Sex of American Cinnamon baby?

[peridot60]

Hi everyone - I'm hoping some of you who understand love bird genetics can help me out. I have a female normal peach face and a male seagreen. I don't know anything about their background. They have had two clutches of eggs, and the babies have all been (by appearances) seagreens and American cinnamons. Can the sex of the cinnamons be determined if I don't know the background of the parents?

[linda040899]

Yes. All cinnamon babies produced by this kind of pairing will be genetically sexed hens. Cinnamon is a sex linked mutation and what you get depends on what the parents look like.

In the case of your pair, neither is a visual cinnamon. Hens can't carry sex linked genes so it's your male that is split for cinnamon. You need the cinnamon gene present in both parents to produce a male, so the baby is a hen. If mom were visual and dad wasn't and wasn't split, you would not get any cinnamon babies but all males would inherit the gene from mom. Pair up the male babies with appropriate hens and you will see the cinnamon, 1 generation later. Should mom be a cinnamon and dad either show the color or be split, each time he passes the gene, you can have a male, although it's not guaranteed. I have one such baby that's not quite 12 days old and it could be male or female. Mom's a visual and dad is split.

[peridot60]

Thanks Linda! I knew Cinnamon was a sex-linked mutuation, but I wasn't sure how it worked. You explained it perfectly! This pair just had more babies - this time normal greens and a cinnamon. They're about 4 weeks old now. It's nice to know my little cinnamon is a female.