While it COULD be a random mutation, that's exceedingly rare to just Happen and, practically speaking, it's more likely to happen in bloodlines that are in mass production facilities. This is due to two factors. One: numbers. People creating the most new baby quail are also creating the most chances for something to mutate. Two: feed quality. One of the number one factors in gene mutation is poor nutrition. It's PART of why we see so MANY mutations in captivity (the other biggest reason being that we foster an environment where they won't be eaten for not blending in right). And large-scale breeders are generally using whatever is cheapest, to make it worthwhile, and "whatever is cheapest" is not always what's best, or even actually complete nutrition.
For scale, my incubator holds about 600 quail eggs. That may seem like a lot. On average over the spring and summer, I hatch AROUND 80-150 birds every week. That may seem like a lot! But I also know of medium-scale breeders who hatch 500-1000 per week. And then there's large scale facilities whose hatches over the year total in the millions. When you see a pallet full of quail eggs in the Costco fridge, that's coming from facilities like that. I hatch January to October, so even if I was hitting the max amount i could hatch in a week (which is NOT the case), I would barely cross 6,000 birds. And I'm definitely not hitting that, I would guess it's more like 4,000ish given the winter months. While, statistically in a best-cast scenario I might have 6000 chances with the same kind of chance as anyone else, when mutation chance is less than one in a million, it's simply more likely to happen in a location that's got a million chances.
So, I would guess it's not de novo.
"Black" isn't one gene in quail. I mean, it IS, there is a gene called recessive black, but it's never been in the public's hands, so it's VERY unlikely to be that. The other black, the one developed by Rebecca Lynch, is supposedly a combination of 4 genes in homozygous form: extended brown, fawn, fee, and myrle. It also MUST be free of sex-linked brown (SLB).
This is a wild type quail with no mutations:
Extended brown extends the darkest part of the brown patterning from the back of the bird all over the bird, and eliminates the spine pattern and the paler chest, creating a fairly homogeneous looking brown bird. I couldn't quickly find a plain EB, but here's an EB of mine with a red factor gene, so you can see the pattern makes the whole bird one solid pattern of brown
Fee removes the red from a bird, leaving only black and yellow pigments. Here's two examples, the one on the right/second photo has been sunbleached, making the blacks less prominant and showing off the yellows.
Fawn changes the pattern again, and dilutes/removes browns, leaving reds, blacks, and yellows
And myrle is supposed to intensify blacks. Left is a homo EB bird with myrle, right is a homo EB without myrle.
Now. Technically I have EB, Fawn, and Fee in my breeding cages. THIS LINE is homo EB, and has had fawn and fee in it at some point. But fawn and fee are NOT recessives (nor is myrle); they show in single copy, even on EB birds. And genes that are not recessive are easy to clean out of a line- you simply take all the birds that have that visual trait, and remove them. Which is what I did.
The only two phenotypes I've been getting from these quail are these two:
And while the chick on the right IS darker, it's not black black. It is, I'm pretty sure anyway, the difference between an SLB EB and a wild type EB. Sex-linked brown is a sex linked gene that dilutes blacks to browner colors. This is why it can't be in a Black bird, because then the bird would not be black, it would be brown. Most of my CE line still are or carry SLB (it's part of what I'm cleaning out of their line).
Now, TO ME, Black quail in photos just look like a clean, darker Tibetan (homo EB). Which, y'know, I suppose they are! They're just that way because of a lot of extra genes. Which is probably why this one resembles that; because I've been selecting for clean, dark tibetans. It's possible that I missed cleaning out certain components (fee and fawn) and can't tell het myrle from no myrle (it COULD be that what I think is SLB vs WT is actually SLB vs myrle), and that I randomly got a Black.
My next step with these guys, after I've gotten what I can from them, is to actually clean them out. Once I have clean wild type celadons, I was going to put a male over the remaining EB hens, and try to properly clean the line of all extra genes. At that point, I'll be able to see if I missed anything, and go from there. Chances are good I just missed a gene in the cleaning process. It happens!
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