# Balding in pearl pieds



## kiwitiels (Jan 1, 2017)

I read on srtiels site about balding being possible with any mutation.
I have 2 surprise albinos from a cockbird I didn't know to be split ino. The spot is further back almost on the back of the head. This pair was 2 pieds, 1 visual wf 1 split.

I have a pair though (colony) that are wf pearl pied and cinnamon pearl pied. Their babies, at 4wks old, have a large variety in terms of pin feathers behind the crest. What is the likely culprit of this? 
Is it a pearl to pearl pairing? 
Is it coming through from a particular bird/line?
I bred the hen & still have her father, her parents were both pearl pied, the cockbird I bought but also bought his sister, and she's not pearl so his parents weren't both pearl.

I've attached a pic of 1 I'll try taking another. The youngest in this clutch actually has great pins behind the crest by comparison.

I'm having shipped a non bald Lutino pearl pied hen, Im trying to figure the best bird to pair her with and how to avoid this next season as I really don't like it.

My cockbird with the best crest and head covering is the one throwing the bald ino.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

The baby in the picture is not an ino. It looks like a cinnamon pearl pied with very heavy pearling. There are cinnamon markings on the secondary flight feathers and two pinfeathers in the tail with visible dark color inside the sheath. A lutino wouldn't have this.

It's too soon to know for sure how much feather coverage the chicks will have on their heads. The back of the head is the last area to feather in, and you'll know more about it when the chicks are fully feathered.


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## kiwitiels (Jan 1, 2017)

Sorry yes I know this isn't a lutino. I brought up the inos I have because their bald spot looks different, it's further back. I'll try get a pic of the 2 chicks I'm talking about. I have had 1 fledged by this pair just recently & he is still quite bald. I don't have other chicks looking like that at the same age.


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## kiwitiels (Jan 1, 2017)

The chick on the wire is #1 of the clutch, the yellow one is #5 and the wf #6. Sorry i don't know why the photo uploader flipped the pic!


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

It very well could be related to the pearlxpearl pairing. Pearl can cause a thinning of the head feathers. And for the ino babies, that's probably part of the ino line that you have. The best way to work with this, is to pair your visual ino with a pied that has a large, full crest. It won't get rid of the problem fully, but it will help. It can take a couple generations to breed out the bald spot. 

Baby #1 looks like his might fully fill in. It's just taking longer probably because of the pearl gene. The other two are too early to tell just yet.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

I don't see any signs of plucking so it's probably not the parents doing it. But that's still a possibility, so wait and see. 

Maybe both the parents in this pair have a gene for baldness that they're passing to the chicks. In that case, pairing them with different birds that don't have a baldness gene should help prevent this.


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## kiwitiels (Jan 1, 2017)

Thanks a lot. In my nest of a pair that was just wf-piedxpied/wf with no pearl or pearl split the pins on the babies heads were much more dense. It's good for comparison.

Different topic, can you detect a cinnamon split in a cockbird once 3mths old by shining a torch through the pupil? In the nest I can see the plum but by fledging I think it's gone.


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## roxy culver (May 27, 2010)

I don't believe you can once it's fledged. Honestly, I've never been able to tell the difference in plum colored eyes vs dark eyes, and I've had cinnamon babies before.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

The only split sign that's guaranteed to be reliable is a pied tickmark. Shining a light in the eyes of a male is said to be an indicator, but I doubt it. From my article at http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/info/breed-tielsplits.html

"It's been proposed that the eyes of a male with a cinnamon split will reflect back a wine color when you shine a light into the eye at an oblique angle. It seems unlikely that a cinnamon split would have this effect, and males have been observed that had the wine color but no cinnamon split.

"A cinnamon bird is unable to produce the TRP1 enzyme which is involved in melanin production, and the lack of this enzyme affects the color of all the melanin in the body. Visual cinnamon affects both the feather color and the eye color. If a cinnamon split affected the availability of this enzyme, it should have a similar effect throughout the body. But a cinnamon split isn't known to affect the feather color, so it's not logical to think that it would selectively affect the eye color.

"However it's conceivable that a PIED split might have this effect on eye color. Some (not all) of the melanin-producing cells in the eye originated from the same place as the melanin-producing cells that color the feathers, and it's well known that a pied split can result in some areas not getting the normal amount of melanin. If a pied split caused the eye to have fewer melanin-producing cells than usual, it would be easier to see the red color from the blood cells circulating through the eye, resulting in a wine-colored reflection. This could happen even more easily in a bird that was visual pied."


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## Jenn1469 (Jan 23, 2018)

Wow great info! I have to babies from a wf cinnimon pied cock and a pearl hen and both have wine colored eyes in the light. One is so red that my 5 year old kept asking me why the baby had red eyes. 

They aren't feathered so I don't know what they will look like. 
So if I have 2 pearl babies does that mean they still carry the gene for wf even if they don't show it? Is that what split means? 

A wf baby would have white down when hatched correct?

Sorry for hijacking this post! This article just really struck me because of the red shine in the babies eyes.


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## Jenn1469 (Jan 23, 2018)

The one with the very red eyes had noticeably lighter eyes than its siblings when it hatched. I didn't realize until the 2nd baby hatched and was caught of guard by it's black eyes.


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## kiwitiels (Jan 1, 2017)

Your one with the red eyes depending how light is either cinnamon (and therefore a hen if Dad is cinnamon and Mum is not) or a lutino/albino and Dad was split ino (again will be a hen). You can tell ino before the eyes open as they're noticeably pink instead of dark through the skin.

If a parent is wf all chicks will be split wf but yes if they hatch with white down they are visual wf and so Mum is split wf if she is yellow not wf pearl.


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