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Unknown mutations

4K views 34 replies 6 participants last post by  tielfan 
#1 ·
Can anybody help me with the mutations of my cockatiels. I'm colour blind and am having trouble working out each of my birds mutations. Some i have a rough idea of. But not completely sure. TIA















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#2 ·
1 normal grey maybe visual pied
2 normal grey
3 white face cinnamon pearl
4 white face cinnamon
5 normal grey
6 normal grey
7 white face pearl pied
8 pearl
9 pied
10 normal grey
11 white face pearl
12 white face
13 lutino
 
#5 ·
Double factors of what? I'm not very good with silvers or anything like that, so I wouldn't be able to tell whether that's what they really were or not.
 
#10 ·
Double factor is not a thing in whiteface mutations. No such thing. I think what the previous owners are trying to say is that both birds are VISUAL whiteface (obviously lol) meaning that if bred together they will only produce whiteface babies. You breed either one of them to a normal bird and you will get a normal baby split to whiteface. Whiteface is a recessive mutation like pied and both parents have to carry the mutation, whether they are visual or split to it, to be able to have babies that are visual as well. So what they could mean is that their parents were also whiteface birds as well. But no, in cockatiels, there is no such thing as a double factor whiteface. Double factor is reserved for mutations such as silver, which I have never worked with.

These parents only produce whiteface cinnamon babies because they are both visuals of those two mutations. Honestly, I wouldn't pair them up myself, as there's too many similarities going on for my taste and I'd be worried about healthy babies in the nest.
 
#12 · (Edited)
The previous owner's bred they male with a normal grey. And the baby is a (SF) Whiteface male. Also my breeding and genetics program has (DF) Whiteface in it. And when i enter his details and a normal grey female it comes up with

12.5% split Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface split pied (SF) Normal Grey
12.5% split Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface split pied
12.5% split Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface (SF) Normal Grey
12.5% split Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface

12.5 % Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface split pied (SF) Normal Grey
12.5% Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface split pied
12.5% Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface (SF) Normal Grey
12.5% Cinnamon (SF) Whiteface

No split whiteface. And the double factor also makes them lighter in colour to normal whiteface cinnamon.
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#15 ·
See I've never even seen that format before. Where did you get it?

% from all 1.0
100.0% 1.0 natural /blue(whiteface) cinnamon
% from all 0.1
100.0% 0.1 natural cinnamon /blue(whiteface)

This is what I get in the calculator I use when I enter wf cinnamon male bred to a normal grey hen. I have never, ever heard of wf being considered SF or DF. Pastelface is just another FORM of wf and when you breed a wf to a pf you get visual pf babies. Technically, pf could be considered dominant over wf but it's kind of blurred there.

Like I said, you are saying things we have never heard before. We would not consider a wf bird double factor. This is because if a wf male is bred to a normal hen, the babies would be normal in color split to the wf. Same as with pied.
 
#16 · (Edited)
See I've never even seen that format before. Where did you get it?

% from all 1.0
100.0% 1.0 natural /blue(whiteface) cinnamon
% from all 0.1
100.0% 0.1 natural cinnamon /blue(whiteface)

This is what I get in the calculator I use when I enter wf cinnamon male bred to a normal grey hen. I have never, ever heard of wf being considered SF or DF. Pastelface is just another FORM of wf and when you breed a wf to a pf you get visual pf babies. Technically, pf could be considered dominant over wf but it's kind of blurred there.

Like I said, you are saying things we have never heard before. We would not consider a wf bird double factor. This is because if a wf male is bred to a normal hen, the babies would be normal in color split to the wf. Same as with pied.

This is the son of the wf cinnamon male and a normal grey. You called him a whiteface?
I'm using Bird Evolution Pro.

