What color is my quail baby??

[kurby22]

You would see speckles if he’s a full wild pattern. I think he’s male. The next bird definitely has roux, and it looks like silver also, and looks to be male.

Here’s the thing about GPC and SSC, it’s so difficult to know your flavor of gray. GPC is like a wide variety of traits. I’m pretty sure fee originated in GPC, but is often found in SSC groups. I think GPC brings other grays like Blau (blue), and lavender. Those colors interact with each other, roux, fee and anything else, to create things like la Creme, platinum etc.

Lavender is recessive, and seems to most often be wild patterned, which I guess is probably just the preference of the breeders. I don’t have lavender, but you can easily determine if you have lavender by breeding it to a non gray bird that you know doesn’t carry any gray at all, if you get any grays, it isn’t lavender because it needs a copy from each parent.

I was told by the breeder of some eggs I received this year, that blue or Blau have dark legs. I crossed the dark legged male I kept, with a group of hens, 2 of which were my Tibetan and scarlet celadon hens, so I could easily identify the eggs for my test. The 2 celadons have no SSC, proven thru many generations, I crossed them to the gray with dark legs and got many gray birds, so he’s definitely not lavender. None of my SSCs have dark legs, even solid silver range patterns with almost no pied. All of the gray offspring of the new gray male have dark legs, even the tuxes have dark areas on their legs and toes.

My next step will be to cross him to some SSC hens, and see if I get any double silvers, if I do, I’ll know he’s got SSC, but could have Blau and SSC. It’s a lengthy journey, but he’s made some lovely chicks. It’s like a hurricane here now, so I can’t take a pic, I’ll try to remember when it clears up, but I have 1 chick that is a cross of my blue boy and a sparkly hen who is dark black with small brown bands, very pretty. Well, their chick looks kind of like, imagine a pansy fee, but instead of white underneath, it’s Smokey gray. I’m hoping this holds up as it ages, it’s only about 3 weeks.

Damn I hope they’re not both males Quail genetics are crazy messy haha, not sure unless I’m hatching huge amounts if I’ll ever really get it figured out! Definitely share the chick when you can if you don’t float away! I’d love to see it!

 

[kurby22]

You would see speckles if he’s a full wild pattern. I think he’s male. The next bird definitely has roux, and it looks like silver also, and looks to be male.

Here’s the thing about GPC and SSC, it’s so difficult to know your flavor of gray. GPC is like a wide variety of traits. I’m pretty sure fee originated in GPC, but is often found in SSC groups. I think GPC brings other grays like Blau (blue), and lavender. Those colors interact with each other, roux, fee and anything else, to create things like la Creme, platinum etc.

Lavender is recessive, and seems to most often be wild patterned, which I guess is probably just the preference of the breeders. I don’t have lavender, but you can easily determine if you have lavender by breeding it to a non gray bird that you know doesn’t carry any gray at all, if you get any grays, it isn’t lavender because it needs a copy from each parent.

I was told by the breeder of some eggs I received this year, that blue or Blau have dark legs. I crossed the dark legged male I kept, with a group of hens, 2 of which were my Tibetan and scarlet celadon hens, so I could easily identify the eggs for my test. The 2 celadons have no SSC, proven thru many generations, I crossed them to the gray with dark legs and got many gray birds, so he’s definitely not lavender. None of my SSCs have dark legs, even solid silver range patterns with almost no pied. All of the gray offspring of the new gray male have dark legs, even the tuxes have dark areas on their legs and toes.

My next step will be to cross him to some SSC hens, and see if I get any double silvers, if I do, I’ll know he’s got SSC, but could have Blau and SSC. It’s a lengthy journey, but he’s made some lovely chicks. It’s like a hurricane here now, so I can’t take a pic, I’ll try to remember when it clears up, but I have 1 chick that is a cross of my blue boy and a sparkly hen who is dark black with small brown bands, very pretty. Well, their chick looks kind of like, imagine a pansy fee, but instead of white underneath, it’s Smokey gray. I’m hoping this holds up as it ages, it’s only about 3 weeks.

Also had to share this one, cuz I think it’s really pretty. It’s like partly Pansy almost…mixed with Rosetta on a Tuxedo :-D

 

[Nabiki]

Also had to share this one, cuz I think it’s really pretty. It’s like partly Pansy almost…mixed with Rosetta on a Tuxedo :-D

That one is a grau fee tux.

 

[kurby22]

That one is a grau fee tux.

Ahhh okay! What a pretty combination! I like the big black bars

 

[FloorCandy]

Damn I hope they’re not both males Quail genetics are crazy messy haha, not sure unless I’m hatching huge amounts if I’ll ever really get it figured out! Definitely share the chick when you can if you don’t float away! I’d love to see it!

Here’s the one I was talking about. It’s tux, so basically white everywhere you can’t see in the pic.

I hope it’s a hen!

 

[kurby22]

Here’s the one I was talking about. It’s tux, so basically white everywhere you can’t see in the pic.
View attachment 2825676
I hope it’s a hen!

Wow! That is a beautiful color!! How awesome I hope it’s a hen too!!

 

[kurby22]

Okay I have another question about colors/gender! I have looked at male Italians and male Manchurians a bunch and there’s clearly a red mask on both colors, and no red mask on the hens. SO! Is this a hen? And is it Manchurian or Italian I feel like it looks like a hen but she has no real obvious speckles. So I was thinking Manchurian?

 

[FloorCandy]

That ones a tough call. I’m guessing male. With manchurian, hens do seem to have more speckles than Roos. But it’s hard to say if it’s a manchurian hen with a lot of speckles, or an Italian with a small amount of speckles. The black head markings are feminine, but the bald chest is masculine. Because Italian is incompletely dominant, you can get what many people call speckled Italian by crossing an Italian to a wild pattern. The speckled Italian will have more speckles than a normal Italian, because the wild pattern bleeds thru more. Then crossing the speckled Italian back into Italians or manchurians will produce offspring with a variety of speckling levels. Once you cross Italian into other patterns, you get a variety of partial Italian offspring.

 

[kurby22]

That ones a tough call. I’m guessing male. With manchurian, hens do seem to have more speckles than Roos. But it’s hard to say if it’s a manchurian hen with a lot of speckles, or an Italian with a small amount of speckles. The black head markings are feminine, but the bald chest is masculine. Because Italian is incompletely dominant, you can get what many people call speckled Italian by crossing an Italian to a wild pattern. The speckled Italian will have more speckles than a normal Italian, because the wild pattern bleeds thru more. Then crossing the speckled Italian back into Italians or manchurians will produce offspring with a variety of speckling levels. Once you cross Italian into other patterns, you get a variety of partial Italian offspring.

This is my problem haha. I do have one that looks like this one, but it’s head is getting very rust colored…so that was the only reason I leaned towards hen. Silly birds don’t cooperate at all do they?

 

[FloorCandy]

This is my problem haha. I do have one that looks like this one, but it’s head is getting very rust colored…so that was the only reason I leaned towards hen. Silly birds don’t cooperate at all do they?

I haven’t had any Italian or manchurian hens with solid red or brown heads, just the males, but I have had males that did not have the solid head, and had markings very much like what is traditionally the more feminine look.

Here’s a thread I made when a speckly chested bird I thought was a hen started to crow:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-male-with-chest-spots.1445991/#post-24031884