I know nada about quail genetics, but it does seem that if I keep breeding siblings, I'll encounter trouble at some point. Does anyone have good info about this? If I buy a set of quail (A) from 1 guy and hatch out a set of those eggs (B), can I try to hatch out eggs from the B set of quail? How far can I go? And, I don't know if my supplier bred siblings or not. Just assuming people do. We'd like to get out of coturnix and into bobs. SHould I buy our initial bobs from 2 different suppliers to ensure fresh genes?
If you buy from a reputable breeder, than you can breed them over and over again. It would take a very very long time to see genetic defects, if they are clean to begin with. If you do see any hatched defective quail, cull them out and keep the good ones. So go ahead and breed them and enjoy them!
I tend to agree with twocrows for the most part. I'm not sure how deep you can get before they become nonviable, so I tend to keep lines pure as I can, and add new blood when needed. This is a simple flow chart I used back when I first got started raising coturnix. I use a slightly more complex version now, but it will net good bloodlines, as far as genetic differentiation is concerned. If your second generation chicks are acceptable, then keep the first generation in production. If you only hatch eggs from the first generation, then you should most likely never cross a brother with a sister generations deep. When it comes time to cross the 2nd generation birds, then cross the R1Hx birds with the R2Hx birds. Very simplistic, and useless for developing a particular trait, but if followed, you won't be crossing brother with sister over and over again. Also, you can hatch thousands of totally non related birds a season with that model.
