i have a very strange button quail....UPDATE!! gets even weirder

[xchairity_casex]

i have this very strange button quail. it is now about 5-6 months old and it has always been female or so i thought (white vent feathers,never trying to mate with other females and never crowing just cooing) but it never laid eggs and it would never allow a male to mate with it so i figured it was unfertile and kept it alone since all the other birds it went with would attack it. she was alone for a long long time untill i hatched a single button chick who turned out to be a female and ended up being terrafied of males so about 3 weeks ago i thought what the heck and put these two lonesome birds together and they took right away! cuddling and eating together im happy and plan on keeping them together. but this past week i noticed somthing odd my so called unfertile female has begun crowing along with my other males in the mornings and then tonight i picked her up after seh flew out of the cage while watering them i noticed it has suddenly begun to grow red vent feathers!!?? now for the first 6 months of this birds life its had white vent feathers none of the rest of its body is changing colors?? i am begining to wonder if this bird is a hermaphrodite? (containing both male and female sexual organs) or does this sometimes happen? as far as i know though there has been no mateing between them though? anyone ever encounter somthing like this??

 

[TheRealTimShady]

I have a similar bird that i think might be making its way there. Tho mine hasn't started crowing or anything.....lost the link but the topic became the odd sex change that can happen birds sometimes. this link here http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/BRKChange.html was mentioned i think by shellyd about how there is proof in certian birds that it has happened.....maybe this is what happened to your bird?

 

[xchairity_casex]

oh wow thank you soo much for that link!!! im betting thats exactly whats happening! i was almost tempted to try incubateing some of the eggs the female with her laid to see if any were fetilized though i highly doubted it

 

[TheRealTimShady]

she won't turn COMPLETELY he....only like, 90%

 

[shelleyd2008]

If it is a female turned male it won't be fertile. It's all visual and/or behavioral.

 

[animal8]

Quote:
Yes, that's exactly it. I have heard of some sex changed females trying to mate with hens if given the opportunity but they never produce fertile eggs (they still have female sex organs inside of them, it's just a hormonal change). I think you'll be good keeping those two together if they're getting along so well, so long as you don't want to be breeding from the hen

I found the link to the previous discussion as well, so you can have a look at that

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=566400

 

[xchairity_casex]

yeh im deff keeping the pair together with or without fertile eggs ive got 21 buttons so im done hatching buttons for quite some time!

 

[TheRealTimShady]

21...they all in pairs?

 

[xchairity_casex]

well ive got 3 mated pairs, the female/female pair i have 3 bachelor males waiting for ladies from a batch of 9 chicks that are 5 weeks old now so soon they will all be in pairs im waiting for the female chicks to reach 15 weeks before i put them in with the adult bachelor males. yes i have quite a few cages LOL and large ones at that as i dont like keeping them in the minimum amount of space tried keeping a male in a 10 gallon tank but he would jsut pace back and forth and i felt sorry for him so i made him a cage 3 foot by 3 foot should be a good size for a pair once his little lady bird is mature enough

 

[xchairity_casex]

UPDATE!!
so about a week ago the little cinnamon female who was in with the pied male/female weird bird had died i woke up in the morning and found her sitting all puffed up on the floor out of her cage not sure how she escaped but it stressed her too much she died in my hands. very very sad little pied male/female bird was crooing for her all that night and then 3 days later i found...an EGG! it was so strange i thought i had cleaned out all the eggs from the female who had died i went to take the egg out and the pied button layed down and chirped at me like he/she was ready to mate!
i took teh egg out and watched the next morning another egg i went to take it out and again he/she imedietly layed down and chirped i picked it up and
ALLL THE RED VENT FEATHERS WERE GONE! replaced with grey feathers!! throughout the day my white male who she/he had been with nearly a year ago was calling to him/her i thought what the heck and put him in with him/her she imediety lay down and he mated with it! they have since been in the same cage happily mateing and laying eggs!!