White button quail from normal parents!

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smallbluejellybean

smallbluejellybean

Songster
10 Years
Dec 13, 2009
597
20
143
Kings Park NSW Australia
This is so freaky to me, that I wanted to start a new thread.
Here in Australia we have a limited amount of button quail colours.
Mostly normals and silvers, and occasionally caramel.
I know there are a few people in other states that have a few more colours, but nothing around where I live.
Both the parents have been breeding together for a few years now. Both are normal colour.
I also have breed silvers before too. So know very well what silver chicks look like.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this little guy.
A pure white chick among all the normal ones.
Out of 9 eggs all 9 hatched. These two parents are great at hatching their babies.
What do you think my chances are of getting another one?
 
With the same parent birds, fairly good. If you cross that one back to its parent (father or mother depending on its sex of course) the odds are pretty good you’ll get some white ones.

I’m nowhere near an expert on button quail, but it sounds like there are some recessive white genes hidden in the parents. If a bird has one copy of the recessive white gene you will never know it by looking. But if two recessive white genes pair up, they turn the bird white.

There is a button quail color calculator in this link, maybe 60% of the way down. You might like to play with it.

http://kippenjungle.nl/Overzicht.htm#kwartelcalculator
 
Ridgerunner said:
With the same parent birds, fairly good. If you cross that one back to its parent (father or mother depending on its sex of course) the odds are pretty good you’ll get some white ones.

I’m nowhere near an expert on button quail, but it sounds like there are some recessive white genes hidden in the parents. If a bird has one copy of the recessive white gene you will never know it by looking. But if two recessive white genes pair up, they turn the bird white.

There is a button quail color calculator in this link, maybe 60% of the way down. You might like to play with it.

http://kippenjungle.nl/Overzicht.htm#kwartelcalculator
Click to expand...
Thank you for that. I am trying to work out how it works. Have you ever used it? Not sure how to input what I want it to do.
 
Yeah, there is a learning curve with it, but another big problem is to figure out where to start with the genetics.

One key is that the dominant version of that gene starts with an upper case letter. For example, with Redbreasted you only need one gene for it to show up. If you have Rb,RB or Rb,rb either one, you will see the effect.

With Silver, you need both genes present for it to show up. If you have S,S or S,s you will not see it. You have to have both genes s,s for it to show up. That means the gene that causes an effect is recessive.

I’m pretty sure you are playing with recessive white, but it might get a bit more complicated since you have three options, Wh, wh, and whspl. If you have a bird that is Wh,Wh; Wh,wh, or Wh,whspl you are not going to see any white. But if you have a bird that is wh,wh or wh,whspl it will be white. That means wh is dominant over whspl since wh,whspl is white, not splash. Odds are really high you can ignore the whspl since it’s unlikely both wh and whspl will show up in the same flock, but with genetics it’s hard to know for sure. I’ll mention it just in case splash shows up later.

If one parent is Wh,wh and the other is Wh,wh you will only get a white bird when the wh,wh pairs up. Same if one is Wh,wh and the other is Wh,whspl. By the odds, 25% of the offspring should be white, but those are only odds on each individual bird. You’d have to hatch a lot of birds for those odds to mean a lot.

Messes with your mind doesn’t it, trying to keep it straight. You can look up Punnett Squares if you want. That’s a graphic way to look at the possibilities to help keep them straight. Or maybe this will help.

If both birds are Wh,wh, each will randomly give one of its genes to its offspring. If bird #1 gives a Wh, bird #2 will give either a Wh or wh so you wind up with WH,Wh or Wh,wh and you will not see the white. But if bird #1 gives a wh, bird #2 still randomly gives a Wh or wh, so you might end up with wh,Wh and you will not see the white or you might end up with wh,wh and you will see white. So the odds of what you will get are:

25% Wh,Wh and no white shows
50% Wh,wh and no white shows
25% wh,wh and you get a white bird.

So change the formula for each parent to Wh,wh and hit calculate cross. You’ll see the 75% -25% results.

Good luck.
 
Thanks Ridgerunner for explaining that. It seems if I breed back to either parent, depending on the sex of course, I will have 25% chance of another white one. I am hoping its a girl, because I have had her mother for 4 years and mated her with other males, but her father I had only added a year and half ago and so I suspect the white gene came from him and not her because she has never had anything but normals.
He has also mated with my caramel and she has just started sitting on her nest, so hopefully something will come of that.
Here in Australia we have caramel, but I suspect its probably the same as cinnamon in the US.
I will just have to wait and see.
This genetic stuff is so interesting, but still nature can throw up some surprises once in awhile.
 

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