A nice surprise...

[srtiels]

Yesterday I pulled several babies. The pastelface (PF) is a mystery baby. Aside from the cheek patches if you look at the eyes of both babies the PF eyes are a brighter pink (excluding camera flash) The reason for this is that it is a lutino pied. Lutino pieds eyes will always be a brighter pink...and look very similar to a fallows eyes when young. To confirm that it was pied all I had to do was look at the wing flight feathers. They are a nice buttery yellow with no visible dots.

The reason why it is a mystery baby is that neither parent is/was a visual pastleface (PF). Mother was a pied (split PF) and father a normal grey/WF,L,pd
--------------------------------
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/Comparison-lutino-cheeks-A-illus.jpg

[xxxSpikexxx]

Too cute :D What a nice surprise :)

[sweetrsue]

Oh How Nice!

[huskymom]

I read somewhere that the Pastelface and the Whiteface where in the same slot.. so if you had a WF and a PF you could get PF´s... and since mom is split PF and dad to WF.. there you go... you´ve got a PF Lutino Pied


super cute!!... I´ve never seen a pastelface in person... so I wish... then i would so buy... he

[srtiels]

Yes...a pairing of a PF to a WF will give some PF babies. It is easy to tell right from hatch...because the babies with pale yellow down are the PF and the white down the WF.

In this instance I did not know that the hen was split to PF. The only visual PF from her family was the grandmother. I had the same thing happen with Rascal a few years ago. His father never produced either WF or PF. He was a normal grey/pearl which I had paired with a double factor (DS) silver pearl pied/WF (what a mouthful)...for nice normal single factor dominant silvers. Racal was a single factor DS pearl and I paired him with a WF hen. Out of every clutch he gave me a PF DS baby, and sometimes PF pearls. Rascal inherited his PF from his grandmother. Somehow his father never produced any PF, but the gene was passed along.

I love working with splits because of the surprises, and you never truly know what genes a bird carries until they are paired. I also let my birds pick out their own mates. Somehow the birds must know something I don't because, because they come up with better pairing, and somehow they also come up with the same types of splits.

[sweetrsue]

I've never seen Pastelface available in the northwest. I sure would love to have one.

[srtiels]

Pastelface are nice...BUT...my favorite bird is Dominant yellowcheek (below)

Pastelface are quite pretty in pied. I have a PF pied called Houdini. After Hurricane Katrina I had damage to my flights and has several birds escape. I went outside and saw a bird circling in the sky above the house, and said to my husband, "someone lost a pretty pied' Upon closer look I realized it was my pied. And several other loose. The next day he flew and landed on the ladder against the house. I climbed up, picked him up, loved on him a little bit and put him in the cage. His brother a normal PF was also loose, landed on the clothline and I caught him too. To this day his brother is scared to even go anywhere near an open cage door. He did not like being a free bird...and cried and called out the whole time he was loose. As to Houdini...he got away again (my carelessness)...landed on the flight and just watched and waited for me to pick him up.
--------------------------------------
http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc331/Mousebirds-and-more/Other%20birds/dyc-lutino-and-pied-illus.jpg

[Solace.]

Awe awesome surprise... I have a PF Cinnamon Pied. :D

[Tony's Tiels]

Beautiful babies...:D.....I have let all of my pairs choose each other also, they have not chosen the mates I would have chosen...:love:....So, we are going to see what they produce & then see if we need to intervene & switch mates around.

Congrats on your Mystery baby !

[srtiels]

Thank you...she was totally unexpected.

Ah...hopefully your pairs will surprise you also.

A common practice with many new or novice breeders is to pair two pretty birds together...with hopes of prettier babies. They are surprised and dissapointed when all they get are normal grey babies. Most times these grey tiels are sold...thus they become a hidden diamond by way of genetics when they are paired with another tiel carrying complimentary genes.

When I first started breeding I realized that a grey cockatiel was a treasure trove of various mutations. When I let them pick their mates I got surprizes like fallows, whiteface, etc. When I first started breeding not as many people were working with WF...a plain WF sold for $175...which was the wholesale, breeder cost. Fallows were less common, and were more costly.

It was through splits that I learned most of what I know today. Splits have been my best means to improve the next generation. When breeding like to like (same mutation to same mutation) you know what you are going to get, excluding additional splits. BUT... you also stay stagnent. Idealially what you would like to do, whether you breed and a hobby or professionally is to improve on each generation. This can be done by saving your best splits (best meaning desirable qualities such as comformation, parenting ability, feather quality, etc.) and pair them to visuals. With each generation you would alternate: 'split to visual' and 'visual to visual'

One of the downsides to breeding like to like...especially several generations is baldness. Lutinos are not exclusive to balding. You also can go backward in size and quality, and the loss of chicks in the nest is higher.

Enough...Susanne