My biggest question is what about the pied baby with the speckled chest.
What are those speckles? This baby will at least be split for pearl. Is it
possible that the chest speckles are a sign of that? Or could they be
related to his being a pied?
I would appreciate any thoughts about these birds. If I understand the
pearling genetics correctly, it should be pretty easy for me to tell males
from females, but I'm wondering if pearling every shows up as only chest
speckles, which would throw my "system" off!
Thanks for any advice and help.
Alice
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