d'anver lovers,discuss the breed and post some pics!

[NanaKat]

Kristen,
that's been what I have seen and heard too, that it's more, enviromental or damage to embryo or lack of dietary type stuff in the parents, and less about genetics of the birds. Though I have never done any intentional breeding of them myself to back any of it. Just what I have read on others who have.
I tend to get maybe 5 or so a year out of several thousand hatched. I have noticed they seem to be more on the rarer colors side of things. Stuff that isnt very commonly kept, so I'm betting inbreeding over many generations due to lack of new unrelated blood to work with has more to do with it than anything. Again, this is just a theory of mine. Stuff like silver quail for sure would fall into that group. Only a handful have them, and most are all related. That's why I started color crossing ( JJ too) with blues, lavenders, duns, etc. By getting a new color, you are also adding in new blood to an otherwise watered down color. The natural colored birds that are produced from this crossing can then be added to the flock and maybe help with this. My silvers so far , havent made any that I know of, but I do get some from the black mottled from time to time.

I have also noticed on the ones I see, they look perfectly normal for the first week or so, and the cross beak only starts showing later on. Do yall see the same thing?? This is what leads me to wonder about a dietary deficiency, that coupled with line breeding for too long I'm betting is the base cause of it.... again, just my thoughts.

The two cases I have had in my flock beside the Blue Quail have been in my LF Columbian Wyandottes. One little pullet was fine until she hit 6 weeks and now at 8 weeks she has a full blown crossbeak where the top beak points off to the right at a 90 degree angle. She has been on the same chick started and broiler feed that the rest of the flock has been eatting.

 

[NanaKat]

Quote: I use toe nail clippers on the bottom part...I can cut each side at an angle and then clip the tip. Then I use a fingernail file to smoth the edges. Fortunately as frequently as I do it, there is not yet blood supply to the lower beak tip. The top beak just needs filing on one side and a coarse grit fingernail file has worked. I file only in one direction: down for the top beak and up for the bottom one.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Here is something really neat. Remember my lavander quail pullet I got through some gentic fluke. Well she started laying so I paired her with my silver quail roo that only has one silver gene, to make some more lavander quail next year. Hear is the neat part seems my roo is split to lav cause here is what hatched.



Then there is the blacks that came from the same roo and a white pullet. Here is their offspring.



I think the lottery birds are now coronations and silver lavander duck wings. And I think I am a year ahead on my lavander quail project.

jj

 

[speckledhen]

Awesome, JJ! Post pics of their progress. Can't wait to see these grow up.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Awesome, JJ! Post pics of their progress. Can't wait to see these grow up.

You Know I will. I will be hatching as many as I can from these two pens.

jj

 

[speckledhen]

Well, my sale fell through, no fault of the buyer's, just one of those unexpected things happened to her. So, I reopened my ad. She called just as I was separating them out in prep for her arrival.

Oh, well. Poor Purple Princess Shadow will have to put up with hormonal Ace for a bit longer. She is not amused in the least.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Kristen,
that's been what I have seen and heard too, that it's more, enviromental or damage to embryo or lack of dietary type stuff in the parents, and less about genetics of the birds. Though I have never done any intentional breeding of them myself to back any of it. Just what I have read on others who have.
I tend to get maybe 5 or so a year out of several thousand hatched. I have noticed they seem to be more on the rarer colors side of things. Stuff that isnt very commonly kept, so I'm betting inbreeding over many generations due to lack of new unrelated blood to work with has more to do with it than anything. Again, this is just a theory of mine. Stuff like silver quail for sure would fall into that group. Only a handful have them, and most are all related. That's why I started color crossing ( JJ too) with blues, lavenders, duns, etc. By getting a new color, you are also adding in new blood to an otherwise watered down color. The natural colored birds that are produced from this crossing can then be added to the flock and maybe help with this. My silvers so far , havent made any that I know of, but I do get some from the black mottled from time to time.

I have also noticed on the ones I see, they look perfectly normal for the first week or so, and the cross beak only starts showing later on. Do yall see the same thing?? This is what leads me to wonder about a dietary deficiency, that coupled with line breeding for too long I'm betting is the base cause of it.... again, just my thoughts.

I have seen a few of these in my quails, which are local birds which I suspect most came from the same breeder. It does seem to show up at two to three weeks. This makes me believe it not so much dietary because the other chicks are eating the same stuff. The fact that vitamin supplements appear to help it leads me to believe that it a metabolic problem with some chicks that can't efficiently process the amount of vitamins in the feed and need mega doses to get enough into their system to use. I also believe that this is a symptom of inbreeding. Just my thoughts and the reason I have chosen to mix colors. I especially like the recessive and sex linked genes to mix that way you get some of what you started with to put back into your original birds. Look at me sounding like an expert which is far from the truth, it is just what I think.

 

[Boggy Bottom Bantams]

good to hear, seems it's been the same for everyone. Yep I may have miss typed a bit too, but that's along the same lines as what I was trying to get at JJ, with the dietary stuff and all. Yes they all get the same stuff, but these few may or seem to maybe have some sort of difficeny that doesnt allow them to process the stuff they need from it. More than likely yes, something that could be traced back to line or prolonged inbreeding.

Also about your chick post, yep seems to all look that way with what you got there. That's great, save me a few years work and I'll just buy some from you when you're done haha!! But seriously keep it up!

and like Cynthia said, do continue to up date us on them, I'm especially curious about the duckwing part, hope you're right on them, that would be awesome. Been wanting to take my bb red to lavender, think that would look awesome, but got to finish a few before I start more.

 

[Backwoods Bntms]

Aubrey, I dont think I have any duckwings yet ,But it is a possibility. 2048 chicks later I will have to have one. But I do think I will have the lavander quail covered both gold and silver.

jj

Two of these chicks have the triangle on their head like a bb red but no stripes. My blue quail chicks were marked the same way except they were blue. For now I think they are lavander quail.

 

[KristenG]

Back to the scissorbeak deal again - I'm not sure it is necessarily inbreeding that is the problem, nor do I think it is entirely nutritional. In fact, my Silver Quails didn't have a problem with it until I outcrossed them, then the F1 generation exhibited a much higher proportion than all of my other varieties combined. Perhaps it is a set of genes that requires only one or two specific combinations of genes and when I crossed the two lines, one line had half the necessary genes and the other line had the other half and they lined up just perfectly for this problem. I think that there are very complex sets of genes that affect the speed of development of both sides of the face - perhaps very similar to the genes that cause cleft palate in people. Each side is controlled independently and sometimes they get out of sync or stop developing on one half independently. I would guess that the most critical time in chicken development regarding beaks would be the sixth through the tenth days of incubation, when the beak is being formed and hardening. There could be certain triggers at this time that can cause the later issues with the growth of the beak if the bird has certain genes (temperature spike, low humidity, etc?). Mine also all start out appearing normal.

JJ- your little lavender chicks are adorable. Is there any possible way they could carry silver? They almost look like silver lavender quail.