Selectively breeding buttons for friendliness?

[twrexus]

Has anyone had success breeding their button quail for friendliness or tameness? I just got my first pair. The female is calmer than the male but they're both pretty skittish, and I understand this is the norm for them. The breeder gave me some weird looks when I asked if there were any that were calmer than the rest, and mentioned wanting to breed for temperament lol.

I also breed rats and mice, and wild rodents are also pretty crazy but with time and effort, we have very calm, friendly rodents as pets.

Has anyone done this with button quail? They are just perfect in every way but I want them to be friendlier, or at least calmer, if possible. I plan to evaluate babies and just keep keeping back the ones that are most docile or even hopefully ones that might be curious about me, but I expect it to take a bit. I thought maybe someone here has already started the process and I could get a kick start!

 

[Fishsticks06]

Has anyone had success breeding their button quail for friendliness or tameness? I just got my first pair. The female is calmer than the male but they're both pretty skittish, and I understand this is the norm for them. The breeder gave me some weird looks when I asked if there were any that were calmer than the rest, and mentioned wanting to breed for temperament lol.

I also breed rats and mice, and wild rodents are also pretty crazy but with time and effort, we have very calm, friendly rodents as pets.

Has anyone done this with button quail? They are just perfect in every way but I want them to be friendlier, or at least calmer, if possible. I plan to evaluate babies and just keep keeping back the ones that are most docile or even hopefully ones that might be curious about me, but I expect it to take a bit. I thought maybe someone here has already started the process and I could get a kick start!

Well based on how people domesticated animals in the first place, selective breeding for desired traits will work.

 

[blackoaktammy]

Buttons are flighty little things. What I have started doing is hatching in small batches and handling them daily until they are about 6 weeks old. Nothing extravagant in the handling, I pick them up one by one, put them in a carrier, clean the cage, and put them back one by one with a little pet on the head. They are MUCH calmer, but not hand tame. I actually asked a similar question before - my Darth Vaders are insanely mean to their cage mates. I wanted to know if it was a trait of the color (mine are unrelated). I'm going to try to breed the aggression out if I can.

 

[twrexus]

Fishsticks06, the thing is, some animals cannot be domesticated. For example, zebras! They are so similar to horses, but they cannot be domesticated because of their particular temperaments. There's a list out there somewhere of the qualities an animal needs to have to be domesticated. Button quail, from what I've seen, have not been tried overly much to see if they can be made more friendly but it's worth a shot.

blackoaktammy, have you tried keeping back the friendliest ones? Have you noticed an improvement with time? Definitely things like aggression tend to have a genetic component, so I'm sure you could improve them within the bounds of the species. That's the hard part! I haven't seen anywhere that the bounds of the species has been tested. I did find a video on youtube of a young button quail that approaches the human hand in the enclosure and even walks inside the open fingers, and allows handling. Seems promising!

 

[blackoaktammy]

blackoaktammy, have you tried keeping back the friendliest ones? Have you noticed an improvement with time? Definitely things like aggression tend to have a genetic component, so I'm sure you could improve them within the bounds of the species. That's the hard part! I haven't seen anywhere that the bounds of the species has been tested. I did find a video on youtube of a young button quail that approaches the human hand in the enclosure and even walks inside the open fingers, and allows handling. Seems promising!

I'm slowly gathering the breeders together to start the project. The problem I'm running into is that there are so few breeders in my area, it's hard to get unrelated birds. I ordered eggs from out of state, and there looks to be a DV chick in the bunch. If it is, hopefully I can set up pairs in 6 weeks or so.

 

[Fishkeeper]

I'm pretty sure it's not that zebras can't be domesticated, but that it would be very difficult due to how they are now. It's just not practical to try and wrangle enough of them to breed, and it would take longer than other species because of how fierce they are. Even wild horses can be wrangled into cooperating if you get them as babies, but zebras are always ferocious. They aren't like horses at all in personality.

But yes, it should be possible to breed button quail for friendliness. It might be less friendliness and more tolerance of handling, though- I don't think most of them are ever going to enjoy being held. They're very small, and humans are big and rough and scary.

 

[PoultryAnna]

In my experience (as someone who likes to experiment) if you go to a forum and ask, "Could [thing that's never been done before] be done?" most people will tell you it can't be done. I used to listen to those people, but then I saw a trend where I'd give up on an idea and then 5-10 years later, that idea would be all the rage.

If you want to do something that's never been done before, you won't be able to ask anyone else how to do it. All anyone can tell you is what they or someone else has done. Make a concrete objective, testable variables, and keep records, that'll make it easier to monitor your progress. Then, if it's not worth the hassle or it's not fun anymore, quit if you want to. If it is fun, then keep going.

 

[Fishkeeper]

If anyone has access to a large number of mostly unrelated quail (to prevent inbreeding) and has the time/resources to house all the breeding stock and cull all the extras, I'm sure they could manage it. You'd be wanting to breed the least flighty ones, probably. I do wonder if breeding for less of a flight response could also end up removing any last bits of broody instinct that some of them could have, but most people hatch buttons in incubators anyway, so that'd be fine.