King Quail Mutations

[Darren_T]

Hi all I a have a question , I have brought a pair of King's , I don't know how old they are but they are on their fourth clutch of eggs. The first two times they hatched five young but they all died, Then the third time only one hatched out of the five but died again. Can anyone help me out , In what I'm doing wrong ? I don't want to lose any out of this forth clutch , Would any of the finches attack them ? Its a large aviary with five Zeb's , one Star finch and a pair of Cubans. Any help would be great.

[Diane]

It is possible the cock is killing them. Next lot of babies take the cock bird out and leave the hen to raise them. If you do a bit of a search on the forum quite a few members take the male away just to be sure.

[Quail Dale]

Its been a long time since I had a male king quail kill the young but it dose happen, If you watch when they are hatching you would see if the male is killing them.
But it could be that the young are not keeping up with the hen, so you are best to confine the hen with the young in a small area so the hen cant go to far away.
The finches would not killing them.
Also can the chicks get to the water and feed?

Dale

[Quail Dale]

the cockbird can be split to cinnamon and still produce cinnamon hen offspring with a normal hen partner... sex linked genes are the opposite in birds than humans, so it sounds like you just have a split cinnamon cockbird to me. if you DID produce a male cinnamon, then it would be a different form of cinnamon. but i haven't heard of this before.

I do now how mutations work, and they DID produce a "cinnamon" looking cock bird. The hen will be bred to a normal male and then the cock birds from this pair will be bred to normal hens to see if it is a cinnamon or not.
I could bred her with a cinnamon male but the only cinnamon looking ones I have could be the recessive brown and it wouldn't prove any thing, but if I find a cinnamon male I may try it.

Dale

[Darren_T]

Thanks guys for all the help , I will try moving the cock birds and see what happens, I'll let you's know how it goes. Cheers

[finchbreeder]

As a breeder of King Quail in all their mutations for the last 30 years I have been following this thread with considerable interest. The Original Australian King Quail Cinnamon is a recessive mutation. This has been confirmed by a number of record keeping breeders over many years. More recently it appears a sex linked cinnamon may have also appeared. More records and breeders who keep records will hopefully be able to confirm this soon. Read your next newsletter for more on this subject. From my breeding records and those of a number of other long term breeders of these lovely little birds I have put together a basic genetic guide with observations.
LML

[Quail Dale]

That is interesting that your "Cinnamons" have been recessive, as all the ones I've had over the years have been sex-linked. The first cinnamon that I breed about 16 years ago was a female and she was sex-linked. I did think when I worked out what I was breeding was a recessive mutation is that they my have been wide spred and that not many people had work out they were two mutations.

The reason I don't like calling the recessive mutation a cinnamon is that I got most of my mutation information from A Guide to Colour Mutations & Genetics in Parrot. This book covers most mutations. And it has a part to help name mutations, but for a mutation to be call cinnamon is must be sex-link and following the steps with the recessive mutation it end up saying its a brown mutation.
This book is not just for parrot breeders as the information can be use for all birds including finches, quail and doves.


I had a bloke turn up to day trying to find a white king quail to bred with his white male, and yes it was a white, I did keep asking that. And no he would not sell it.

Dale

[finchbreeder]

When the original cinnamons were bred the names fawn and cinnamon were both used indiscriminately. To be accurate as you so correctly say the recessive bird should be called fawn and the sex linked should be called cinnamon. This would comply with what has been the norm in other birds. Unfortunately, we have been calling them cinnamon for that long now that I doubt it can be rectified. Maybe we will need to do what the budgie breeders did with yellow face. Have type 1's and type 2's. And the fact that they are not visually discernable causes problems too. Keep in contact with the guy with the white. Maybe you can both do chick swaps for outcrossing and strenghten what you each have in whites.
LML

[Quail Dale]

The Fawn and Cinnamon mutations are one mutation not two, but people started calling birds that have white ground colour like Zebra finches and Diamond dove fawn and birds that have yellow ground colour like Star finches cinnamon.
It starts to be a problem when you name a colour wrong and then the true mutation appears. I did a quick Google for cinnamon star finches and came up with a article about the recessive fawn and sex-linked cinnamon. For a mutation to be call Fawn/Cinnamon it MUST be sex-linked and can not produce grey or black in any colour shade. The "Fawn" star could be a dilute. So until someone writes a book about all the mutations in finches, it's just going to be to confusing.

My King quail are most likely the recessive brown mutation or a dilute mutation but until I breed more and I will not know.

Dale

[thehammer]

The Fawn and Cinnamon mutations are one mutation not two,

Dale

I agree with this- just seems to be colour variations.




The original Cinnamon King Quail mutation was sex-linked.