Hobbyist bird breeding farm in Liege Province, Belgium
Birds
Through the years, I selected a strain of US Red-breasted cinnamon Chinese painted quails (Coturnix chinensis) producing particularly high qualitative males, displaying a very large and intense red coloured breast.
The above-pictured specimen is probably one of the best male bird I produced during the season 2020.
He was pictured on November 22th, 2020. Enjoy!
Three young European quails (Coturnix coturnix) from breeding pair No.6.
The pictures were taken on June 6th, 2020.
We already clearly can see on the pictures the difference between the sexes by the pectoral pattern.
After multiples generations of crossing and selection, I finally reached during this breeding season 2020, to produce a nice complete black-headed female of the well known recessive US Red-breasted colour-mutation.
I used males from my black-breasted strain and female from the Silver “Graukopf” strain of my german friend Norbert K.J. Geißler.
The pictures under are the best female I produced this season, and I am very proud of the result.
In 2021, I will try to fix this characteristic and produce more offspring of equivalent (or better) quality.
More pictures of the same female-bird: (update February 6th, 2021)
Young European quails (a male and a female) after the first moult. Breeding season 2020.
They are offspring of the breeding pair no.6.
Nice shaped and colored little birds.
This is exactly the ‘type’ of birds I like and that Im trying to select.
I made the under-reported pictures to clearly show you the difference between the “pearl” colour-mutation of the Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) and the Mexican speckled bobwhite (Colinus mexicanus).
I pretty know that some scientists consider that the Mexican bobwhite is a mutation of the Northern bobwhite that appeared in the wild.
In fact, the intercrossing of these species produce chicks of both phenotypes, without alternation of the type and I personally think that those scientists are right…. but this is not the subject of this post…
So, I made a few pictures of two females to let you see the different pattern on the back and also on the head. I will try to take the time to take the same pictures with males too.
Have a look!
A pretty dark-coloured female of US red-breasted cinnamon Chinese painted quail.
This bird is born in my aviaries during the breeding season 2020, the pictures were taken on July 5th, 2020.
This female is already destined to reproduce the next breeding season and will integrate a duo composed of a solid wild coloured US red-breasted male and a dark US red-breasted silver female.
The birds above pictured are two young females of the Chinese painted quail in colour-combination golden-pearl Fallow: this is the combination of the dominant mutation pearl and the recessive gene Fallow.
Those birds are born in my aviaries at the beginning of the breeding season 2020 and result from parents carrier of the gene Fallow.
They are strong and heavy birds.
In the spring of the breeding season 2020, I hatched a very pale Fallow chick that after a few weeks resulted to be red-breasted ivory. This is the combination of 4 recessive colour-mutations on the same phenotype: red-breasted, silver, brown (cinnamon) and Fallow.
This combination produces a very pale silver bird practically without markings on the back and with an extremely light orange breast.
I imagine that such a colour-combination on a female should produce an even lighter coloured bird.
I let you enjoy the pictures!
The birds above pictured are two nicely marked females of the Chinese painted quail.
They are also carriers for the “Fallow”-gene aka “pink-eyed dilute” firstly discovered in 1999 and reinforced/established by Garrie J.LANDRY, in Louisiana, U.S.A.
These two females will be used in 2021 with pure Fallow birds to build up a new breeding line.
I toke the pictures on June 1st, 2020.
Some juvenile of genetically pure Chinese painted quail.
Those birds come from pure wild breeding pairs that carry no mutation inside their genotype.
Pictures were taken on May 24th, 2020.
