Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,
I was curious as to how bad inbreeding is in cockatiels. We have had 2 for several years and thinking back to when we got the first, the woman we bought her from had them all in one aviary with no way to control who was breeding to whom. How bad is this for them? Ours from her is now about 8 and is doing fine. She's sweet, intelligent and is very loving. Thank you for all your time and help.

From what I understand obvious signs and problems of inbreeding in cockatiels is not always noticable in the first generation. It can cause problems in later generations if the inbred ones are bred and produce babies. If I remember correctly it can cause birth defects such as blindness, or certain handicaps. Sometimes but not always it can cause them to be infertile. As I said I am not positive on this as I can't find it in any of my books but have read about it in the past.

Stephanie

Thank you very much for your answer. I'll just have to hope that if she ever cares for her eggs that they are alright as well

If you`re unsure of her genetic background, I would highly recommend replacing the eggs with dummy eggs or freezing them for 24 hours and marking them before putting them back in the cage where you found them. I wouldn`t want to risk passing on problems to the young that could vary from vision problems, to kidney or liver failure.

If yours are now 8 years old and haven't raised any clutches, chances are they won't (which is good for someone not into breeding).

Anyone who colony-breeds tiels (as the person where you bought your birds did), there is going to be a certain amount of inbreeding take place, and usually it's a lot of inbreeding if original flock and their offspring are kept together for some time. In colony breeding, one never knows for sure which males fathered which chicks (some of those females are little jezebels that breed with several males).

When I was breeding cockatiels, it was for purposes other-than making babies. I was working with triple and quadruple mutations (whitefaced cinnamon pearl-pieds) and kept detailed pedigrees on all the birds.

I kept all my non-breeding adults in separate flights, males in one, females in another, and then *I* chose which two birds were to be paired up. That way I knew with certainty who the parents were.

After their breeding duties were finished; they were put back in their respective non-breeding flights.

Sometimes I used the same male with another female. One male of my original stock, was extremely nice so I kept him busy with many females, with a week or two rest before pairing him up with another female.

And sometimes I "intentionally" inbred for certain qualities, traits, colors and achieved my goals without compromising the genetic health of the chicks.

When inbreeding, you're doubling up on both the good genes as well as the bad genes, so if there's any genetic problems they will come out. But both parents must be carrying the same genetic weakness to show up. Inbreeding doesn't cause freaks, and it doesn't automatically cause liver or kidney problems in offspring.

Carefully planned linebreeding/inbreeding by knowledgeable folk is fine; colony inbreeding isn't.

I know it isn`t `instant.` But unfortunately, not all breeders are careful with their line breeding when working with mutations which has already caused a predilication for those sorts of problems, especially in certain mutations such as whiteface.

Plus, I musta been half-asleep when I read the original message, as I somehow got the silly idea in my head that both birds were from the same colony... and if so, breeding the two together really could potentially cause a lot of trouble.

Thank you very much for the information. I'm glad that my little girl has turned out fine. Your post was very informative. Thank you again.