Can I keep a few Bob White Quail with my chickens?

[paneubert]

Also I'm not sure how you would be sure the would be sterile. Insulting my bird's for god sakes! That's just low.

Haha. I say sterile because that is what I have read about these crosses in the past. It happens with pheasant and chicken crosses quite a bit. The baby grows fine, but cant have their own babies. Same with Horse-donkey crosses, and tigons/ligers. With tigons and ligers, the females are fertile whereas the males are sterile.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I didn't misinterpret what you said I just don't agree.
I have also raised quail in the past. 10s of thousands over the years. I also raise and have raised a huge variety of chicken breeds. Enough to know there isn't a "normal size chick" maybe an average size. There's a huge variety of sizes among the different breeds which in turn produce quite a variety of size chicks.
Still my opinion that chick is not quail size. And in fact chicken chick size. Maybe not a large breed chick size but larger then some bantam breeds.
Those chicks remind me of old english bantam chicks.

 

[paneubert]

Since it is a slow day at work, and I have access to it, I am going to head over to grab a copy of this from the library....
Attempts to Obtain Quail × Chicken Hybrids
Poult Sci (1970) 49 (5): 1176-1178.

And @The-Moonshiner , your theory would make sense since this is supposed to be a chicken hybrid, right?

 

[The Moonshiner]

First and foremost for me is that I can't see a chick that size at a few days old hatching from a quail egg.
It also looks like a chicken chick to me.
I'm not saying a quail/ chicken hybrid isn't possible and the size would vary depending on what breed the chicken was but you can only fit up to a certain size inside an egg the size of a quail egg and I would suspect anything hatching from a quail egg would be pretty small and a lot smaller than that chick.

 

[JurassicBawk]

I agree that those "hybrids" look like Old English game bantam chicks. Nothing about it says tiny and quail. It looks more like my Easter Egger 1 day old chicks when I got them versus the quail I've hatched out, both in color and size. My profile pic is a 2 day old quail chick and is thumbnail size, and the one in the pic in hand looks giant in comparison.

Here's a pic of and a link to bantam chick pics. Maybe you've got some cool hybrid, but I'm betting that's a chicken. No offense and not trying to insult your chicks, but I'm just going off my personal experience. And yes, if two species interbreed, the resulting offspring is usually sterile. Mules are the best example of this.

https://www.mypetchicken.com/catalog/products/ProductDetails.aspx?pid=271&

 

[paneubert]

As another option, check out these bobwhite chicks.....their coloration and pattern also looks familiar....a lot like the "older" photos of the babies.