How do you make a wild coloration of Coturnix Quail?

[Byron Luk]

I am wondering how I can make the original brown coloration of Coturnix Quail. Which two colorations of Coturnix quail can I breed so they have the original brown color?

 

[Weirdness555]

It depends on the genetics of the birds, not just the expressed colour. Obviously, if you have wild type birds then there will be wild type offspring. However, it is possible that there is a recessive colour gene in there too, such as a dilution, so it's possible that some of their offspring will not be wild type.

I don't know about the genetics of all of the colour varieties, but certainly golden is a dominant colour, so it is possible that goldens will produce some wild type offspring. As having two copies of the golden gene may be fatal, many people breed goldens to browns to produce 50% golden offspring, so goldens produced like this will throw 50% browns if bred back to each other.

Unless you know the parentage of your birds, and quite a long way back, it is difficult to say whether or not they will produce wild type offspring unless one or both of them is a wild type themselves.

Wild type is not a colour that can be created in a line where it hasn't previously been, like Tuxedo (created by breeding a white; either A&M or English; to any other colour), so one of the parent birds must carry the gene from an ancestor in order to throw brown offspring.

This doesn't seem very helpful, but I hope it's ok!

 

[Nichrome]

I have had brown parents hatch white chicks!

 

[Weirdness555]

That's because white is a recessive gene, so dominant colours such as brown and golden can hide the white, so if both of the other colour parents carry a white gene, they could throw 25% white chicks.