So my mystery beige quail that I’ve been trying to discover his (and his mother before him) color since I got quail, finally solved the mystery: purple, but since poultry don’t come in purple, we’ll settle for lavender even if he is orange, I’ll get there, just wait, and yes this is written in fun.
My personal guess was a Blau Italian, but as I hadn’t hatched anything even faintly resembling another one or even more than one other Blau birds of any pattern (and I have a Blau hen too so that one wasn’t unexpected) I wasn’t convinced. I flirted with German pastel, some multigenetic combination, even ginger, but nothing made sense. I finally tossed him in with four Rosetta hens (one roux carrier, possible Italian carriers) and just hatched the eggs a week ago. I have a tentative diagnosis! 9 chicks hatched, I have one plain Italian, 2 plain pharaohs, 2 white/cream chicks that will look vaguely like dad, and 4 Rosettas that are feathering out gray and/or roux.
Doing some math and rough genetic guesswork, dad looks to be a homozygous roux, heterozygous Blau and Italian (a blau autumn amber). My last hatch of general flock eggs had 2 blau birds and two cream/gray birds as well (max 2 eggs from a blau hen, ergo I have a male throwing blau and as my 2 other males most certainly aren’t I can guess who it is). We’ll see if my guess about the roux is right in a few weeks when my 3 feather sexable birds can be sexed, they should all be male as none are roux, the Rosettas could go either way as one of the hens is roux. Which also means the cream/gray replacement hen I just kept back (5 weeks old) is actually a boy (a female should express roux), but I’m still guessing here, I’m guessing the cream/gray birds are blau Italian but they need to express roux to be that orange beige color, hopefully I’ll know more in a few weeks.
But purple? Blau (blue) and roux (red) make purple right? And chicken people call stuff lavender, so why not? Makes about as much sense as blau autumn amber! It is definitely a multigenetic phenotype, I’ll play around with it some more and see if I can figure out which genes produce which variations, I’d love to reliably replicate the color though, so far I’ve only had 2 birds with the orange beige tinge. I’ll update this post as the chicks Feather out and I know more.
My personal guess was a Blau Italian, but as I hadn’t hatched anything even faintly resembling another one or even more than one other Blau birds of any pattern (and I have a Blau hen too so that one wasn’t unexpected) I wasn’t convinced. I flirted with German pastel, some multigenetic combination, even ginger, but nothing made sense. I finally tossed him in with four Rosetta hens (one roux carrier, possible Italian carriers) and just hatched the eggs a week ago. I have a tentative diagnosis! 9 chicks hatched, I have one plain Italian, 2 plain pharaohs, 2 white/cream chicks that will look vaguely like dad, and 4 Rosettas that are feathering out gray and/or roux.
Doing some math and rough genetic guesswork, dad looks to be a homozygous roux, heterozygous Blau and Italian (a blau autumn amber). My last hatch of general flock eggs had 2 blau birds and two cream/gray birds as well (max 2 eggs from a blau hen, ergo I have a male throwing blau and as my 2 other males most certainly aren’t I can guess who it is). We’ll see if my guess about the roux is right in a few weeks when my 3 feather sexable birds can be sexed, they should all be male as none are roux, the Rosettas could go either way as one of the hens is roux. Which also means the cream/gray replacement hen I just kept back (5 weeks old) is actually a boy (a female should express roux), but I’m still guessing here, I’m guessing the cream/gray birds are blau Italian but they need to express roux to be that orange beige color, hopefully I’ll know more in a few weeks.
But purple? Blau (blue) and roux (red) make purple right? And chicken people call stuff lavender, so why not? Makes about as much sense as blau autumn amber! It is definitely a multigenetic phenotype, I’ll play around with it some more and see if I can figure out which genes produce which variations, I’d love to reliably replicate the color though, so far I’ve only had 2 birds with the orange beige tinge. I’ll update this post as the chicks Feather out and I know more.
