Hybridising Chinese Painted Quail and Japanese Quail

[pterry97]

Okay, how to explain this.... I wanted to call it quits, but then found out the hard way that I had gotten too used to the sound of the incubator at night, and literally couldn't sleep without it on... And since I wasn't doing anything with the eggs still, I just resumed incubating them.

I had a couple more almost-hatchers that just didn't make it. They all seemed to vary rather wildly in deformities, though all had virtually no necks which was likely why they couldn't hatch. Large legs and large beaks were also a common factor. One had a tiny button head with a large body, another had a big coturnix head with a teensy button body. It truly seemed like a mishmash of genetics.

Then, tragedy struck. My dog got seriously ill and in the span of 2 weeks I was thoroughly distracted from the eggs to tend to my poor dog. He eventually had to get his eye removed this week. He's now finally starting to heal. On the day I got him back, I finally remembered to check the incubator, held up the first egg, and could feel the chick inside pecking away. I was ecstatic! The first of my hybrids to ever reach pipping stage!

This was on Tuesday. This morning, a cold Thursday 5am, our first CP/JC quail hybrid emerged...

Everybody, meet Experiment 626, AKA Stitch:

Even though Stitch managed to hatch, they still have a few noticeable deformities. The large beak is still prevalent. They have a large underbite too. Their toes are very curled, we're gonna see if we can get that fixed early with some tape shoes, but from birth I've noticed they're quite a bit stiffer than other chick toes have had to tape in the past. And most interestingly, their right wing is fused back into the body at the last joint in the wing. They're quite the little Frankenstein.

The mother is a pharaoh JC and the father is a red breasted CP, so as of right now the chick is resembling the patterns of the hen. I haven't the slightest how these two colours can correlate - if it will affect the overall pattern of adult plumage, or if it's just a case of having the one more dominant genetic (I don't know genetic lingo so excuse my ignorance). I'm excited to see if they can make it to adulthood, I really want to see what they turn out to look like. Maybe they'll just be a smaller coturnix haha. My hopes aren't too high on their survival chances, but still, this is the farthest we've ever gotten!

 

[DK newbie]

Wow, that's an exciting development! Red breasted is a recessive mutation in the CP quail, so you probably won't see any of that in Stitch. But if Stitch is a male - and survives long enough - it'll be interesting to see if he gets any of the red and blue colors of the button.. I fear that he will have as many deformities on the inside as he does on the outside though, so the chances probably aren't great although he's looking strong now.
Good luck to you and Stitch!

 

[MadamContrary]

Please keep us updated, hopefully little stitch has a decent quality of life even with the apparent issues. Do you have something snuggly in with it? It's always so hard when only one chick hatches.

 

[pterry97]

Please keep us updated, hopefully little stitch has a decent quality of life even with the apparent issues. Do you have something snuggly in with it? It's always so hard when only one chick hatches.

Do I count as snuggly? They’re kind of living in my shirt at the moment haha

 

[pterry97]

Little update on Stitch; they’re alive and doing well! I fixed their toes with the power of tape, and on their first night out of the egg they wiggled so much that they managed to rip off the skin attaching their wing to their body, so now they technically have 2 functioning wings! Even their underbite is weirdly looking lesser than before.

They have cute little blue/grey eyes, I imagine they’ll lose them as they get older but it’s something I’ve never noticed in any of my previous Coturnix or button chicks. They’re actually doing a lot better than I expected them to.

Visibility wise they mostly resemble a Coturnix chick, but I’m starting to see some behavioural differences. The first is just how skittish they are. I always find my previous JC chicks to be very tame and clingy, and not very bright haha. Vs my previous CP chicks, despite being handreared, were extremely skittish and flighty. Little Stitch has no other quail contact, their only interactions are with me. However despite this and spending a decent 7-8 hours a day climbing on me, they don’t respond to ‘follow’ their heat source. Instead they will run and hide and cry until I find them, not vice versa. If I move away they will simply not follow, but will dash away elsewhere and resume calling for me (and get excited once I scoop them up again). This behaviour reminds me more of how the CP chicks behaved compared to the JC.

Other than that, we’re only 5 days in and they already have their first pin feathers showing through. Very excited to see how they progress.

Day 3:

Day 4:

Day 5:

 

[DK newbie]

Thank you for the update! The change in the beak is really impressive - makes me wonder if it was actually the jaw that was somehow mispositioned and Stitch managed to put it where it belongs? I'm not even sure that's possible, but it it seems quite extreme for the upper beak to grow that much in just 1 day, so I guess a mispositioned jaw could be the explanation..

 

[pterry97]

Thank you for the update! The change in the beak is really impressive - makes me wonder if it was actually the jaw that was somehow mispositioned and Stitch managed to put it where it belongs? I'm not even sure that's possible, but it it seems quite extreme for the upper beak to grow that much in just 1 day, so I guess a mispositioned jaw could be the explanation..

Yes it’s super crazy how different it looks within a couple of days! I hadn’t considered a malalignment, it could be possible. Stitch is constantly readjusting their crop too so it possible they’re ‘fixing’ their jaw while they do those little yawn stretches. One other thing ive noticed is that Stitch has super long wings. They often use them to balance out and to me they seem much longer than what I can recall my JC having, as I remember thinking before how stubby Coturnix chick wings were.

 

[pterry97]

Little update: Stitch is a week old today! They’re doing great so far, growing super fast. Their pin feathers are already sprouting feather tips, I’m excited to see how they form. Though knowing our luck Stitch will probably just resemble a pharaoh coturnix at this point haha.

I think the only potential unique thing that /could/ develop is their weird little white patch on the base of their tail, as it’s already white despite the fact that baby feather’s versions of white should come out as yellow before developing their plumage. Maybe someone else has had a similar experience with something like that:

(And before someone says it, no it’s not poop, and it’s not yellow, it sticks out rather strongly against their yellow down)

 

[JacinLarkwell]

The body proportions you were finding are very similar to a rooster I have. He's a bantam Cochin x standard Ameraucana, and has a standard body and bantam sized legs and wings.

 

[pterry97]

The body proportions you were finding are very similar to a rooster I have. He's a bantam Cochin x standard Ameraucana, and has a standard body and bantam sized legs and wings.

I’ll not be too surprised if a CP/JC hybrid just makes a bantam quail hahaha