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#17 ·
This is the son of the wf cinnamon male and a normal grey. You called him a whiteface?
Actually yes, that's a whitefaced bird...it means that the hen was a normal split to whiteface hen. She wasn't a visual whiteface, but she carried the gene, which she passed onto this baby in the picture. That's why whiteface is considered recessive...it's like pied, as I have stated before, in that both parents must carry the gene to get a visual baby. That means they either have to be visual or split to the mutation to get a visual baby.
 
#19 ·
Still not double factor. Sorry but that's not from a source I recognize. Pastelface is NOT a new mutation, it's been around for a while. Pastelface is considered a form of whiteface and IS not df or sf. http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=26845 this sticky explains more about recessive genes and how they work.

http://www.justcockatiels.net/pastelface.html this article was written by Susanne Russo, one of the most knowledgeable people I know about cockatiels. In it she explains the pastelface mutation, which has been around for over thirty years and how it's inheritance works. The hen you posted is NOT normal, she's a pastelface, and the fact she had a whiteface baby when paired with a whitefaced male is NOT surprising. It's normal. http://www.justcockatiels.net/whiteface.html this article explains the whiteface mutation and how it is passed onto babies.
 
#20 ·
That page was from the Australian National Cockatiel Society. So i would say reliable source. The breeder said Double factor and cinnamon. Maybe i misunderstood that for whiteface instead of Dominant Silver? Waiting to hear back from them.

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#21 ·
When posting things from other sources, you need to include the website you got it from for copyright reasons.

Dominant silver is the ONLY mutation that can be double factor or single factor. Whiteface/pastelface are recessive genes. Just because something comes from a cockatiel society doesn't mean they're right.

If the bird IS dominant silver and cinnamon, that's a horrible pairing. From what Susanne had said of the silver mutation, it should never be mixed with cinnamon or lutino. She said it really shouldn't be mixed with any mutation, as it muddles the coloring, but cinnamon was the worst because then you can't visually tell the bird is actually a silver. The whole point of the silver mutation is to bring it out visually in the bird, which can only be done by breeding it to normals or to another silver (which isn't advised because there tends to be a higher fatality rate in the nest, especially in silvers.)
 
#22 ·
% from all 1.0
100.0% 1.0 natural pastelface /cinnamon blue(whiteface)
% from all 0.1
100.0% 0.1 natural cinnamon pastelface /blue(whiteface)
This is what you get from that pairing with the mother being a pastelface.

If the father is silver, you'd get:
% from all 1.0
50.0% 1.0 natural ashen_dilute(dom.silver)(sf) blue(whiteface) /cinnamon
50.0% 1.0 natural ashen_dilute(dom.silver)(sf) pastelface /cinnamon blue(whiteface)
% from all 0.1
50.0% 0.1 natural ashen_dilute(dom.silver)(sf) cinnamon blue(whiteface)
50.0% 0.1 natural ashen_dilute(dom.silver)(sf) cinnamon pastelface /blue(whiteface

You can get the visual whiteface baby that you posted if mom is a visual pastelface that got that way by having one pastelface parent and one whiteface parent. If it was silver the breeder was talking about, the babies would be single factor because only dad is silver, mom is not.
 
#28 ·
Tuning in late to this conversation... Double Factor is a term that is used to indicate a bird that has two copies of a DOMINANT gene. In cockatiels, dominant silver and dominant yellow cheek birds can be visual with either one copy of the gene (single factor) or two copies of the gene (double factor). The term isn't used with recessive mutations like whiteface. A bird that has two copies of the gene is visual (you can see the mutation coloring) and a bird with one copy of the gene is split (you can't see the mutation coloring).

That "different" calculator readout is from GenCalc at http://www.gencalc.com/gen/eng_genc.php?sp=0Cock It's harder to work with than the Virtual Breeder (Kristen Munn) calculator, but it does have some advantages. It can handle crossovers and the easier calculator can't.
 
