Eggs Blue on The Inside? Celadon Genetics?

[MarsQuails]

Hello everyone!

I’m currently the owner of five gorgeous little Coturnix quail.
My first one was from shipped celadon eggs, and we only had one rooster hatch from them unfortunately.

After he hatched, I ordered some chicks from Myshire farm, and currently we have three hens and one rooster from them.
They’re now all old enough to be laying, and I noticed today one hen seems to be laying eggs that are blue on the INSIDE, but normal brown and speckly on the outside. All the others have eggs that are white on the inside

I’m breeding them to my celadon hatched rooster regardless, but I also would really like celadon layers in my flock.
Since one hen is laying internally blue eggs, does this mean she carries the gene, and their chicks could potentially lay celadon eggs?

Thanks everyone!
I originally wanted celadon layers, but the eggs don’t seem to be as obtainable right now, and I was already planning on hatching my own eggs, but I would like to know more about the genetics involved with the celadon gene!

 

[Quailobsessed]

I'm pretty sure all (or at least most) of my girls lay eggs that are blue on the inside. I thought that's just how the eggs naturally are.

 

[Kale the Quail]

if you breed your celadon rooster with a female that lays totally normal eggs then you might get a celadon laying bird.

 

[BESSIE THE QUAIL]

yeah, i bread my pharoh female with a male and got a celedon layer.

 

[FloorCandy]

It’s my understanding that a female who is het for celadon can lay eggs blue on the inside. This means she has 1 copy of the celadon gene, and 2 copies make them lay blue. I’ve also heard that not all hets are blue inside layers, so the white inside ones could also be from hets. I don’t know what the percentage of hets with blue inside shells is, it’s hard to find info, a lot of people give conflicting info. I’ve been curious, and received 30 blue eggs and 6 believed to be blue inside. I have them incubating, and I’m going to try to band them with different colors to track their progeny. The 6 regular spotted eggs, based on photos and other eggs I’ve seen at the grocery store, seem to have a faint bluish hue. Like they’re foggy looking not crisp brown spots.

If your rooster came from a blue egg(inside and out) he will be a carrier at bare minimum. To know for sure you would breed him to a blue layer and if 100% of hens produced lay blue, he has 2 copies.

Laying of blue eggs only tells you the hen is carrying 2 copies of celadon, if the sire rooster was het, the chick in the blue egg will have a 50% chance of being just a carrier vs. full.

this could be totally wrong, I spent a bunch of time looking into celadon before I bought eggs, and I read so many ebay descriptions, website articles I followed from who knows where, but I did see several accounts of people claiming eggs with internally blue shells are layed by hens carrying the gene.

 

[FloorCandy]

I'm pretty sure all (or at least most) of my girls lay eggs that are blue on the inside. I thought that's just how the eggs naturally are.

do you breed them, or purchase new eggs each season? I would be super curious if you breed your blue shell layers together over a couple generations if you would get celadon layers. It’s hard to know without knowing the Roos status.

 

[Fenrisulfr]

I just heard of quail celadon eggs a few weeks ago, as a big german breeder anounced to sell celadon splitter eggs (pure roo on non celadon hens, gotta trust them).
This just made me curious.

As far as I understood, you can only identify roo's by breeding, selecting, calculating and try and error, as the gene is rezessive.
Best way is to set the splitters on the known pure father to get statisticly 50% pure celadon layers. A really hard way, which makes me understand, why they are so expensive.

Even if you get blue Celadon eggs from the breeder, you don't know, if the roo was pure.
But you definately know, that you have splitters, as the hens are pure.

Whether the blue shell inside is a marker of a split Celadon gene is OR the ability to lay blue shell and to lay without or less speckles are on two different genes, I don't know.

But as there are also white quail eggs whitout speckles, my dedicated guess is that Celadon quail egg mutation are on two diffrent gene pairs, one for the blue shell, one for the lack of camoflage.

Fact is, that my quails indeed are laying eggs with white and blue egg shells inside:

So anyway, ... blue egg shells is probably the first step to Celadon eggs.

 

[FloorCandy]

I can’t quote the last post for some reason, but it definitely makes a lot of sense. My blue eggs are very smooth but they have some gritty specks on them, like a few grains of sand are glued to them. The ones I was told are blue inside are very smooth.

however I would think that would produce some normal eggs, white eggs without camo, blue eggs without camo, and blue with camo. Unless it’s linked, like harlequin in dogs, maybe the naked egg gene only visually surfaces in cunjunction with the blue shell or something else entirely that occurs coincidentally with the gene. I haven’t heard of people getting white eggs with no camo when breeding celadons, but maybe people just choose to eat those eggs to keep it out of the line.

does anyone know if anyone has done, and published, research on these genes, and maybe have links to read more about it? I’m super interested in genetics, I’ve seen some very detailed genetics posts on here about chickens, so maybe there’s more quail info out there? I assume the big name breeders know this info, but keep it a family secret so to speak.

 

[Quailobsessed]

do you breed them, or purchase new eggs each season? I would be super curious if you breed your blue shell layers together over a couple generations if you would get celadon layers. It’s hard to know without knowing the Roos status.

I let them breed when they want to. I'm trying to encourage broodiness (I had one broody last breeding season).

 

[MarsQuails]

@Fenrisulfr
This is what mine look like!
My blue inside eggs are a little lighter in colour , but I could see a distinct difference between the white and the blue.

Thank you everyone for the help!
Like I said, I’m going to breed them anyway, so I guess we’ll see in a couple of months when their chicks are laying age!