# Sexing Lutino



## Kiral (Aug 6, 2010)

My Cockatiel appears to be a Lutino bird, 

s/he is a complete baby, just feeding her/himself but I cant find anything online about how to tell... 

its not all that important, seeing as Im not looking to bread him/her so I wouldn't put the bird through the stress of DNA sexing, but If there's an easy way to tell I'd love to know

Ive heard you can tell through the song, but Im not sure if this applies to Lutinos too?

Tanks for any help


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

If the baby has just been weaned it's too early to tell by any way other than DNA sexing. Your bird should be about two months old if it is just weaned.

The "song" method works as well on lutinos as on any other tiel, but it may take up to six months for young males to start singing.

Young birds all have "female" markings - stripes on the rump, spots on the flight feathers, and stripes/bars under the tail. Females keep these markings for life but adult males lose the markings and replace them with a solid color. The markings are easy to see on birds with gray coloring but it can be difficult or impossible to see them on a lutino. If you see these markings on a lutino that's at least a year old you can be sure it's a female. But if you don't see them, you can't be sure whether the bird is a male or if it's a female whose markings are too faint for your eyes to detect.

Lutino is a sex-linked color, and females outnumber males with all the sex-linked colors. But there are still plenty of male birds in these colors so your bird could be one of them.


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