# Breeding Whiteface Cockatiels



## AmyKennedy

Hi, I am new to this forum, I have been breeding cockatiels for about 5 years. I have normal Grey and Pearls. I just got myself a WF Pear/Pied who I am awaiting a DNA test to sex it but do want to breed it. I was hoping for babies with either pearl or pied and mostly white.Can I breed it to a WF Lutino?? I have no experience with WF mutations but have done a lot of reading and know there are tips.If anyone could help that would be great Thanks


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## SilverSage

Complications can arise from breeding visual whiteface to visual whiteface. Better to breed visual to split or split to split.


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## roxy culver

Breeding to a wf lutino is not going to get you mostly white babies. Lutino is a completely different than wf and separate from it altogether. A wf lutino is actually two mutations combined. With a wf pearl pied your best bet is to breed to a split to pied or split to pearl bird. Problem is, if the bird you currently have is a boy, hens can not be split to pearl and can only be visual. Hens can be split to pied though. I know it's a lot to take in but genetics is hard to wrap your head around.


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## AmyKennedy

Thanks so much, it is very confusing. I found out today my bird is a female. I saw a real nice Pied lutino male , if I was to pair them up would I get whiteface babies from them?? Or not knowing the parents of the lutino pied bird confuse things??







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## roxy culver

Are you sure the wf is a hen? I only ask because it looks like she's loosing her pearls, which only happens in males. It does take longer in pied to lose all the pearling, my split to pied male kept his pearls and tail feathers for over two years. 

As to the other bird, that's NOT a lutino. It's a normal pied, may be a pearl pied, it's hard to tell in that picture whether the bird has pearling or not. Lutinos are all yellow, a lutino pied would not have any grey on it at all even if it is pied. The bird's cheekpatches are irregular, which can indicate a split to wf, but it's too hard to tell without either knowing what his parents were or test breeding him to find out if he's possibly split. 

A DNA test would tell you for sure what the genders of both birds were.


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## AmyKennedy

I just had a DNA test done on my wf female. got the results last night. This is going to be harder then I thought. Thanks very much for your help


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## roxy culver

Well that's a start in the right direction!! It's really not recommended to breed two birds of the same mutation together (pied to pied) but pied is one of the stronger mutations so it's not a taboo as say lutino to lutino.


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## Bigvally

I don't understand cockatiel genetics but from what I have read....
WF is a recessive gene and I think you need to have a male and female with the WF gene as a recessive. At that point you MAY have a 1 in 4 chance of having a WF baby.

SilverSage is the only person I have spoken with on the forum that gets this stuff.
(I am sure there are plenty of others out there that "get it")


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## ParrotletsRock

Bigvally said:


> I don't understand cockatiel genetics but from what I have read....
> WF is a recessive gene and I think you need to have a male and female with the WF gene as a recessive. At that point you MAY have a 1 in 4 chance of having a WF baby.
> 
> SilverSage is the only person I have spoken with on the forum that gets this stuff.
> (I am sure there are plenty of others out there that "get it")


Yes both parents need to carry the whiteface gene to have whiteface babies, I have a pair of non whiteface tiels (cinnamon pearl pied hen and a lutino male)who both carry the gene, out of 23 babies from this pair I have had 7 whiteface chicks, 4 have been whiteface lutinos, one whiteface pied, 1 whiteface pearl and 1 grey whiteface.


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## SilverSage

Bigvally said:


> I don't understand cockatiel genetics but from what I have read....
> WF is a recessive gene and I think you need to have a male and female with the WF gene as a recessive. At that point you MAY have a 1 in 4 chance of having a WF baby.
> 
> SilverSage is the only person I have spoken with on the forum that gets this stuff.
> (I am sure there are plenty of others out there that "get it")




Lol, I try my best, but I did just have one of my misunderstandings straightened out by Roxy  

The beauty of a Forum is that we all bring forth what we know and offer it to help others. Often another member can fill in our blanks and straighten out our mistakes. That's one reason why I love forums 


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## roxy culver

> The beauty of a Forum is that we all bring forth what we know and offer it to help others. Often another member can fill in our blanks and straighten out our mistakes. That's one reason why I love forums


It's a learning experience!! I learn something new every day! 

Wf is for sure recessive, like pied. Unlike pied, it's not as easy to tell if a bird is split to wf. An irregular cheekpatch CAN be a sign of being split or a patch with a white ring around it (I had 2 males that had this and they produced wf babies). Test breeding will also tell you whether they're split or not.


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## AmyKennedy

Thanks for all your help, my male is wound up and ready to go but my female wants nothing to do with it, she just sits calm right beside him and has a face on her like "Whatever" !!


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