#29 · (Edited)
I think I know where the confusion over "double factor whiteface" came from. Looking at the GenCalc display at http://www.gencalc.com/gen/eng_genc.php?sp=0Cock there's a column heading that says (df)(sf). But if you look at the choices below it, dominant silver is the only mutation where you can choose between these options (this calculator can't handle dominant yellowcheek). It's just poor visual design, since this terminology doesn't apply to almost all the mutations listed under the heading. It would have been better if they'd made a separate section for dominant mutations instead of sticking DS in the middle of a bunch of recessive mutations.

P.S. You'll notice that there's no option to choose a split for dominant silver, because there are no splits in a dominant mutation. A bird will be visual with just one copy of the gene.
 
#30 ·
I didn't read the thread carefully enough the first time lol. It was Roxy who posted GenCalc results, not the OP. Looking more carefully at the previous conversation, it's mentioned that the OP is using a program called Birds Evolution Pro, and it looks like it actually does use "SF" in connection with cinnamon and whiteface, but this terminology doesn't apply to either one of these mutations. The English on the website is kind of odd so it doesn't look like their native language, and they may not have understood the correct terminology. I can't see enough to know whether they understood the genetics correctly or not. Here's the website: http://www.birdsevolutionpro.com/
 
#31 · (Edited)
Strange thing here. I downloaded the free version of Birds Evolution Pro, entered one of my pairs in it, and calculated the results. It did NOT use the terms SF and DF in connection with whiteface or any other gene that this pair has. It even took the crossovers into account, although it didn't do it at the right rates. As a genetic calculator I would rate it as crap, since they don't ask you which X chromosome a male is carrying his sex-linked splits on and that's vital to getting a reasonably accurate answer. But it doesn't refer to a split as single factor, which it seemed to be doing in the OP's results. They don't use the word split at all from what I saw, instead when you enter a mutation they ask if the bird has one or two mutant genes.

I would also rate it as crap because you need a good understanding of genetics to understand the poorly-worded results correctly. If you don't already know what you're supposed to get from a pair, you're likely to misunderstand it. The problem comes at the bottom of the list below, where you have a bunch of girls who are visual lutino and/or cinnamon but only split to whiteface, and it's easy to misread it and think they're split to cinnamon and/or lutino (which is impossible). And the percentages are wrong because they assumed a crossover rate of 50% between cinnamon and lutino when the actual rate is about 3%.

The pair I entered was Buster and Shodu. He's normal grey split to cinnamon on one X and lutino on the other X, and also split to whiteface. She's whiteface with no splits. Here are the results the BEP gave:

6.25% Male - Blue (Whiteface), Split Lutino, Split Cinnamon
6.25% Male - Blue (Whiteface), Split Lutino
6.25% Male - Blue (Whiteface), Split Cinnamon
6.25% Male - Blue (Whiteface)
6.25% Male - Split Blue (Whiteface), Split Lutino, Split Cinnamon
6.25% Male - Split Blue (Whiteface), Split Lutino
6.25% Male - Split Blue (Whiteface), Split Cinnamon
6.25% Male - Split Blue (Whiteface)
6.25% Female - Blue (Whiteface), Lutino, Cinnamon
6.25% Female - Blue (Whiteface), Lutino
6.25% Female - Blue (Whiteface), Cinnamon
6.25% Female - Blue (Whiteface)
6.25% Female - Split Blue (Whiteface), Lutino, Cinnamon
6.25% Female - Split Blue (Whiteface), Lutino
6.25% Female - Split Blue (Whiteface), Cinnamon
6.25% Female - Split Blue (Whiteface)

Here are the results from GenCalc, which asks where the sex-linked mutations are and uses an accurate crossover rate. It's consistent with their actual breeding results. I've translated it into standard terminology and cut all the numbers in half so the total for both sexes combined adds up to 100%, so it's comparable to the results above. You can see that the percents are very different.

