For a while now I have had two Chinese painted (CP) quail (assumed a pair) living with my Japanese Coturnix (JC) hens. Surprisingly, the CP roo has not once mated with his CP hen. Instead, he took a fancy to my JC hens.
At first it was a futile attempt, he would climb on their necks and sit there like a backpack. It was cute but unproductive. About 2 weeks ago however I saw that he figured out how to mate successfully with the JC hens; by grabbing the lower back and successfully touching cloacas. I was shocked he figured it out.
Out of curiosity I looked online to see about CP/JC hybrids, and found absolutely nothing. No examples. A couple of people asking if it was possible. Everyone saying no. Some people saying that their cohabiting CP and JC always stick to their own kind and never attempt to copulate.
So now I’m determined. I have a CP roo who, of his own volition, mates with JC hens. I want to see if they can hybridise. This is mostly a lazy experiment, nothing crazy or precise, but I want to document it so there is evidence out there.
I simply incubate every egg I get from their pen. 4 eggs a day usually, from my 4 JC hens. The CP roo barely mates with them to begin with, so it’s hard to know which could be fertile and which aren’t, so all eggs get a round in the incubator for 6 days and removed on a rota when no activity is occurring.
It has been just over a week since I started the experiment. Here is what currently happened.
Two eggs have red ring of death’d. I never saw visible veins growing, but the death ring was visible in the shell. This implies that fertilisation can occur, but the cells died very quickly after. Sadly the only light strong enough to see in the eggs is my phone light, meaning I can’t take pictures to show the process. Here’s one of the death ring egg’s cracked open:
There is currently 1 egg in the incubator that is fertilised and alive. I am genuinely surprised and excited. There are tiny veins visible inside branching out, only about 3-4 days into incubation. Unfortunately I can’t get a picture to share with you guys. But one has fertilised. I even tried rotating it around but no avail:
Because it is still early days, there’s a huge risk it won’t survive development, but there is now evidence they can potentially hybridise if the embryo can survive. I’ll update this thread as my experiment progresses. I hope you are as intrigued as I am.
Edit: managed to get a very blurry picture using my laptop camera. The current fertilised egg:
At first it was a futile attempt, he would climb on their necks and sit there like a backpack. It was cute but unproductive. About 2 weeks ago however I saw that he figured out how to mate successfully with the JC hens; by grabbing the lower back and successfully touching cloacas. I was shocked he figured it out.
Out of curiosity I looked online to see about CP/JC hybrids, and found absolutely nothing. No examples. A couple of people asking if it was possible. Everyone saying no. Some people saying that their cohabiting CP and JC always stick to their own kind and never attempt to copulate.
So now I’m determined. I have a CP roo who, of his own volition, mates with JC hens. I want to see if they can hybridise. This is mostly a lazy experiment, nothing crazy or precise, but I want to document it so there is evidence out there.
I simply incubate every egg I get from their pen. 4 eggs a day usually, from my 4 JC hens. The CP roo barely mates with them to begin with, so it’s hard to know which could be fertile and which aren’t, so all eggs get a round in the incubator for 6 days and removed on a rota when no activity is occurring.
It has been just over a week since I started the experiment. Here is what currently happened.
Two eggs have red ring of death’d. I never saw visible veins growing, but the death ring was visible in the shell. This implies that fertilisation can occur, but the cells died very quickly after. Sadly the only light strong enough to see in the eggs is my phone light, meaning I can’t take pictures to show the process. Here’s one of the death ring egg’s cracked open:
There is currently 1 egg in the incubator that is fertilised and alive. I am genuinely surprised and excited. There are tiny veins visible inside branching out, only about 3-4 days into incubation. Unfortunately I can’t get a picture to share with you guys. But one has fertilised. I even tried rotating it around but no avail:
Because it is still early days, there’s a huge risk it won’t survive development, but there is now evidence they can potentially hybridise if the embryo can survive. I’ll update this thread as my experiment progresses. I hope you are as intrigued as I am.
Edit: managed to get a very blurry picture using my laptop camera. The current fertilised egg:
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I will be curious to see if any of the eggs hatch at some point!
) and was heavily inbred to express other mutations, according to someone who works for Southwest gamebirds. He commented on a discussion I was having with someone else about German Pastels, which I learned were actually SSC (in a quail group on FB), and also that line was the origination of Celedon layers in the U.S. My poor brain is going to explode before I figure all this stuff out 
(watches)
