Female Quail with WHITE (Speckled?) Chest

[ManitobaQuail]

Hi all, I'm new here and new to quail keeping. We have just under 2 dozens of quails, mixed types of Coturnix. Recently we culled out a bunch of roosters to get the ratio right. Long story short, we found out that one of our "roosters" is actually a hen! Please see attached photo (middle one). I could not believe it when my partner told me "he" laid an egg. To make sure it was "him" who's been laying the past two weeks, we put "him" to a spare hutch and it's been one egg a day consistently.

Has this happened to anyone? Now I feel like vent sexing is the surest way to know the gender of the birds...maybe we culled out a couple hens that were mis-ID'd as roosters...

 

[Erkenstein]

Lucky bird. How old is she? I wonder if her speckles will come in stronger next molt. And I wonder what her offspring will be like.

If you butchered the boys, you should have seen their jelly beans. You would see forming eggs with the girls. If you culled them without looking inside, you can't be 100% sure.

 

[ManitobaQuail]

She’s just about 9 to 10 week old. It’s gets down to 10 degrees or so at night where I live now (Canada; +/-7 hours north of Minneapolis for the Americans). They seem to be losing their feather more than usual. Is that a sign of molting?

Honestly, I did not pay that much attention. It was our first time butchering quails. But no forming eggs for sure - might be because they were just between 7-8 weeks old when we culled out most of the roosters.

 

[Sara L]

The chest speckles are only there for the traditional color and the Italian color. If the bird is a golden or mixed golden then the chest feathers aren't reliable. I had the same thing happen and only realized it when all the males were super interested in her and she lost all of her head feathers. If you are keeping them just for eggs, you could keep her, but if you are breeding your birds I recommend culling her since the non speckled chest will probably show up in her babies and make it difficult to sex them by color.

 

[bhaugh]

I have the foam method doesn't always work as females may just have been bred. I wait now for the crow or cricket sound.

 

[ManitobaQuail]

Thanks for the responses! Yea we started marking the males now with zip ties every time they crow...(unless they are standard coloured birds, which we don't mark).