# Emerald to Pastelface



## jjervshel (Jun 1, 2019)

Greetings!

I don’t know a lot about cockatiel genetics. So, I have a question about recessive traits. 

I’ve bred cockatiels in the past, my birds were always pets that had babies. I never cared what the babies looked like or what mutations they were.

I’ve recently started raising birds again and I have two beautiful birds I want to pair together.

The male is a BEAUTIFUL Emerald (he is a light Emerald (suffused) and the female is a Pastelface Cinnamon Pearl hen. The male is potentially split to Whiteface (not sure though). I have no idea what the female is split to.

I spoke with someone recently who told me they would just produce “normal greys” split to Emerald and Pastelface. I read, however, that if a bird does not exhibit a dominant gene, it does not have it.

How would they produce all normals if both parents are visual recessive? The “normal grey” gene is dominant. Since, both birds are visual recessive genes, how does that work?

I’m a little confused and would like some advice!

Thank you


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## Darkel777 (Jun 7, 2013)

Pearl is a recessive sex-linked mutation carried by the Z chromosome. Emerald is a recessive autosomal mutation. There is no one gene that makes a bird normal grey. The parts of the genes that are not mutated will be expressed over the recessive if it does not have a reciprocal recessive gene. If the Emerald male is split whiteface, you will have some pastelface and whiteface in the clutch.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Emerald is recessive, and it SHOULD NOT be combined with cinnamon or any other melanin-altering mutation because this will cause huge problems trying to figure out what color the babies are in future generations. It's fine to combine it with psittacofulvin-altering mutations like whiteface and pastelface, but the bird that has the psittacin-altering mutation should be have normal melanin coloring.

"Normal grey" is not a single gene - it's a whole collection of genes that combine to produce the coloring that we see. The gene that produces emerald is different than the one that produces pastelface, so when you pair an emerald with a PF, you will get a bird that has an emerald gene and a normal gene at one gene locus, resulting in normal melanin coloring, and also has a PF gene and a normal gene at a different gene locus, resulting in normal psittacin coloring. All the visible coloring is normal, but the bird is split to emerald and PF. Or maybe split to WF instead of PF. If you want to open that can of worms, there's information on it here: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/info/breed-allelic.html

It's actually more than that because PF is multiple-allelic but you don't need to worry about that right now.


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## Rosalind g (Dec 7, 2020)

jjervshel said:


> Greetings!
> 
> I don’t know a lot about cockatiel genetics. So, I have a question about recessive traits.
> 
> ...


Do you have a emerald cockatiel for sale or know where I can get one


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## Rosalind g (Dec 7, 2020)

Rosalind g said:


> Do you have a emerald cockatiel for sale or know where I can get one my number is 209 6023680 [email protected]


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