My lucky find - ruffled/frizzle Coturnix quail!

[sphanges]

Yesterday I was lucky enough to stumble onto these guys and I am really pleased.

All three have "ruffled" feathers down the middle of their backs (they are not moulting at the moment). The golden male has the best ruffles. It's not quite a fluffy as a frizzle chicken and it's only on their backs (with kinda "poofy" tail and vent feathers, like fluffy chicken butts). The pharaoh have white splotches down the middle of their ruffles which are super cute. I'm going to breed to enhance the ruffles and white spots.

The only downside is that they seem to have been neglected - overgrown beaks/toenails and the first case of scaly leg that I've ever seen in quail. They've been treated and trimmed and are now in isolation waiting till they are all better. I can't wait to breed them

I'll try to get better pictures later on but for now:

 

[sphanges]

More photos, very hard to get a good shot of the way the feathers stand up.

The golden male is just awesome. The feathers are sort of twisted on his back so they look like he's just had his hair ruffled by a grandma. He has lovely rich red spots on his wings, and his head is sort of roaned with white - reminds me of snowflake Bobs. His wing feathers are normal and the rest of his feathers, esp under his wings, on his belly and around his tail, are just super soft and downy and fluffy. Looks and feels like the fluffy britches my Wyandotte hens have.

The two pharaohs are not quite as striking but obviously have the ruffling gene. Their back feathers are a mix of normal and white. When I first saw them I thought they had been pooped on but the back feathers have the same sort of curling to the feather as the golden male.

I also have another that is not pictured. It's a cinnamon italian and I'm pretty sure it's a boy - hard to tell as it has a heavily spotted and striped cinnamon red chest, no brown or black spots, acting like a boy (all four birds are not laying/breeding at the moment so can't vent sex). He has some missing feathers from his back but I can see a few white curled ones growing back so I'm not sure how ruffly he will be when they grow in.

 

[Sycamore27]

I hate to be a pessimist here, but if the birds were clearly neglected as you say I wouldn't hold your hopes too high that these are genuinely ruffled birds.
Malnutrition and poor gender ratios can create ruffled feathers from the birds simply not being able to grow them back in properly for nutritional or stress reasons. Also the fact that these birds are all different colors and thus likely not just one line where this is occurring as a mutation makes me doubt it further.
I once was given a sorely neglected gecko to rehab that I thought was a exotic color mutation. It turned out the poor thing had so many retained layers of old shed from improper conditions that a good soaking peeled everything off to reveal a pretty, but completely normal phenotype, skinny little lizard.

Either way, good luck with getting these poor babies healthy again and I'm very glad that you got them out of the situation they were in. Please update us after they are well and have gone through a molt, and I would entreat you not to hold it against them if it was only poor health making them appear to be something they aren't.

Cheers,
Jessie

 

[sphanges]

It did cross my mind that perhaps they had something funky going on from the neglect, but I had a good look at the feathers all over them and I genuinely don't think it's that. The patterns of curled feathers are the same in each bird (strip down middle of the back), while on the rest of the bird the feathers are either normal or downy-soft (on the male). The white feathers specifically are very curly, which isn't adding up to a deficiency as I've never heard of anything that makes certain feathers turn white and curl.

It definitely will be interesting to see them go through a moult and also to see if their chicks have the same feather patterning. The boy is so beautiful that even if he moults out the curly feathers I'll be keeping him for his amazing colouration, and I can also use more unrelated pharaoh girls for my breeding program, so they have a good home here no matter what

B

 

[freeflyin]

How big are they? Some larger specimens of coturnix have a rougher kind of feathering.

 

[Feathers1984]

Any updates on this project?

 

[Nabiki]

Any updates on this project?

Just a note, but this thread is over 10 years old.

 

[Feathers1984]

Just a note, but this thread is over 10 years old.

I'm aware....