Anyone in Arizona?

[JessiMuse]

I dead, that should be helpful for getting Lucy to eat softer vegetables.

He's definitely a cuddler. I'll have him with me on the table or on the back of the couch with me, and sometimes it's like being near me isn't enough. he's so clingy. A total sweetheart, when he's not trying to chew on anything I have. He and Lucy are gonna cause so much trouble together.

Though I think he might be a she, since the mutation he has is Pearl, and Pearl is a sex linked mutation. Females can't be split to Pearl, because it's a sex-linked recessive gene. They either have the gene visually, or they don't have it at all. So if the mother is a Pearl, the babies could be either gender. If the mother isn't a Pearl, then any Pearl chick is a female, due to the father being visual or split. The mother is a whitefaced Lutino, and I didn't see any Pearl markings on her (Lutino can have Pearl markings - they're just very faint) I would probably have to send the blood in for a dna test to find out for sure, though.

Who thought there was a science behind cockatiel color mutations, huh? I sure didn't until I met Lucy's breeder.

[Pajarita]

No, you don't need to DNA, just wait until the first molt (you very seldom have to wait for the second but it can happen) and if the pearls stay, it's a hen, if they disappear, it's a male.

[JessiMuse]

So until then, I have to think up a unisex name that'll fit either way. I'm so bad with unisex names.

I heard it can take longer for a male to actually start losing his pearls. I'm hoping that might not actually be the case, though I'm guessing behavior might tell me before pearls do in that case.

[Wolf]

Dna testing is accurate and much quicker then guessing based on behavior and is cheap enough to use while they are too young to tell by other methods. So if you want to know quickly for what ever reason that you have then I would say use it.

[Pajarita]

I know that they say that it can take longer for the males to lose the pearls but it's just a matter of degree so, if the bird loses a significant number of pearls, even if he retains some, it's a male.

[marie83]

Harlie was a pearl but I had no idea about the sex link and thought she was a boy because she had no bars under her tail and her cheek patches were very bright. Over time the brightness actually faded and bars appeared under her tail. I only discovered pearl markings were sex linked after she laid some eggs. We just changed the spelling of her name from Harley.

[JessiMuse]

yeah, the Pearl mutation is a little strange like that. Hens tend to have slightly brighter faces than a hen of any other mutation (Lutino and pied being an exception).

Heck, the onlY mutation I know of that basic visual sexing doesn't always apply to is pied. The pied mutation tends to ignore every rule of basic visual cockatiel sexing, so males can have dark faces (known as "dirty faced pied"), and the females can have bright faces. It doesn't ignore the rules of sex-linked mutations though, so a cinnamon pied born from a mother that isn't cinnamon would still be female.

Cinnamon is a sex linked mutation as well, which is how I know Lucy is a female.