# What are my potential possibilities?



## Smerft85 (May 18, 2019)

I want to start by saying this all depends on what my new bird proves to be, male, or female. I have a white face male potential split for pied, and the possible female (currently 6 weeks) is a lutino pearl pied, and quite the attention craver, what are the possible offspring mutations, later, if all goes as we hope. I'm not new to breeding, but I'm new to bird breeding if that road is traveled, right now the only intentions is a companion bird for my boy. If we were talking snake genetics I wouldn't be as blind.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

If your male is split to pied, you can get pied chicks. Anything else depends on whether the parents are split to any other mutations. If the hen is split to whiteface, you can get whiteface chicks. These are both autosomal (ordinary) recessive mutations.

Lutino and pearl are sex-linked recessive mutations, so the inheritance rules are different. I don't know if snakes have sex-linked mutations, but if they do then it probably works the same way as birds. If you need more information on how it works in birds, I have an article here: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/info/breed-sexlinked.html 

The short version of the story is that the male must be at least split to the mutation to get any babies who are visual for the mutation. If dad has the gene, he can have visual daughters no matter what color the mother is. But to get visual sons, it's also required for the mother to be visual for the mutation. Your hen is lutino pearl, so if the male is split to lutino and/or pearl you'll be able to get visual babies of both sexes.


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## Smerft85 (May 18, 2019)

tielfan said:


> If your male is split to pied, you can get pied chicks. Anything else depends on whether the parents are split to any other mutations. If the hen is split to whiteface, you can get whiteface chicks. These are both autosomal (ordinary) recessive mutations.
> 
> Lutino and pearl are sex-linked recessive mutations, so the inheritance rules are different. I don't know if snakes have sex-linked mutations, but if they do then it probably works the same way as birds. If you need more information on how it works in birds, I have an article here: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/info/breed-sexlinked.html
> 
> The short version of the story is that the male must be at least split to the mutation to get any babies who are visual for the mutation. If dad has the gene, he can have visual daughters no matter what color the mother is. But to get visual sons, it's also required for the mother to be visual for the mutation. Your hen is lutino pearl, so if the male is split to lutino and/or pearl you'll be able to get visual babies of both sexes.


That does help, snakes are a little different, two visual mutations in a snake generally creates a whole new mutation, nothing is one gender specific like the pearls "only" showing in females ect.

If I gather correctly I could end up with whiteface, pied, pearl, lutino or any mix of those into the babies? In snakes it would be something like pastel x spider = pastels, spiders, and bumblebees, am I one the right track somewhat? Thank you for helping me understand, and I will have a look at the link as well.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

If you pair a pied with a split pied, you can definitely get pied chicks. But the rest will depend on what other genes the parents are carrying. Most mutations in cockatiels are either autosomal (ordinary) recessive or sex-linked recessive. With autosomal recessive, the chick has to get the gene from both parents to be visual. If one parent is not visual, you can still get babies with that mutation if the parent is carrying one copy of the gene (a split). But pied is the only mutation that has reliable visual indicators of a split. To know whether a bird is split for other mutations, you have to either know what its parents looked like, or wait and see what you get in the nestbox. The common autosomal recessive mutations are pied and whiteface, but there are also several rare mutations that are autosomal recessive.

With sex-linked recessive, girls only need to get the gene from their father to be visual, but boys have to get the gene from both parents. Girls can't be split to a sex-linked mutation - if they have one copy of the gene they will be visual for the mutation, and they can only get the gene from their father. If they aren't visual for the mutation, it means that they don't have the gene at all. The common sex-linked mutations are lutino, pearl, and cinnamon. 

It's my understanding that there are several multiple-allelic mutations in snakes, meaning that there are several mutations that are all different variations of the same gene. A quick internet check told me that this is the reason that pastel x spider = pastels, spiders, and bumblebee. A 'bumblebee' is a snake that has one gene for pastel and one gene for spider. A pastel would be a snake with two pastel genes, and a spider has two spider genes. 

There is an equivalent to this in cockatiels and other parrots, mostly in the "blue locus" mutations. Whiteface, pastelface, and creamface are different variations of the same gene, and can be mixed together. Whiteface is common, pastelface is rare but becoming more common, and creamface is still pretty rare, so it's not a situation that most people will get to work with unless they make an intentional effort to get a bird that is pastelface or creamface to pair with a whiteface bird. There are a couple of other genes that have different mutations of the same gene, but these mutations are unavailable to most of us. I have an article on allelic mutations here: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/info/breed-allelic.html


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