How do you know that Carolyn???? The mom is a cinnamon, and dad is normal grey.

Light yellow feather down means the chick is a lutino. Lutino is a sex-linked gene, and females can't be split to sex-linked genes. If the father isn't a lutino, then he is split to lutino which makes this baby a girl. The only way you can get a male lutino is if you have a male split to lutino, and a visual lutino hen. That will make the baby either sex which means you'll have to wait until their first molt to find out

@Carolyn, please tell me if I got this right or wrong. It's my first time giving this type of information.

You guys said before that Gracie kinda looked like a cinnamon.......thanks Baruch for your help! That is so fascinating. I checked this morning on egg #2 and it hasn't made any progress through the night. But now it is chirping much more! I'm sure baby 2# will come today!

Good luck on the 2nd baby!

It's actually the eye color that gives it away. Dark-eyed babies have huge dark orbs but red-eyed babies almost look like they don't have eyes because the eyes are the same color as the skin. Here's a picture with a lutino baby and some dark-eyed babies to demonstrate the difference:


Sometimes cinnamon chicks can fool you though. They're supposed to have plum-colored eyes, but some have eyes so dark they look like normal eyes and some have eyes so pink they look like lutino eyes. If this baby is actually a cinnamon instead of a lutino, the eyes will turn darker in a few days.

If this baby really is a lutino it will be a girl. To get a lutino boy you MUST have a lutino mother and you don't. It's similar with cinnamon - to get a cinnamon boy you have to have a cinnamon mother. You might actually have a cinnamon mother, so if the baby turns out to be cinnamon it could be either sex.

The only thing the yellow down tells us is that the baby isn't whiteface. Whiteface babies have white down. All others have yellow down. The lutino baby in my picture has yellow down, but she's resting her head on a whiteface baby.

2nd baby is here! He/she hatched in the night. This baby has dark eyes with dark yellow fluff.

@Carolyn,
I went back to Pipers baby pictures, and saw that she had dark eyes like the second baby....I wonder what they will look like? So, if the first baby is lutino, does that mean that daddy is split for it?

Congrats on the 2nd hatchling!

Dark eyes with yellow down just means that the baby isn't whiteface or lutino. (S)he can be anything else. If the oldest baby is lutino, then daddy must be split to it. Since mom is not a lutino it's genetically impossible for daddy not to be split to lutino.

Here is the little youngster!

Look at that little fuzz ball. They seem healthy. The parents are doing a great job with them.

The little one is very fuzzy!

Yes, dad has to be split lutino. Dad has to have the lutino gene to get any lutino babies at all, no matter what color mom is. Sex-linked mutations are complicated, but if you'd like to learn more about the subject we have an article about it here: http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... inked.html