New (unusual) Button Quail Chick

[hebe5]

Oh all these buttons are just toooooo cute!!! Can anyone tell me if they have had success with a broody serama hatching buttons or is this a no no?? Also can anyone tell me what they do with excess buttons - are they easy to find homes for??

 

[JaeG]

Oh all these buttons are just toooooo cute!!! Can anyone tell me if they have had success with a broody serama hatching buttons or is this a no no?? Also can anyone tell me what they do with excess buttons - are they easy to find homes for??

You could probably hatch Coturnix under a Serama but Buttons are just too tiny. You couldn't use anything but a Button mother or an incubator.

I sell to a petshop and they are good to breed as they are happiest in monogamous pairs so you don't end up left with lots of spare males.

 

[JaeG]

That is truly crazy! Can you post a new pic of what we'll now have to call 'her'? And keep us updated on how her color developes as she ages.

I've done my best here - they are in a cage that isn't easy to photograph in. It only has a top door and the bar spacing is too large where it connects to the base so we've had to attach some mesh stuff around it, but the camera did a good job of ignoring that.

These are without the flash and there's her tiny little egg in the first photos:


These are with the flash so there's a bit of shadow where a cage bar got in the way:


And here's her tail end still with a few reddish feathers here and there:

 

[DK newbie]

She's so weird! I wonder if it's some kind of hormonal thing - if there was too much testosterone or too little estrogen (or wathever the eqivalents in birds might be) in her system for some reason. And it might be normalising now, causing her to loose the male coloration. But then the bib apparently isn't hormonal, so she didn't get that (mental note to self to consider this when sexing odd buttons in the future)..

 

[hebe5]

You could probably hatch Coturnix under a Serama but Buttons are just too tiny. You couldn't use anything but a Button mother or an incubator.

I sell to a petshop and they are good to breed as they are happiest in monogamous pairs so you don't end up left with lots of spare males.

Thank you so much JaeG - that's good to know!

 

[Flight Feathers]

I just wanted to share my little Button chick that hatched out today. I've brought it and its family inside as the weather is going to pack up and I don't want this precious baby wandering off in the aviary and getting lost (that's happened before).

It's patterned like a wild type but instead of black stripes it has light grey/brown stripes. I had one hatch the same colour awhile ago but it died early on so I never got to see what colour it would turn out to be.

I do have Caramel in the genetics of my birds and I'm wondering if it acts like a diluting gene as I've had very diluted silvers coming through.

Here's the precious bubby with its wild sibling to show the difference:
View attachment 1238567

Here's what my caramel and cinnamon chicks look like and it's not like either of them:

Caramel:
View attachment 1238568

Cinnamon:
View attachment 1238569

We only have five mutations here in New Zealand: Wild, Cinnamon, Caramel, Silver and Ivory, so I'm hoping this little one makes it and I can see what it turns out to be.

I have a friend who had a white Chinese quail She lives in NZ.

 

[Flight Feathers]

I believe I have one caramel chinese quail, are caramels rare? My caramel has lots of white on it. It’s sister (same age as it) has lost all its white yet this caramel one hasn’t for some reason.

 

[JaeG]

I believe I have one caramel chinese quail, are caramels rare? My caramel has lots of white on it. It’s sister (same age as it) has lost all its white yet this caramel one hasn’t for some reason.

I think it's sex linked so it is a more difficult colour to bring out, and hens are much more common than cocks. I have hatched out lots of girls, but only recently two boys.

The caramel females do seem to be whiter underneath which is very pretty.

 

[Flight Feathers]

I think it's sex linked so it is a more difficult colour to bring out, and hens are much more common than cocks. I have hatched out lots of girls, but only recently two boys.

The caramel females do seem to be whiter underneath which is very pretty.

Okay thanks so I won’t necessarily get caramel when I breed my female then?

Yes they are very pretty!!

 

[JaeG]

Okay thanks so I won’t necessarily get caramel when I breed my female then?

Yes they are very pretty!!

If your male is carrying it you might. I have a wild male I was given and the girl he came from had only seen the wild ones, so he's from wild parents, but pairing him up with one of my caramel females has resulted in the odd caramel chick. Yet my original pair, a caramel hen and a silver male, never gave me any.