Often in doubt about genetics, there is the term division. Splitting into birds simply means a genetic trait or color that is carried, but not seen visually.

Sometimes there may be nape feathers (perhaps white spots) revealing that a bird may clearly have some other color mutation or trait, than it appears to be visually. Or it may be something like a white nail on a particular type of bird that would normally be black.

I like to think of these as little secrets and clues to what a new color or trait might be, in addition to what can actually be seen.

My favorites are the unexpected. When a bird seems ordinary and produces the unexpected (it breaks and is not noticed).

#1 Example: male gray cockatoo X hen gray cockatoo = 100% all gray chicks. But if I put a lutino chick in the nest, what does this mean? How could this happen? Well, lutino is a sex-linked gene itself, so this means that the male gray cockatoo (dad) is split lutino, and we can pronounce this lutino (chick) to be a girl. Because the hen (mother) is gray.

From father to daughter, the mother hen would have to be a visual lutino and the father split or visual to produce a male lutino chick. Also, half of all gray male chicks will also be split lutinos, and not all hens (girl chicks) will be lutinos, some will be gray but not split!

#2 Example: Using another gray pair again, if I get a white-faced chick in the nest. I know that it takes two recessive visual or non-visual (split) whiteface genes to make a recessive visual whiteface. This now means that the male gray cockatoo (daddy) has a split white face! And the gray cockatoo hen (mother) also has a split white face! Therefore, this white-faced chick could be a boy or a girl. Now brothers and sisters who are gray, about half of these will also be split and the other half will not.

I must emphasize that this article does not include matchmaking splits!

After reviewing these charts, you will find how similar many genetics are. Blue ringneck, blue parakeet, blue quaker, Dutch blue lovebird, fallow cockatoo, pied cockatoo, and white-faced cockatoo are all recessive. Lutino ring neck, parakeet lutino, quaker lutino, lovebird lutino, pearl cockatoo, cinnamon cockatoo and lutino cockatoo are all linked to sex. Albino ringneck, albino budgie, albino quaker, creamino lovebird, and albino cockatiel are all “recessive and sex-linked.” And yes, you can have more than one recessive gene in a bird and a combination of multiple sex-linked and recessive, but we’ll save that for next time!