# Does anyone else have a bald tiel?



## HAJiME (Sep 20, 2009)

My lutino (rescue before you all criticise for getting a bad breeder) has always been bald behind his crest and everyones always assumes he's stressed and plucking. I have to be like, use your brain how would he pluck behind there? And why only there? He's always been this way, just how he is.

I only just read that lutino breeders have issues with baldness behind the crest. 

I get annoyed with inbreeding, which is undoubtably the cause here. The lutino colouration is recessive, so at some point they were (still are?) heavily being inbred with their family members. No excuse for it, not just to make an animal pretty. :/

Anyway, wondered if anyone else had a bald tiel?


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## Cheryl (Dec 27, 2008)

Yes..I do. Its hereditary. It does not require inbreeding for it to occur. Its just poor breeding of a bald lutino or a lutino to another lutino which tends to be responsible for it.
The bald spot has been bred out by good breeders, but the pet store market hasn't exactly caught up to that yet.


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## HAJiME (Sep 20, 2009)

Inbreeding must have occurred at some point for the lutino mutation to even exist in the first place and more recent inbreeding will be the cause of that bald spot being so prolific. And then, I assume, outbreeding will have spread it into other populations. So now, no, inbreeding doesn't have to occur to get a bald tiel, but it will have had to at some point in the bird's family tree since being bred in captivity.

I just googled the history of the lutino to see if my suspicions were true...

"All Lutino Cockatiels are descended from one single male cockatiel. This bird was owned by a Mr. Cliff Barringer of Florida, USA. Mr. Barringer had bred 14 normal offspring from his pair of what appeared to be normal Grey Cockatiels. It was in a nest of two of these youngsters, in 1958, that he was surprised with a baby with pink eyes. It did take another two years for Mr. Barringer to mate a female lutino daughter back to the father to produce the first male lutino. Shortly after, much of Mr Barringer's stock was purchased by Mrs. E. L. Moon, once a curator of the Florida Parrot Jungle. She subsequently named her lutino offspring 'Moonbeams', and from here Lutino Cockatiel's spread throughout the world."
http://animal-world.com/encyclo/birds/cockatiels/LutinoCockatiel.php


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## HAJiME (Sep 20, 2009)

EDIT: Net messed up.


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## Belinda (Oct 9, 2010)

My little moonbeam has a bit of a bald spot. My breeder was a backyard breeder, she wasn't trying to win the prize for the best looking cockatiels or bloodline - but she loves and looks after them well and I don't think she was inbreeding them (I would think you'd have to be pretty stupid to do that right?). I wouldn't class her as a "bad" breeder, in fact I feel pretty darn lucky.


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## AlbyPepper (Apr 3, 2010)

Mango, my cinnamon lutino has quite a large bald spot. And Alby, my white face lutino pearl, has a baldspot as well. Oh well, they are still gorgeous.


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

When I first got Hershey (my WF lutino) she didn't have a bald spot but after the babies started fledging, Fuzzy began plucking. He plucked the youngest baby and then plucked Hershey too! Its growing back just really slowly.


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## MeanneyFids (Aug 24, 2010)

lutinos arent the only ones! tsuka, my male pearl has a slight bald spot as well. its more a thinning of feathers but its certainly a bald spot all the same. its breeding like to like mutations that can cause it (tsuka's father was pearl split pied, his mother whitefaced cinnamon pearl)


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## Cheryl (Dec 27, 2008)

Yes, they were originally inbred, but that rarely occurs anymore. Breeding a lutino to a lutino, no matter how far separated they are in the family tree, can result in the bald patch. You should never breed like to like!
Simply breeding a whiteface to another whiteface could result in smaller offspring.
Please be aware that almost any new mutation (especially a recessive one) would probably require careful inbreeding/linebreeding. It would be VERY difficult to produce a new mutation otherwise.


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## HAJiME (Sep 20, 2009)

Cheryl said:


> Yes, they were originally inbred, but that rarely occurs anymore. Breeding a lutino to a lutino, no matter how far separated they are in the family tree, can result in the bald patch. You should never breed like to like!
> Simply breeding a whiteface to another whiteface could result in smaller offspring.
> Please be aware that almost any new mutation (especially a recessive one) would probably require careful inbreeding/linebreeding. It would be VERY difficult to produce a new mutation otherwise.


I'm well aware that any mutation requires inbreeding, which is why forming such mutations should be frowned upon in the first place.


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## Cheryl (Dec 27, 2008)

Then we probably wouldn't have anything other than the normal grey. This not only occurs in birds but has been done in dogs, cats, horses, etc. As long as its done carefully, there isn't much harm as you can see by all the healthy whiteface, lutino, and pearl cockatiels. Its when this practice is continued for no reason and done poorly you can result in a weak and deformed bird. However, if you carefully breed these birds and introduce new birds to counter any poor qualities, you can make a really good bird. Inbreeding emphasizes GOOD qualities along with BAD ones. However, there is NO excuse why anyone should be doing it now with their birds..especially people who aren't experts at it.


