interesting article from Japan

I stumbled upon this by chance and thought I would share it. It's a paper from Japan written in English (thankfully). It describes some strains of quails. Most are obviously for research of genetic conditions, but some of the traits are related to colours. Interestingly several sex-linked/auto-sexing traits are listed (in page 12); brown/cinnamon (not sure if they are separate or same trait) and a form of albinism.

It also describes a strain S (silver) as incompletely dominant (page 4). It also says the central part of the retina lacks pigment. I wonder, are they describing the silver strain that Suz has? Suz does your silver bird's eyes look different from other birds?

http://www.angrin.tlri.gov.tw/apec2003/Chapter5JPQuail.pdf

interesting paper we thing we had some mutant colours and they all died . several where all yellow . not golden yellow.

I just re-read your post on that Rete. I thought initially you were talking about chicks, but the ones you lost were adults!

where did you get your yellow quail from?

I wonder if that is mutation that is often described as homozygote lethal (2 copies of the trait are lethal).

I asked Suz about this a while back, she's not noticed any eye problems/blindness with her silvers.

It describes a lack of pigment in part of the retina and not blindness or any other disability Emma. I just noticed the pic near the bottom and the bird described looks more whitish than silver. The eyes are a bit spookey too, not as pretty as Suz's birds.

The sex-linked "brown" and/or "cinnamon" seems to correlate to the cinnamons that Derek has been breeding. That appears to be sex-linked. So they are using it to create auto sexing quail chicks in Japan.

hi thanks for reply Andoy thats what we where thinking too . we also had a brown coloured one . another lethal.
we got them from a breeder where my husband worked . he was just an amatuer doing it in his spear time. we do thing he inter breed. has he didnt seemed bothered .
we think they where brother and sisters . not good . we have 2 chicks from them too, and they are both yellow , well one is n early white and has no chest feathers and looks very scruffy the other feathers dont seem right either.
they are 2 weeks old tomorrow will put pic up on here soon so you can see.thanks for making me feel better that is was nothink we did. and thinking along the same lines. as no one else seems to answer as they dont know. keef said hes never seen a yellow one. regrds rita.

A pic would be good Rete. There has been a bit of a debate about the lethal gold gene and it is often attributed to the gold known also as Italian. It seems to be quoted or misquoted in so many places. We suspected it was an urban myth, because homozygote Italians/golds apears to be possible and people report mating from Italian x Italian producing very consistently high fertility (in theory 25% shouldn't even hatch if it was leathal in double dose).

However, I've come across references after reference to the lethal gold gene in some scientific papers. I have a feeling your yellow birds might well be this strain. It doesn't necessarily explain the deaths, that might be some other congenital defect (from being inbred as you say) or even possibly disease. It is quite difficult to tell. I don't think they are dyed as that would fade after a few weeks.

If this yellow is the "fatal gold", I can understand why it's not popular.

Sorry - I didn't bother reading it (pdf was a faff when I was in a hurry), I found an article a while back that said they'd found a silver mutation a while back where the double led to blindness due to a problem with cells in the retina. Figured it was probably talking about the same thing.

LETHAL GENE. THOUGHT THIS MIGHT HELP EVERY HATCH I HAVE 2-3 WITH LEGS LIKE THIS, ONLY ON THIS COLOUR, YELLOW BUT WITH BLUE HIGH LIGHTS, THE REST TURN OUT SILVER & RANGE.I THINK I'M GETTING TO CLOSE TO SOMETHING.??????

are the parents silvers and ranges? that might be a recessive gene that both parent have and it's popping by chance Dave.

Silver hens & silver cocks, paired silver/ silver, silver/fawn, silver/gold, silver/range, Paired all different ways, still get the defect might even try with some COMMON ones, Going to cross silver young with Suzs splits.