# Red eyes



## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

Hello! I am looking for white faced cockatiel and loco bird shop has these beautiful ones. However most of them have red eyes and I saw red eyed cockatiels are weaker and don’t live long in some site. If I breed with pearl or pied which has dark eyed how much persent of red eyes would they have? Or I should go with dark eyed?


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

The three red-eyed mutations are lutino, fallow, and recessive silver (called pale fallow in Europe). Lutino is common and the other two are rare. A whiteface lutino is an all-white bird with red eyes, and it looks like the bird in the foreground of your first picture is one of these. 

But a bird with a lot of grey on it is NOT a lutino. If the other birds in this picture have red eyes then they are probably recessive silver - they don't look like fallow. 

A bird that is visual for any of these mutations will have red eyes, and a bird that is not visual for any of these mutations will have dark eyes. So the outcome will depend on what you breed your red-eyed bird with. For example, if you breed a lutino female to a pied male who does not have the lutino gene at all, the babies will all have dark eyes because you will not get any lutino babies. If you breed that same lutino female to a pied male who is split to lutino, you will get some lutino babies and they will have red eyes. The non-lutino babies will have dark eyes.

A red-eyed bird is not necessarily weaker than any other bird. If you get a lutino that was produced by a bird mill it is likely to be weak, since they use bad breeding practices to make as much money as possible. If you get a lutino from a breeder who follows good practices, it should be as strong and healthy as any other cockatiel. The same thing applies to all the other mutations too. Bad breeders tend to produce weak birds, and good breeders tend to produce strong birds.


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## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

Tielfan,

Yes, only like 2 of them were dark eyed which were pearls. I liked pied one but I am 6th on the wait list so I shall worry only if I could buy. I think bird breeder is fine as bird shop is good one.

Do male pearl cockatiels could have barring on tail feathers? As I saw some difference in them and hoping to skip DNA test before purchase.

You are cockatiel genius Tielfan ! I am studying hard but can’t easily find all facts so quick. Thank you!


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## Vickitiel (Oct 10, 2012)

roomy311 said:


> Do male pearl cockatiels could have barring on tail feathers? As I saw some difference in them and hoping to skip DNA test before purchase.


Yes male pearls will have tail barring and look just like a female pearl until they molt, and it can take a few molts before the barring completely disappears on a male. However a fully mature male pearl usually does retain some yellow on the underside of their tail, but it won't look like barring, it's more a mottled kind of pattern (I have a 5 year old male pearl and he has kept some yellow on his tail and a few ghost pearls on his back but the rest of him looks like a normal grey).


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Pearl cockatiels don't have the standard pattern for tail barring and wing spots - they have a unique pattern that is different from other cockatiels. But juveniles do have markings on the wing feathers and tail, and the males molt out of it at maturity. The markings can vary quite a lot from one individual to another, but this picture is an example of what they can look like. Sometimes the wing spots merge together into one long splotch, and sometimes the tailfeathers are almost completely yellow except for a dark quill.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

With sex-linked mutations like lutino and pearl, you can sometimes figure out what sex the babies are based on what color the parents were. Does the pet shop have this information?


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## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

*Vickitiel*

I didn’t know male have barring, too. Half of them have plain white tail feather so I assumed they are male.Owner told me they are only like 5 weeks.


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## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

*Tielfan*

So much studying here Yes I knew pearls were sex linked so went back to bird shop but bird shop owner doesn’t have an information about parents. I paid half deposit to hold but most people already paid in full lol Cockatiels are so hot here in WA? ( or everywhere?)


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## Farah (May 17, 2018)

I have a white face bird he looks so beautiful but so bad in breeding so lazy


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

Plain white tailfeathers with no dark color at all are pied feathers, and the bird that has these feathers has the pied mutation. Pied feathers never have any markings regardless of the bird's sex, so they don't tell you anything about the gender.

But a white feather with a dark quill is a pearl feather.


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## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

Farah, I wouldn't mind if he doesn’t breed if it’s perfect visual. I see people have or google image but not seeing for sale...


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## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

Tielfan, 
I see that’s why we can’t visually do sexing. I stopped by the store again today and owner told me they ordered DNA test so I wouldn’t have to worry about sexing now. Babies were so cute and my daughter liked pied one which had red eyes 🙂


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## roomy311 (Oct 3, 2018)

*I wonder...*

To have a clean white face baby, both parents have to have clean white face?


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

The pied pattern is random. Two dirty-faced birds can produce a clear-faced baby and vice versa.


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## Neeky (Apr 27, 2021)

i have same of my 2 year old male red eye sorta very angry wont let calm or learn stop bitting and they hate cut micchip wing and they wont like go to shower in summer getting worse passout 2sec i tap him climb on shoulder does not like shower and he love water spray that all have his names lemon of yellow sunny colour


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