Breeding Projects

Working Towards Truly Pure Colour Lines

Truly ‘pure’ colours in Chinese painted quail can be difficult to come by, as many lines have been mixed over time. As part of our ongoing breeding work, we are currently breeding out and refining each colour line (excluding golden pearl, which will be bred with a recessive gene due to its dominant nature and double lethal combination) so that, over the next year or two, they will stabilise and begin to breed true.

Developing a New stable Morph - Female Tux Red-Breast

Alongside this, our main focus, and a much bigger challenge, is working towards stabilising the tux expression of the pied gene, something that has not been reliably achieved before. We are combining this with the female red-breasted trait, with the aim of developing a consistent, healthy, and visually striking new morph.

Selected Pairing & Early Results

To support this, we’ve carefully selected our three best females and paired them with a proven pied red-breast male. All three hens selected have already produced tux female red-breasts with different males, which is very promising. Interestingly, the genes do not appear to interact the same way in males, as so far we have only hatched female tuxes and no tux red-breast males.

Interesting Behaviour Observations

Interestingly, the stunning male we've selected has not only proven himself in breeding but has also sat and hatched eggs alongside the hen. Older literature often suggests this behaviour doesn’t occur, but we’ve now observed it multiple times. We’ve also noticed that younger males frequently engage in egg rolling, much like the females, although they don’t actually sit, they will roll the eggs under themselves briefly and then go about their day.

Project Progress & Next Steps

Still early days, but we’re really excited to see how this line develops and whether we can achieve a stable, repeatable result in future generations. We’ll be sharing photos from each hatch along with our selection process as the project progresses.