white quail chick

[CircleT]

I have golden and normal brown colored coturnix. They are not penned together. I keep gold with gold and brown with brown. I do not keep the eggs seperated during incubation. I had a batch hatch today which was my normal mix of golds and browns, but, there is one chick that is solid yellow which i am assuming will turn out to be white. Any ideas how i got one white chick?

 

[Sycamore27]

Are your birds first generation stock? That is to say, did you hatch them from birds your bred or buy them as eggs/adults? If they aren't first generation birds how many generations back have you kept the stock?

If they are first generation some likely had an all white parent. I'm not that informed yet on quail color genetics but I believe breeding a golden with a bird of any other color is supposed to yield a certain percentage of goldens and a certain percentage of birds of the other parents color (or other colors back in the pedigree). I have heard that golden is a terminal gene, one copy of the gene creates a golden but two copies results in fetal death, therefore good breeders mix their stock to increase hatch rate and increase the stability of future hatches.

I'm sure others have the numbers and further details on golden genetics, but I would suspect that is what is at play here. I think if your browns had whites in their lineage they would turn out tuxedos before they would have a solid white pop up.

It'd be great to see a picture if you can get one!

Cheers,
Jessie

 

[CircleT]

I purchased these breeders as eggs, guess i got some crosses. The two chicks in the pics are from the same breeders.

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[veggiecanner]

With the rabbits every once in awhile we would get a mismarked bunny.
Even though we were breeding pure breds. Some where in the back ground some one had bred in another bred or even a mutt. and then continued with the pure bred strain. we would put that one in the freezer and act like it didn't happen.
The last breed I had was a rare breed so they used another breed to reproduce the few they had then bred the corectly colored off spring from that back to the few specimens they did have. After a few generations they were consitered pure bred again. But would throw a mismarked one every once in awile.
Thing is if you bred any of the ones with the funky back grounds together their genes would match up and you would get lots of mismarked ones.
Some breeders also did this to add atributes from one breed to another,such as good shoulders, better fur or a wide butt.

 

[FeatheredObsessions]

I think Sycamore27 probably has the right thought going on with the golden genetics being the culprit

 

[chickenfreak101]

I purchased these breeders as eggs, guess i got some crosses. The two chicks in the pics are from the same breeders.

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So cute!

 

[CatFishTony]

no not really! more of a mix of strains. all are variations of the basic type of Coturnix
no matter what hue they are.you have a blood line of quail coturnix were the strain of color is not fixed as of yet.
in a gene pool were a mutation shows up you must either select for the hue/trait or not select for it
to get a blood line to breed true to type ie here the case is color phase some were in this family line
a mutation and a recessive gene have been captured.
but in recent years, an incompletely dominant albino gene has shown up
if i understand what i have read.LOL
TAKE ALL THIS WITH A GRAIN OF SALT SO TO SPEAK
as i am a tomato breeder just learning the life cycle and color phases/strain of coturnix quail.
the gold blood line you paid for should have gave you wheat/gold birds if stable for hue at F7 OR MORE.
when crossed to a normal wild hue pattern you get 2:1 outcome.
BUT at some point in this family line the gold color phase that was locked in and stable
also had a mutation blood line or English White that has this recessive gene.
OR someone has done this on purpose to ADD new blood to the line to stop
in-breeding as this is to be avoided at all cost or you end up with a strain
of JUNK so to speak holding many genetic set backs lock in and your flock will decrease in size
health egg laying ability and so on.
tony.

 

[CatFishTony]

also as stated above it is true a double set of the gold gene will for sure kill 25%
of the hatch.