An update on the great quail project!
I am coming up on the end of the feathering portion of the major genetics project I've been working on for the last two years, to produce jumbo wild type celadon quail. This stage of the project has been focused on making birds with the wild color and pattern, which is something that doesn't exist as a homozygous celadon line yet- there may been individual WT ce birds out there, and there may even be a wild type celadon line out there, but not one in the public eye that is for sure WT and not sex-linked brown. And there's definitely not a jumbo line of them.
I've had to take several lines and add them together. My celadon line (CE), my jumbo SLB line (SLB), my cali friend's celadon line (EVB), a wild type het roux line from wisconsin (WT), and a clean wild type line from tennessee (TOF), which thankfully had one male that was het celadon.
I kept one breeding pen of pure TOF birds. These are all full, clean wild type birds, no feather mutations.
I crossed the EVB line to itself, which gave me some wild-pattern but questionably wild color celadons. I crossed the wild pattern EVB with the het celadon TOF male, which created the EVX line. The EVX line produces wild type celadon hens. Yay!
I crossed the WT line with the SLB line, which gave me Roux hens (FWT). I put two TOF roosters over those roux hens, which is the TOX line- the TOX pen produces wild type hens, and wild type het roux males.
I crossed another WT male to my CE line, which gave me all het EB, het celadon birds, half of which were also roux. I saved JUST the roux birds, and those birds make up the CEX line. The CEX pen produces Roux EB, Roux het EB, and roux pharaoh (RP) birds. 50% of the RP birds are hens, and 25% of those RP hens should lay blue. These are roux celadons.
I also kept one roux male from this group, and put him over the SLB hens, to produce a sex-linked breeding group (SL). The SL group produces SLB males and roux hens, making them sexable as soon as they hatch. This has nothing to do with the project, but it's neat.
I then took a pharaoh EVB male and put him over four RP hens, to create the ER line. This is the stage I'm finally on at this moment. The first ER eggs hatched within the last 2 weeks, and there SHOULD be a male in that group that is SLB het roux AND celadon.
I will be taking this male, and putting him back over the roux celadon hens, to produce a roux celadon male.
This roux celadon male will be crossed over the EVX wild type celadon hens I'm currently growing out. That will give me wild type het roux males, which can be crossed back over more EVC wtce hens, which will finally give me wild type celadon males. Unfortunately, I will still have to test breed a handful of those males (half a dozen should do), to find a couple that don't throw roux hen offspring.
Those will be the males I need, and I will be able to put those over WTCE hens and finally have my wild type celadon line. Then it's just a matter of spending a little time selecting for size and egg color and type to improve the line!
The quail in the photo above is an anomaly.... it's a fawn, from the EVB x CE group. As it turns out, EB can hide fawn! I didn't know that. Always learning stuff!