Is it possible for a grey female and yellow lutino male to have a chick that has both colours.?

Answer 1

Well, no. But yes, sort of....

The normal grey color is the dominant color for 'tiels. Lutino is not really a color, but the ABSENCE of color (grey). So the bird cannot have both traits. However males can carry the sex-linked gene for lutino on one of their chromosomes and pass it on to his babies without you ever seeing it.

OK. This is going to get confusing, so here is the lesson in genetics:

Every bird has two chromosomes. Males have XX chromosomes, females have XY. (For those of you who passed Biology, you'll notice that this is opposite of how it works with mammals.) Some color genes--like lutino--are carried only on the X chromosomes, and these are called sex-linked genes. In these cases, males can carry two separate sex-linked color genes and the females will have only one from the father, and none from the mother since she supplied the Y chromosome.

In your pairing the grey is the normal color, and is dominant over lutino. Lutino is sex-linked recessive. What that means is that a male with only one lutino gene will LOOK grey but will really be grey (normal) "split for" lutino (Normal/lutino).

The female, since she is NOT lutino in appearance carries no lutino gene. If she had one lutino gene, since her other chromosomes is a Y, she would appear lutino. Females cannot be split for sex linked colors. They either are lutino or are not. She will be normal/Y

So when you pair these two birds you have four chromosomes to work with. Lutino/Lutino from the male and Normal/Y from the female. When you distribute these four genes every possible way, you will get 50% (on average) of each of these possible combinations:

Lutino/Y (all females because they would have the Y chromosomes.) These birds will be visually lutino.
AND
Normal/Lutino (all males since they would have 2 X choromosomes). These birds will appear to be grey but will be capable of making lutino babies.

(The nice thing about this pairing is that you will know at hatching which are the boys and which are the girls. The girls, being lutinos will not have pigment in their eyes and they will be easily seen to appear red.)

Now if your female was lutino and your male was normal, things would get more complex. Your grey male could harbor any number of unseen color combinations that could make things really interesting. But let's not get into that now.

Back to your question:
Can the chicks be both normal and lutino? NO. But there is another color called pied, which is essentially like the coloring of a pinto pony. It has some colorless places and some colored places. Pied can be added to any number of other colors: normal, cinnamon, pearl, white-faced, even lutino (though you would not be able to see it ) or any number of other fun combinations. The pied trait is recessive but is not sex linked, so each parent must carry at least one gene for pied for you to see it in any of the babies. Birds with only one pied gene will not appear to be pied, but can make pied babies if the other parent also carries the pied gene.

So if you thought you saw a combination of lutino and grey, what you were really seeing was a pied.

And I suppose, if your parent birds carried the pied gene without your knowing, you could have some pied babies from this breeding pair.

Genetics can be a surprise.... If you're really into the subject, here is a website from the North American Cockatiel Scoiety. http://www.cockatiel.org/genetics/index.html

You can also get access to great info on breeding and genetics by joining the National Cockatiel Society
http://www.cockatiels.org/
or the American Cockatiel Society
http://www.acstiels.com

Answer 2

Yes it is possible for this to happen. It is also possible for the chick to be a totally different color from the parents, depending on how the genes are aligned.

Answer 3

Yes it is possible.

Answer 4

no not both colours it wont happen