Boys or girls?? And breed ID too.....

[cutechick2010]

I am fairly new to quail, I have raise buttons for a little over a year and now am trying to branch out into the "meat" quail. I bought a batch of eggs a few months ago that were a conglomeration of breeds, these were the left-overs that hadn't sold in her other auctions.
Anyway, with the buttons I can tell boys from girls by their color, but I am not quite so familiar with the larger quail yet. I heard/saw one of them "crowing" this afternoon, which of course is very cute, LOL. My question is, it is only the males that crow, right? I have seen one of my young buttons that I could have sworn was a hen crowing, so that confused me. As for the breed ID part, I took some pictures to show ya'll what they look like.

I am pretty sure this is a Coturnix, although I don't know if it's a male of female:

Tibetan, mabye?

This gorgeous guy is the one that was crowing, and is trying to mate with some of the others too:

These are really pretty, have no clue what they are:

Thanks for any and all help!

 

[mhwc56]

Coturnix...just different colors/patterns of them.
1st pic is a Brown/wild color female ( Speckled chest)
the 1 to the right is a Range but i know too little about that color to comment
the 1 behind the Range is a Brown ..about 90 % sure it's a male( no speckles on chest)
2 all the way to the back right look to also be Range
of course the white is a White ( and they cannot be visually sexed..neither can the Ranges or the Tuxedo)
the browns with white fronts are called Tuxedo
the 1 in the 4th pic is a Manchurian or Manchurian Gold (female..speckled chest...)

You want more females then males..ratio of 3-5 female to each male or the males will wear the female ragged when they're breeding.
also, they do best with at least 1 square foot per bird for space .

There is A LOT of EXCELLENT information on here so go through the posts and get acquainted with the breed that way you'll know the proper way to care for them
Good Luck with your new additions!

 

[Stellar]

Mhc is correct, what you have are not a mixture of breeds, rather color varieties of the Japanese Coturnix

 

[JJMR794]

Its Important To Note That When Color Sexing The Coturnix Look Directly At The Chest. Side Views Can Be Quite Deceiving. Range Also = Tibetan, Wild= Brown
Tibetans, Tuxedos, Whites, Rosettas Cannot Be Color Sexed

 

[JJMR794]

Also They Should Not Be In Contact With Chickens Or Other Poultry

 

[cutechick2010]

Ok, thanks! I didn't realize that Coturnix came in different colors, I thought they were all "wild" colored. That kinda irritates me actually, the person selling the eggs said there would be several breeds mixed in.

I do know that they are too crowded, I actually did that intentionally because of the cold weather here. They have a heat lamp on them right now. I am assuming they should not be in contact with the chickens because of the possibility of disease transmission, right? The small chickens that are in with them have never been exposed to any diseases, they went from the incubator right in with the quail and have never been apart since. Once they have had any contact with the other chickens, then yes I will definitely keep them apart.
I will separate them into groups of male/females as soon as I can figure out which ones are what.

 

[Stellar]

Don't you love people who tell you false info

they are pretty coturnix colors though you have in there

 

[Rozzie]

Sometimes people give false information through ignorance, not ill will or to deliberately mislead. Some people don't know the difference between varieties, breeds, species, etc. That may be the case from the seller.

Quail lady has a very nice website. She shows pictures of the various colors on her site. You might want to look at it. It's easy to use.
http://www.stellargamebirds.com/Japanese-Quail-Mutationsnewpage.html

 

[cutechick2010]

Thanks for the link, that helps a lot. I really love the Tuxedo ones I have, they are soo pretty. I think I read that you can get Tuxedos by breeding the Tibetans to the A & Ms? If you breed two Tuxedos together, will they breed true or throw back to their parentage?

 

[mhwc56]

Quote:
Tibetans to Whites( A&M/jumbo OR English)b/c whites are recessive to Tux. Tux to Tux get better /quicker Tux or something like that i believe.