Cockatiels

Cockatiels, also known as quarrions, are a friendly and attractive companion bird. With an easygoing temperament and capable of imitating many different sounds, they are a great pet for children. Having a life expectancy of twenty to twenty five years, they will provide years of enjoyment.

If you suffer from allergies or hayfever, keep in mind that Cockatiels produce feather dust that is an allergen. There are many birds available that do not produce feather dust. If you do suffer from allergies, we are more than happy to advise you on other species we breed that produce no feather dust, and make an equally great pet.
At Rosedale we keep several breeding pairs of cockatiels. They are different colour mutations to produce a variety of different coloured birds.

Colour Mutations: These days cockatiels are available in many different colours with new colours appearing regularly. Some you may have heard of include grey, fallow, cinnamon (brownish grey), white face (white faced grey bird with no yellow visible), pastel face, lutino (yellow faced white bird with no visible grey), white faced lutino (albino), pearl (individual feathers are outlined in white or yellow to give a scaly appearance), platinum, platino, silver, olive, spangle, pied (irregular patterns of white, grey and sometimes yellow all over the body), as well as many different combinations of these.  We breed cockatiels in pearl, lutino, whiteface lutino (albino), cinnamon, and pied and reverse pied. We are constantly adding to our colour gene pool to produce new and attractive mutations.

Sexing: In normal grey cockatiels, the sex of the bird can be seen from approx 6 months of age. This is when the male begins to colour up and display a bright yellow head with the orange patches over the ears. The upper side of his tail will appear pearl grey and the underside black. Immature birds will appear to look like mature females. They have facial yellow restricted to outlining features as well as yellow and black bars or banding seen on the underside of the tail.  

Sexing different colours in cockatiels can be difficult as the traditional cheek colour or barred undertail may not be visible in some mutations. We have overcome this problem with some of our birds by setting up colour combination pairs with sex linked genes to make it possible to sex our birds according to their colour. This method, known as nest sexing is convenient to us, however, not all our pairs are set up this way. For this reason, we also offer DNA sexing if you would like a companion bird of a particular sex.

If you would like to know more about sex linked genes and how to set up your breeding pairs for nest sexing, please contact us for information.