Quail Genes & Help With Genetic Ids

[Pipsnchicks]

On the beige (apricot?) bird, how do you tell the underlying pattern (pharoah or Italian)? I can see the EB in the gray bird but my Egyptian from this hatch doesn’t look anything like this one, actually looking at the barring on the apricot bird it almost looks EB? I have some chicks out of that pen (10 days old) with a pearl male and they are all coming in pearl or Italian (was hoping for some Blau!). I wondered about roux with that reddish top line and can’t find what roux does to Blau anywhere (purple!). What does fee do to Blau too? And then you combine them, my brain hurts! Thanks for your input, I’ll post a better shot of the bird in question plus my roux pharoah (no tux on this one!) for comparison.

I have some 10 day old pictures of these birds, have a gander and let me know what you think!

View attachment 3940852

So! It's the little yellow lines (the barring) on those wing coverts (the ones closest to the camera). Now, it could look very different in person, but those look like the typical pharaoh patterning from this angle. They also look slightly different from the "hackle" feathers up by the neck. The only way you get that lighter horizontal striping on each feather with EB is if you have Fawn enhancement, and EB will have consistent feathering all across the body. You won't see changes in the wing coverts like you would for pharaoh. That's the biggest thing that makes me think Wildtype base.

I will say, with the teenage pic, it does look like it is more blau than fee. It's hard because the lighting in both is very different.

What Roux does is it converts eumelanin (the black color) to pheomelanin (the red color). So it makes a very red bird.

Fee changes the pheomelanin (red color) and wants to delete all of it and make it shades of black and white. Fee and Roux obviously clash quite a bit because they want opposite things. So when you have both, you kind of meet in the middle with a dusky reddish beige color. (Egyptian Fee is one example). Fee with only one copy is less of a player, and will "lose" a bit more to Roux then with two copies, so you'll get more red coming through.

Blau is kind of in it's own land. It wants to just change all of the colors, eumelanin and pheomelanin, across the board, to a dusky grey. So when you mix it with Roux, it doesn't have to compromise too much to make greyish red color, and you'll usually get some cooler, blueish undertones. We also kind of ignore Blau in homozygous form too because it's the odd outlier and obviously not at play (they typically look almost all white).

Blau and Fee complement each other very nicely. Fee strips the red, and Blau makes it all a nice light grey tone. You'll get a slightly lighter bird with a nice grey and white patterning usually.

 

[Pipsnchicks]

View attachment 3940854
Scarlet (EB roux) bird from same hatch. This is my new wild theory: is the beige bird a roux EB plus possible fee and or Blau to fade out the color?

It could be Roux EB (Rosetta, as there's a few feathers you can see with a white center), it would definitely have Fawn enhancement and Fee/Blau though. See how this bird doesn't have that yellow horizontal striping in the wings? There's some lighter brown barring up in the neck, which is almost the opposite of the bird we first talked about, and a sign of fawn on EB.

If it were rosetta though, you'd get about half of the chicks to also have rosetta, so if you're getting just Italian and Italian fee, that's not quite it. Rosetta also is consistent in the pattern across the body - this one looks like it changes a bit (but it could be the angle).

 

[Pipsnchicks]

View attachment 3940855
This is the gray bird for comparison, again you get that barring.

This guy is completely EB (Rosetta) with Blau or silver and Fawn Enhancement. That barring here is caused from fawn, but notice how the patterning on his wings is consistently the same as the pattern across his back and breast (I say him but it could be a her). All of them have that same, uniform barring. Also, notice how the feet are darker. EB tends to give the quail brown skin through the shanks and toes. The more dilutions you add on top to strip the eumelanin though, the less likely you are to see the darker feet, which makes it hard.

 

[Pipsnchicks]

View attachment 3940856
This is the Egyptian from that hatch (pharoah roux plus possible fee). I’m trying to see the base pattern under all the dilution genes (haven’t even tried pansy etc yet!), any hints? Thanks again!

This gal definitely has fee! See how it's a much more muted brown color compared to a bright, brilliant red? That's the fee at play, diluting the pheomelanin. Het. Fee will leave some brown tones this shade, but tends to be a bit more patchy (i.e. some parts of the feather will be completely grey, other parts will be this shade of brown), whereas this bird has that lovely brown shade all the way through the colored portions of the feather.
This is also a pharaoh base.

For reference, here's a true Egyptian growing out compared to Pharaoh:

 

[Susan Skylark]

Thanks for all the info, really looking forward to whatever else you’re ‘hatching.’

 

[Susan Skylark]

Chicks hatching last night and today (2 left, 10 out) was doing a little mini study on turning and storage temp preincubation (not a large n!) and the results were surprising, not what I set out to investigate (no difference between groups) but rather my EB male is apparently a roux carrier. I’ve hatched 7 of his eggs, 3 known female, with no roux. Just hatched 7 more and 3 are roux! Two look like they’ll go scarlet, but the third is a puzzle, it’s a chocolate red color:

12 hours old, two obviously red chicks on the left, chocolate red on the far right. Indirect sunlight with some shadows.

Under the brooder light, darker chick middle top.

Obviously EB and I think roux but where does the brown come from? Fee and roux? Fawn enhancement? I know it is ridiculously early but I thought it was kind of cool! Thanks!

 

[Susan Skylark]

Here’s a better side by side. Both EB, both roux?, both likely white bellies, why is the left one chocolate, fee?

 

[Susan Skylark]

Checking out myshire farms catalog pictures their scarlet fee seem to be a sort of chocolate color so I think fee is the answer. Anybody want to write a field guide to day old quail chicks?

 

[Pipsnchicks]

View attachment 3947292
Here’s a better side by side. Both EB, both roux?, both likely white bellies, why is the left one chocolate, fee?

Very cool to see it play out! The slightly darker chick may be due to being homozygous for EB (Tibetan Roux instead of Rosetta Roux), if you've got some Rosetta or Tibetan hens in the mix. It could also be due to something else in there or being Roux instead of Ginger, etc. It's a bit too early to tell yet, that's what makes the chicks so hard!

I will say Myshire gets confused sometimes with his genetics, so his website may not be the best resource to use for genetic IDs. Great guy and loves quail, just gets the genes mixed around sometimes. I

 

[Susan Skylark]

I wasn’t going off myshires genetic info, just the color of the chicks in the picture, that’s what’s hard about all this is everybody says something different, thanks for putting together some solid data!