Are those grey feathers on Sunshine's shoulders or something else? If it's grey feathers then she's a very heavy pied aka clear pied. Whiteface too of course. I'm not sure what to make of her tailfeathers and primaries - is that a color wash or are they just dirty? Cinnamon lutinos will usually have a color wash in this area (called the dirty lutino look) but this doesn't happen with pied birds. So her shoulder area and her long wing/tail feathers are sending a conflicting signal. Lutino eyes can be a lot of weird colors in adults (see http://s525.photobucket.com/user/Mouseb ... ort=6&o=25 ), so she could still be a lutino even though you can't find any red. My adult lutino hens all have blue/white looking eyes, but I can only see it when they're outdoors and have natural sunlight. Indoors they just look like dark eyes.

Oscar is a grey pied, and he must be split to cinnamon, pearl and whiteface since he produced a baby with those colors. I can't see enough of Angel to tell whether she's visual pied or split pied. If both parents are visual pied then all their babies will be visual pied too. If the baby is NOT visual pied then mom must be a whiteface lutino not a clear pied.

I just looked at the picture of Angel in the photo contest section. Her flight feathers are all white so she IS a visual pied. So Sunshine must be at least split to pied. If the dark area on her shoulder is dark feathers, she can't be a lutino and must be a clear pied (by show-breeding definitions, a bird can have a few dark feathers and still be considered a clear pied). But if the dark shoulder area is NOT grey feathers and her tail is NOT dirty then I vote for cinnamon lutino.

Sunshine has missing feathers. She started plucking out some of her feathers after Angel hatched. I am working on it. here is a better picture of her before she started losing feathers.

Here is a better picture of Angel (only surviving adult baby produced by them.) I am also putting up a couple more of sunshine.

The all-white wing feathers in this picture are a strong indicator that Angel is visual pied, unless there are some dark markings on the wing feathers that I can't see:


But except for that and the white feathers on the back of her head, she doesn't have any pied feathers that I can see. If the wing feathers are completely white with no dark markings at all, I think she's visual pied, but a light pied. I have a pearl hen with even less pied coloring than that, but based on her breeding results I think she's visual pied.

Mom on the other hand looks more like a whiteface lutino to me, cinnamon too if the tinting on the wing and tail feathers is real and not just dirt or a lighting issue. It shows up more in some pictures than in others. It's always possible that she might be whiteface lutino cinnamon pied - these mutations can all coexist in the same bird. If you ever get any non-pied babies from this pair that will be proof that she's not visual pied.

You won't get any lutino babies from this pair unless dad is split to lutino. But if you do start getting lutino babies and one turns out to be a lutino boy, that will prove that mom is visual lutino. It's very easy to tell the difference between lutino and clear pied with babies, because lutino babies will have bright red eyes and clear pied will have dark eyes. Eye color is harder to determine in adults.

Random thought on the plucking... how is Sunshine's calcium intake and general nutrition? There are many factors that can lead to plucking and calcium deficiency is one of them. Egg laying takes a lot of nutrients out of a hen's body, especially calcium.

I feed high quality fresh pellets, seeds, and nuts. Once a day while they are feeding the babies, I make fresh food that has cooked grains, pasta (whole grain), vegetables - and I mix in fresh greens, carrots, broccoli, corn. There is 2 cuttle bones in the cage that Mom and Dad both chew on quite a bit, and a mineral wheel that Sunshine is chewing on a few times a day right now. I saw where some add in cooked eggs, but how do you cook them for a cockatiel? They won't touch a hard boiled egg so far.

Vitamin D is needed for calcium absorption, and it's difficult to get it through natural foods. Pellets contain it, but they're designed to meet the daily requirement if the diet consists of 80-90% pellets and a lot of us don't feed that much. Cooked egg yolk is about the only natural food with vitamin D in it that we would give to a bird, so it would be a good addition to the diet. I give my birds a small amount of cooked egg twice a week for most of the year, and every day when they're breeding.

Here's how I do it: I beat up an egg in a bowl with a few drops of oil to help reduce sticking (I use red palm oil but any kind would do). I nuke it in the microwave until it's cooked, and after it's cool I chop it up, put it in a plastic bag and freeze it. When I want to use some I take out the amount I want. A single egg can last for weeks this way. I chop it up into tiny pieces and mix it in with their daily serving of lightly sprouted grains. The birds LOVE it.

Another way to provide vitamin D is to take your birds outside for some direct sunlight, but that's not practical for everyone. They can make their own vitamin D if they're exposed to UVB rays. Full spectrum lights can provide UVB, but finding one that will do the job is a lot more complicated than you'd expect. Here's our article on vitamin D and related issues: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... hting.html

That was exactly what I was looking for. I have tried to get her to eat a hard boiled egg, but she won't. I will make it this way, and put it in with the fresh I give her. Can I use coconut oil? I have low processed organic coconut oil that I use for us.

Coconut oil is OK for birds in small sensible amounts.