I think this is whole grain. I'll check...

Pretty pretty little old men
Baruch what possible mutations can they be?
My babies started getting dark wing skin at that age but I see that yours are all very light. Are they going to be lutinos? Little miniature MMs

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Oh, what ugly cuties (oxymoron). But that is the surprising thing. In just a few more weeks they will become the cutest thing you have ever seen. I am waiting patiently for more updates.

Thank you both!!

None of the babies are going to be lutinos. They can be pieds, cinnamons, or normal greys. I think the 2 oldest are split to whiteface because they have light feather down compared to chick#3

Oh, what ugly cuties (oxymoron). But that is the surprising thing. In just a few more weeks they will become the cutest thing you have ever seen. I am waiting patiently for more updates.

Thank you! I heard that the growth of a 30 day old cockatiel is equivalent to a 5 year old human.
Wait till you see today's pictures...the two oldest ones look so much fatter and longer.

A member on avian avenue said this

I remember Sodie's baby pictures. Not the ones I showed you all, his baby baby pictures. He was horrifying.

Show me!

Please bear with me and my complete ignorance. For what I thought I understood, whiteface lack the yellow colour. Should't whiteface babies be white? Or maybe they lose the yellow when they grow older?

I can't. I accidentally deleted the picture and I can't email the breeder again because the whole email conversation was deleted and the Craigslist ad expired so I can't get to it. He was incredibly ugly. It's funny something so hideous can transform into something so gorgeous. He does have the cutest baby face... but not cuter than Jaid's. He's 8 months old and still has it.

Yes, from what I've gathered, only whitefaces have white down. Those chicks may be something lighter, like a cinnamon or a lutino.

Yes, the whiteface mutation eliminates all the yellow color. Whiteface babies have white down and all others have yellow down - sometimes very pale yellow if they have a mutation that reduces the yellow color but doesn't eliminate it completely.

But cockatiels also have a grey color pigment. There is no melanin (grey) in their baby down, so the down color doesn't tell us whether the baby has a melanin-changing mutation. The eyes do have melanin, so differences in eye color can indicate one of these mutations. A lutino baby has pink eyes not dark eyes because the lutino gene has removed all the melanin.

All the babies in this clutch have dark eyes so we know that they're not lutino, and that they'll have some kind of dark coloring in their feathers later on. Sometimes it's possible to identify cinnamon babies by their eye color when they hatch, and other times you have to wait until you can see the feather color.