# Adopting Siblings



## mgautreau (Aug 13, 2012)

I have 4 babies from the same clutch that I am trying to adopt out. We have some friends that want to take two of them but I'm not sure if it's okay to adopt siblings since we don't know the sex. Will siblings breed if they are together and it turns out that they are male and female?


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## bjknight93 (Nov 13, 2011)

Siblings tend to have very strong bonds and will breed if you let them and if they are hormonal. It is best that they use hormone reduction techniques if they do take 2 and to boil any eggs that are ever produced by the pair to keep genetically defected babies from hatching.


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## mgautreau (Aug 13, 2012)

I think I need to take my best guess at sexing the babies before they adopt and try to get them two males or two females so they don't have any problems down the road.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

What color are the parents and babies? When you have the right combination of parental genes, sometimes it's possible to sex the babies by color. If that doesn't work you can try wing spot sexing, see http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=18307


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## mgautreau (Aug 13, 2012)

Using the pictures in that link I believe that we have two males and two females and the two that the adopting family want are the two females so I think we are okay here. I suspected that they were females because they seem to already have the plumper body type that the females have. and the wing spots seem to confirm. This is good news for us and the adopting family.

Thanks all for your help.


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## mgautreau (Aug 13, 2012)

tielfan said:


> What color are the parents and babies? When you have the right combination of parental genes, sometimes it's possible to sex the babies by color. If that doesn't work you can try wing spot sexing, see http://talkcockatiels.com/showthread.php?t=18307


The female looks like your Shodu (not sure what that color is called) and the male looks like your Vlad. Three of the babies are greys and one is a pied. We think the pied is a female with spots all the way across the bottom of the wing. We also think the largest grey is a female with spots all the way across her wing.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Shodu is whiteface and Vlad is cinnamon, although the lighting in my signature is so variable that I'm not sure how obvious his cinnamon coloring is.

Cinnamon is a sex-linked mutation and can be used to determine the sex of the babies. If your male is really cinnamon and the hen is not, then all your female chicks will be cinnamon and all your male chicks will not be cinnamon. It would be helpful if you posted a picture of the parents and the babies so we can double check on whether anyone is cinnamon or if they are all grey.

Whiteface and pied are ordinary recessive mutations so they don't tell us anything about the sex of the babies.


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## mgautreau (Aug 13, 2012)

Ok, I'm going to attempt pictures here. All attempts as sexing are based on under wing coloring. Anything you can tell us about them including coloring, especially DD who we think is the most beautiful, or sex or anything else you can see or think of would be appriciated.

This is DD, the breeding Female:









This is Dizzy the breeding Male:









This is Goldie (formerly Goldwing), we think she is Female:









This is George, we think he is a Male:









This is Sunshine, we think she is Female:









This is Charlie (the runt), we think he is a Male:


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

Dad is a pied, mom is a WF cinnamon pearl. When you take pix of the babies with the flash do any have eyes that reflect back red?


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Dad is pied but not cinnamon, and none of the babies are cinnamon either. You have three normal grey babies and one pied. Charlie has the "spot gene", mysterious markings that might be a corrupted form of pearl. 

Unfortunately it isn't possible to sex these chicks visually at this age; the parents don't have the right color genes that would make it easy to tell the boys from the girls. Your best bet is to try wing spot sexing.


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## mgautreau (Aug 13, 2012)

With Charlie are you referring to the spots on his chest? Goldie has those also only more pronounced and George has them but much fainter.


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

Yes that's the mysterious spot gene, we aren't really sure what affect they have as of yet.


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