Here's my best guess about the mutations, which might be very wrong.

Baby #1: Recessive pied with one or two dark factors. One dark factor is called dark green, two dark factors is called olive.

Baby #2: looks a lot like dad and I still don't know exactly what he is. There are several yellowface mutations in budgies and he obviously has one of them. This is a totally different gene than yellowface aka yellowcheek in cockatiels. Yellowface in budgies is a parblue mutation and if you want to know more about that I can deliver the info. For now it's enough to say that it reduces the yellow on the bird but doesn't eliminate all of it. Parblue basically means partial blue.

Baby #3: violet is a combination mutation. According to http://www.budgieplace.com/colorsguide.html "Violet factor is a color-adding factor. However, it is not as strong as the grey factor. If a budgie has a violet factor, you may or may not know it. True violet only shows up on cobalt budgies (white-based budgies with one dark factor) or, if double factor, on sky blue budgies(white-based budgies with no dark factor)." So this bird probably has some of those genes.

Baby #4: I think I see some hints of green but it's too soon to tell much.

I do have to admit, the violet is gorgeous, but if I'm right, it looks female, although it was kind of hard to tell with the lighting. Number 2 looks like a boy to me, since the cere was out of incoming light, it looked pretty solid. The breeder said he really looks like his dad. Even if the answer is no, at least I'm learning more about budgie genetics.

It's always been my understanding that you couldn't tell by cere color until they were older, and some mutations don't follow the standard rules. I could be wrong though, I haven't kept up with the advances in budgie knowledge. I'm trying to learn more right now though, so I'm glad people here have budgie mutations to discuss. If I remember, I'll look for the latest info on cere color tomorrow.

Here's where I got my info:
http://cutelittlebirdiesaviary.weebly.c ... adult.html

The information there sounds familiar, I think I remembered it wrong before.

If you scroll down to 'Pigment Variation Effects on the Cere' it says "When they have dark, grey or violet factors, it can cause their beak and cere to be darker even black in some places. The effect is usually the most noticeable around the center and outside edges of the cere making it darker, and causing a black color to the beak. "

It looks to me like the mother and maybe some of the babies have a dark factor or two, although I could be wrong. One baby also has a violet factor. So it's possible that the cere colors could be off. I don't know whether this is true of all mutations, but it's common for a very young budgie to have black on the beak, which fades away earlier than the time when the forehead stripes disappear. Back in the olden days at least, a black beak was considered to be a sign that a bird was very young.

The only mutations I have a basic clue on are cockatiels. All I know is the one I am looking at is a form of yellowface, piedish? The breeder says his body is starting to look like his dad's.

Hmm... maybe it's just the lighting, but dad's cere looks purple rather than blue. There are several mutations that cause adult males to have a cere that's pink to purple instead of blue, and I don't know what effect these mutations have on the babies' cere colors. It sounds like maybe there's no effect on the cere color of adult females.

Recessive pied is one of the mutations that causes this effect, and I think dad might be recessive pied. I can see some spots on his head where the little black stripes are missing, and it looks like he doesn't have a white iris in his eye. One of the babies looks like recessive pied so both parents would have to have the gene.

I noticed a mixture of purple blue on daddy's cere, and I did notice his light barrings and patches, but how that could effect the chicks I don't know.

If we go searching on the internet we might find some info on how these mutations affect the cere color of babies. I'm not going to do it tonight though, maybe tomorrow. I found another good budgie mutation site at http://www.budgieplace.com/colorsguide.html They have a picture and description guide similar to the other site, and they also have links where you can call up the technical genetic geek-talk that I love so much.

Budgies have a lot more mutations than cockatiels do. The yellowface mutations more or less correspond to pastelface and creamface in cockatiels - they're variations of the blue/whiteface gene which remove some of the yellow/orange color but not all. If you want to get technical, they're alleles of the blue gene and I have an article on allelic mutations from the cockatiel point of view at http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... lelic.html

Cockatiels have two sources of color: yellow/orange pigment and grey pigment. Budgies have both of these pigments plus one more color source that cockatiels don't have: structural color. The structure of the feather reflects light in a way that makes melanin look like blue or green to our eyes. Dark factors and the violet mutation affect the feather structure and makes the color look different, and there's nothing in cockatiels that corresponds to this. The dark factors make the green or blue look darker than normal, and they're co-dominant so a bird with two dark factors will be darker than a bird with one dark factor. Violet changes the feather structure in a way that makes blue color look purplish, and two violet genes have a stronger effect than one. There are more structural mutations than this but these are the ones that seem to be in this family.

I second this post!

budgies mutations and sexing confuse me
But they are really cute! I hope you can get one