The falcon parentage DNA test package includes one chick DNA profile, one mother DNA profile, one potential father profile and the parentage analysis. If you require additional potential fathers or chicks to be tested, these will need to be added on individually.

As a chick inherits 50% of its DNA from the mother and 50% from the father, a test without a sample from the mother will not provide the same degree of certainty as a test without samples from both parents.

The mother's sample is used to rule out the maternally inherited alleles to check if the remaining alleles correspond with the potential father.

With peregrine and gyrfalcons, the likelihood of potential male parents being related can sometimes be quite high. We would not recommend completing a parentage test without the mother to be able to provide a conclusive result.

Currently there are eleven DNA markers used to confirm falcon parentage. If there was an instance where the potential male parents were closely related enough to not be able to confirm a result due to the similarity of the DNA profiles at those particular markers, this would be explained clearly in the report. Falcon parentage is not quite yet at the same stage as that of dogs and other animals, where additional markers are available to carry out extended parentage testing.

If you are aware of or suspect that any potential male parents may be closely related it is always useful to notify us so that we have all of the information when completing the analysis.

Upon completion of the analysis, your bird's DNA profiles will be kept on file. This means that you will not be required to send in another sample or pay again for them to participate in a future parentage test.

We are able to carry out DNA testing and analysis to determine genetic relationships for peregrine and gyrfalcons.

Please note that this service unfortunately cannot be used to determine parentage for hybrid species.

The profile used for DNA bird sexing only looks at one DNA marker to confirm if the bird is a male or female. A parentage test analyses eleven DNA markers, hence the difference in pricing and turnaround time between the two services.

If you are unable to send us the samples for all birds participating at the same time (e.g. a chick has hatched and you have the egg membrane but have not yet been able to collect the samples for the other birds) that is not a problem. Please send the samples that you do have to us with your completed sample submission form making it clear which samples we have and which samples we are waiting for.

In this case, we can extract the DNA from the samples that we do have and hold it ready to complete the rest of the steps in the process when we have the remaining samples. This means that the DNA is extracted while the sample is still at its best and we can store it appropriately until needed.

The turnaround time is eight working days. The day we have received all of the relevant samples required to complete the case is classed as 'day 0' and eight working days is counted from there.