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## willowsalbus (Nov 4, 2010)

Albus is! He's a rescue too.


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## tielmom (Aug 4, 2010)

My lutino Lenny has a bald spot behind his crown too...pretty good size one I might add. He is a rescue so I do not know his background.


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## liltiel (Sep 23, 2010)

I wonder if the bald lutinos actually feel coldness on there because whenever I touch it it's always hot.


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## xoxsarahxox (Dec 13, 2010)

My new lutino Aero is bald behind his crest.....The pet store guy said its because hes young :s but i dont mind hes cute either way


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Bald spots can occur with any cockatiel color but occur more frequently in lutinos. And breeding lutino to lutino isn't the only way it happens.

Shodu is whiteface grey and her mate Buster is normal grey split to whiteface, lutino and cinnamon. Their daughter Snowy (whiteface lutino) has a bald spot and one of their "normal" lutino daughters also had a bald spot. The other three lutino daughters did not. It just happens sometimes.


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## HAJiME (Sep 20, 2009)

> Then we probably wouldn't have anything other than the normal grey. This not only occurs in birds but has been done in dogs, cats, horses, etc. As long as its done carefully, there isn't much harm as you can see by all the healthy whiteface, lutino, and pearl cockatiels. Its when this practice is continued for no reason and done poorly you can result in a weak and deformed bird. However, if you carefully breed these birds and introduce new birds to counter any poor qualities, you can make a really good bird. Inbreeding emphasizes GOOD qualities along with BAD ones. However, there is NO excuse why anyone should be doing it now with their birds..especially people who aren't experts at it.


Why do we need anything other than the normal grey? What's wrong with with normal? It happens in all animals that humans interfear with, yes, but I don't know why people think that makes it acceptable. Breeding animals for a certain breed can be incredibly damaging to an entire species, brining it to the brink of extinction. Whilst this isn't the case with cockatiels, I don't know how anyone can think it's morally acceptable to create "breeds" of animals for no reason other than they look pretty. http://www.bigcatrescue.org/cats/wild/white_tigers.htm



> And breeding lutino to lutino isn't the only way it happens.


Not the only way it happens _anymore_. The issue is that outbreeding done by these "good" breeders has spread the trait around.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

> The issue is that outbreeding done by these "good" breeders has spread the trait around.


The trait has always been there - all cockatiels including the normal grey have thinner feathers behind the crest than they do on the rest of the head. Some individuals have fewer feathers there than others, and in some cases the feathers are completely missing. It tends to happen more often with lutinos but it can happen with wild cockatiels too.


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## Duckybird (Sep 13, 2010)

While in some cases it is a shame that humans have manipulated breeding in animals, in many others, human intervention has saved or improved the species. Cockatiels have not been imported from Australia since the 1800s (possibly earlier), so all of our pet birds in the U.S., Europe, and Canada came from captive bred populations that had to be manipulated by human caretakers in one way or another to be available as the sweet, charming pets that they are. And human intervention has allowed the study of these wonderful creatures, meaning better healthcare, housing, and quality of life. I'm 110% positive that my two captive-bred tiels have a better quality of life than a wild bird that's not guaranteed tomorrow. If animals hadn't been domesticated, our history would be VERY different.


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## Cheryl (Dec 27, 2008)

Duckybird is right, breeding of dogs and horses and especially livestock has allowed us to become as advanced as we are now. 
If we never domesticated anything (which would normally include inbreeding/linebreeding), we would probably still be nomads. Horses brought us transportation, dogs brought us herders, protectors, life savers.. Chickens, cows, and goats helped us to settle and become farmers.
Realistically, if someone wants all species to remain "wild", they should be against pet ownership all together. Most pets come from small portions of populations that have been selectively bred. This causes the gene pool to remain fairly small.. no matter what.
Domestication is NOT in any way meant to save a species.. In order to save a species it should not be domesticated..period. Although I didn't read the article you posted, tiger breeding is goaled to save the WILD population..this means that you want to have as many genetic variations as possible and in controlled settings this is difficult to achieve, especially for an already small population. Smaller genetic variation threatens the species of extinction due to disease or competition. Again, this is generally more needed only with wild populations.

Even if we did not breed for mutations, the cockatiels that were exported from Australia would have been just a small population, weakening the gene pool for the overall species..but luckily these birds are meant to be under human care and not the wild.


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## lperry82 (Aug 2, 2010)

*Here is cookie bald spot*


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