Considering the difficulty to find good quality documentation about hybrids from the different quails species and also because of the unfortunately growing amount of unscrupulous breeders producing inappropriate crosses solely for commercial purposes, it seemed very useful to me to build a small personal image database of quail hybrids.
It helps me to :
1) Learn how those hybrid birds look like
2) Spot hybrid birds offered for sale (and not buy them)
I carried out several hybridization that I found interesting to experiment and pictured the produced birds.
None of these offspring are ever sold
This work will take me several years because hybridization is often difficult to achieve on the first attempt.
Year 2018:
I did not directly start to hybridize different species together but I firstly crossed two mutations of the Northern bobwhite species (Colinus virginianus) to discover how the offspring would look like.
In fact, I crossed together the “Tennessee red” and the “Mahogany barred” mutations and was very surprised to discover that it produced a very recognizable offspring clearly showing a mix of the characteristics of both varieties.
Unfortunately, a dramatic incident caused by a wild animal one night in early 2019 put an end to my hopes of immortalizing these beautiful hybrids birds I isolated in individual cages a few days before the planned photo-shooting session.
Year 2019:
Will be put to good use to try some other hybridization experiments, always for a totally informative purpose:
1) Harlequin quail (Coturnix delegorguei) x European quail (Coturnix coturnix)
• Hybrid chicks, born June 22nd, 2019: HERE
• Hybrid young birds approximately 2 months old: HERE
2) Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) ‘Sparkley’ mutant x Harlequin quail (Coturnix delegorguei)
• Hybrid chick, born September 7th, 2019: HERE
• Hybrid chick, 45 days old: HERE
3) Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) x Chinese painted quail (Coturnix chinensis)
4) California valley quail (Callipepla californica) x Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus)
5) Purchased hybrids birds resulting from the mating between Masked bobwhite (Colinus virginianus ridgwayi) and Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus): HERE
Year 2020:
Will be the year of some new experiments:
coming soon.