Male: Grey split WF, cinnamon, lutino
x Female: whiteface
Males
12.125% Whiteface split cinnamon
12.125% Grey split cinnamon & whiteface
0.375% Whiteface split cinnamon lutino
0.375% Grey split cinnamon lutino & WF
12.125% Whiteface split lutino
12.125% Grey split lutino & whiteface
0.375% Whiteface no splits
0.375% Grey split whiteface
Females
0.375% Whiteface cinnamon lutino
0.375% Cinnamon lutino split whiteface
12.125% Cinnamon whiteface
12.125% Cinnamon split whiteface
0.375% Whiteface no splits
0.375% Grey split whiteface
12.125% Whiteface lutino
12.125% Lutino split whiteface
 
#32 ·
Excuse me for rambling on, but I got to wondering whether they use different terminology for splits in Australia. The Australian sites I found used the same terminology that we do. Also, I discovered that the screen cap that was said to be the Australian National Cockatiel Society actually came from a Jamaican breeder's site: http://janseenie.tripod.com/id23.html It's possible that someone on an ANCS forum quoted it, but that's apparently not where the text originally came from.

The Jamaican site is using the terms SF and DF to talk about pastelface, not whiteface. It's technically not correct to use these terms because PF is an allelic mutation not a dominant mutation, but I can forgive them for doing it. It's murderously difficult to talk about allelic mutations because we don't currently have good terminology to describe the gene combinations. The reptile community uses the terms heterozygous and homozygous, but the bird community is confused by these words and so they end up using other terminology that doesn't quite fit. I'd rather see heterozygous pastelface called single factor PF than to see it called pastelface split whiteface, which happens way too often. And homozygous pastelface called double factor instead of... what? Pastelface NOT split whiteface?

But the Jamaican article never talks about whiteface being SF or DF because it wouldn't make any sense to do this. SF and DF are used to indicate the number of genes in a bird that is visual for a mutation. A "single factor" whiteface bird will never be visual whiteface, and a "double factor" bird obviously has two WF genes because that's the only way you can get visual whiteface.

I did find a Finnish site COMPLAINING about people who refer to pastelface as SF or DF. http://www.neitokakadut.com/en/cockatiel-colors/parblue-pastelface But they don't complain about people referring to whiteface as DF, probably because there's almost no one doing it.
 
#34 ·
The whiteface gene affects only the psittacin pigment (yellow/red coloring), and it removes all of it. Whiteface does not affect the melanin (grey) pigment, so the only effect on body color comes from getting rid of the yellow wash on the body feathers. DF can have a stronger effect than SF when one gene only changes part of the color and a second gene changes it some more. But you can't get any lighter than pure white, so even if whiteface coloring could be caused by a single gene, there would be nothing left for a second whiteface gene to do.
This is what I was trying to say!! I can never remember the correct terminology (and pregnancy brain DOES NOT HELP guys!!!) but yes, this is what I meant! In layman's terms, it won't affect the color of the body, only the face. Grey is still going to be grey, whether the bird is wf or not. And I've seen some pretty dark wf birds (I owned one at one point, gorgeous coloring.)
 
#35 · (Edited)
The melanin is normally black, but it looks grey to us because we see it through a layer of white keratin in all cockatiels, and also through a thin layer of yellow pigment in non-whiteface birds. The darkness or lightness of the grey coloring will depend on a variety of factors, like how thick the keratin layer is, how intense the yellow coloring is (if present), and how dense the melanin granules are within the keratin layer. But the whiteface mutation doesn't have any effect on the melanin itself, it just changes the visual filter by removing the yellow pigment.

Whiteface has been around for almost 50 years and is one of the most common mutations. The genetics are very well understood, and it's universally accepted that it's autosomal (ordinary) recessive. Two WF genes are needed to get visual WF, with no known exceptions. Every website, book, and article that I've ever seen treats it that way, and so does every calculator that I've seen including the Birds Evolution Pro version that I downloaded today. My breeding results confirm it too. Especially Teela and Azazel, who give me whiteface babies even though neither one of them is whiteface. That wouldn't be possible if one WF gene was all it took to make a bird visual WF.
 
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