Odd markings - mutation?

[tielfan]

I have a cockatiel chick with some odd markings. Some pictures first (the markings show up better in real life), then the story.





Dad is normal grey split lutino, Mom is whiteface. Their first clutch produced two lutino females, three grey chicks that I assume are male based on wingspot pattern (not reliable I know but I have nothing else to go on) and one grey chick presumed to be female with some odd markings. Her name is Squeebis.

She has small yellow dots on her chest, a few small white dots on each wing just above the big white bar that all tiels have, and some yellow streaks on her head that look like pinfeathers when you glance at them, but look and feel like feathers on close inspection. Mother has similar dots on her chest but not as many, and no odd markings on her wings and head. None of the 'male' chicks have these markings and my eyes aren't sharp enough to determine whether the lutinos do. Dad has no such markings.

I haven't manhandled Squeebis enough to see exactly how the marks are distributed on the feathers, but I've seen Mom's molted feathers and there's a small dot near the non-quill end of an otherwise grey feather. I've read that the pearl mutation can create a speckled look but I don't know if this is true. The location of the marked feathers is odd for pearling, and the genetics don't really add up either. If it's pearl the trait should come from the father for a female chick, and from both parents for a male chick. The speckled variation (if it actually exists) seems to be a lot less common than standard pearling.

So unless Mom and Dad are related it appears that the trait came from Mom. The parents did come from the same breeder, but the breeder (who didn't keep written records) says they're not related because Dad would be whiteface if they were.

Any ideas on the mutation?

[birdsnreps]

sometimes babies have those spots on their chests, then they go away after they moult.

[Monica]

I find the breeder an idiot then...

Normal split Whiteface x Normal Split Whiteface
25% Normals
50% Normals split Whiteface
25% Whiteface

(or a tad more specific)
Cockatiel Color Palette
Mother:Grey Split To Whiteface
Father:Grey Split To Whiteface

male offspring:
25% Whiteface
25% Grey
50% Grey Split To Whiteface

female offspring:
25% Whiteface
25% Grey
50% Grey Split To Whiteface


I wouldn't know myself about the peculiar spots so will have to go with what birdsnreps says....

[tielfan]

If the mother's parents were both whiteface (and they might have been - I don't know) then they wouldn't produce anything but whiteface chicks, so in that situation the breeder would be right. But the breeder doesn't seem to be very knowledgeable about genetics and could very well be wrong. In fact they told me that Buster (my daddy bird) was split to whiteface but so far he hasn't proven it by producing any whiteface chicks. He DID prove that he had a lutino split that I wasn't expecting.

If these are little incest chicks then their quality is excellent. This clutch (the parents' first) had a 100% hatch rate. The chicks are robust and healthy and they all fledged early. The parents currently have another clutch of 5 eggs which all appear to be fertile. Five more opportunites to find out if Buster really does have a whiteface split! The odds of 0 out of 6 whiteface chicks with a WF mother and WF-split father are 1 in 64, not too probable but not too improbable either. The odds of 0 out of 11 is 1 in 2048, so if there are no whiteface chicks this time around I think it'll be safe to say he isn't split whiteface.

The spots on Baby Squeebis might very well go away after the first molt. But for what it's worth, Mommy Shodu has kept her spots and has more now than she did when I first got her.

[Monica]

In recent years I've heard some conflicting information about siblings breeding together.... even in humans! So I'm starting to get the idea that if they have bad genes to start with, it's not likely that they'll produce good offspring... but if the parents are healthy then they may very well produce healthy offspring! Still, if it's a known fact that the two are related it's probably not a good idea...

Good to hear the clutch is healthy! And best of luck with the new one!

[birdsnreps]

another reason this bird could have those spots is maybe he was trying to be a pearl, but it didnt quite happen....kinda like light-pied tiels with very little yellow, they wanna be pied, but dont really have enough yellow, lol. it could just be a baby male with very little pearling and he will loose them after his first moult, im assuming this bird is a baby, right??

i know normal whiteface females, as babies, have the little chest sparkles, but they loose them after their first moult :( its not pearling, they just have special little sparkles that i think are adorable, too bad they loose them :(

[tielfan]

Yes, the chick in the picture is seven weeks old. There are no known pearl splits in the family tree but it's always possible that daddy is hiding something. He's already surprised me with a lutino split. Assuming that the next clutch hatches normally, it'll be interesting to see what the chicks look like.

This chick is definitely split whiteface since mom is whiteface so maybe the speckles are related to that somehow. The little head stripes are what seems strangest to me, and the effect they create reminds me of a lion's mane.

The good news is that whiteface girls don't always lose their 'sparkles', because Shodu has molted more than once and came out of the molt with more specks than she started with! She only had two or three dots to start out with and now it's more like a dozen - I haven't actually counted.

[birdsnreps]

your baby just has natural highlights!! LOL

shodu looks like a visual pearl though, a good pearl bird will have the speckles on their chest, i was talking about normal whiteface females that have the sparkles when they are first born, then they loose them later. pearls should keep all their pearls and sparkles on their chests :)