Spiral Breeding Program for Coturnix Quail

An excerpt from the Shop Talk LIVE series on spiral or clan breeding with coturnix quail. We talk about setting up a spiral breeding program, selecting breeders and line breeding as a tool.
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[@Kd4stt.]

Hello from Etowah Tennessee. Our Southwest Gamebirds eggs are hatching out now, shout out to Michael for supplying these great hatching eggs! Somewhere around 30 eggs out of 60 so far, it is day 18!!! Needless to say we here at Muddy Water Farms are excited about our first quail hatch. This video is very important to us as we grow as a local egg supplier here in our area. Thanks again for your time Terry!

[@CoturnixCorner]

Congrats on the hatch. Yes, Southwest Gamebirds has some amazing hatching eggs, not to mention packaging.

[@jennifermills3698]

I've been reading about this for a while now. Looking at five clans I think im going to go ahead with it after watching your video. Thank you for you for laying it out

[@CoturnixCorner]

You're welcome and good luck with your 5 clan program.

[@smckee9063]

This is definitely something I want to do. Thank you.

[@CoturnixCorner]

Me too, def helping out with keeping track of genetics.

[@onionring1531]

Excellent, I've currently got one large cage that holds 30 coturnix quail and I was planning to build a second cage. With this information I'll now make the second cage segmented to isolate 4-5 breeding groups, that way I can spiral breed and not have to worry about inbreeding in future generations.

[@adamdaly5250]

Thank you for the great content you always put out. It’s easily taken in for someone just starting.

[@CoturnixCorner]

Thanks Adam, glad you enjoyed it.

[@NorthlandSLC]

Used this type of clan breeding for my rare beltsville turkeys but only kept hens in the clan. The best males were only used on the next clan in line and never with the females they came from. Female clans a, b, c. Males from a went to b, b to c, c to a etc in a circle. Never get lines closer than 4 generations but keep the improvements.

[@ShelbyAlyson]

This is just what I needed to learn! Thank you for sharing such valuable information!!

[@ralphcostello9203]

Really enjoyed the video

[@tommytextor6175]

Hello from Erin, Tennessee!

[@CoturnixCorner]

Hey Tommy.

[@ralphcostello9203]

Ralph from Tumble in South Wales UK.👍

[@dominiksteinbauer8231]

Hallo from germany. I love the idea of that method. Very good Video. Thank you. Now i make 6 clans of my gigant wilds(best hen 430grams) and hope i can push the weight and color for Shows.

[@Kulis747]

If I'm starting out, should I source the first generation of hatching eggs from three different suppliers? I'd like to eventually get up to 100 birds for meat and eggs.

[@kromsnavelfun]

Maybe it's in another video explained. But does putting a new rooster in a group of hens give problems and ho do you do that (same for daughterhens or do you replace the mothers in that case completely)?

[@soota6083]

Hello. Thank you for this info. Do you know how many clans it would take to never have issues with genetics? Is it better to go more than 5 or would it not matter at that point? Thanks.

[@Scoutdogs]

So you need an incubator and brooder for each clan? And how many do you start with for gen 1? How do you ensure those birds aren't bro/sis when they start?

[@rjcias1233]

Can this type of breeding be done if you don’t separate colours?

[@GrizzlyGroundswell]

Great vid, I breed hogs but looking to learn more about quail. In my hogs I use a similar 3 sow family lines but use the same boar to cover all 3 family lines based on the sow. After a litter or so I choose a better piglet boar from a different sow line and that becomes the father of the next few litters. So in 8 years I have had 6 boars with two of those being my current boars that have two distinct skull structures so a wrinkle in the system, but we worked hard to get to these two distinct traits. I can see how having roosters for each group would be ideal, but for these large hogs I would not have the space or infrastructure to keep multiple boars around. Although just guessing at the math, the rooster or boar for each family line would be endless, but I am wondering out loud if my approach isn't also endless or potentially if choices are made each generation to keep all the plates spinning. I have yet to have any two headed piglets but traits will pop up that are really interesting. I guess that is the fun of it all, chasing those promising sports. I think that is what is so attractive about quail is the short turn around time in breeding. You could have a lot of fun chasing this trait or that color! I have old spot hogs, so every litter is like a Rorschach test. I have had a lot of blessings with my breeding approach, so I am interesting in your thoughts and would it be applicable to a small holding of quail?

[@CoturnixCorner]

I can understand not wanting to keep three different boars, so your plan seems to be the best option. Glad you enjoyed the video.

[@TT-_-]

It would be benefitical for you to keep track of boar lines instead of/in addition to sow lines. Boars (male) have sex cromosomes X and Y, sows (female) X and X. All male offspring of a boar will have his Y chromosome, regardless of the mother. Any traits and mutations in or linked to the Y will be impossible to breed out of the male line. (This is totally different from quail sex chromosomes: roos (male) 2 same, hens (female) an odd pair, can't recall what letters people use for birds... unlike mammals, hen sex chromosome is thought to be too small to hold mutations.) Likely you have lost the diversity of the males by not keeping track of the boar lines, and have only 1 type of Y chromosome with whathever traits it has and gets... So you have 1 male line, and are continuously line/inbreeding it. IMO, it is high time to add an unrelated boar. If you are keeping a closed breeding group you should have a minimum of 3 boar lines, then you can use the spiral breeding technique for some generations (and you would need 5 lines for unlimited generations). Though with large livestock it's easier to buy occasional new animals than try to keep a closed breeding group...

[@GrizzlyGroundswell]

@@TT-_- Interesting thanks!

[@fiestacranberry]

Where do you get you 3 starting lines from? Do they need to be unrelated?

[@pf5249]

Are there ever any problems with introducing a new male to a group, and the hens not accepting him? Is clan breeding solely used with the same color hens & roos?

[@cosmic_parallax]

So if i buy 10 birds and breed a couple generations of birds off of them i technically need to buy 10 more in another cage to be able to start a spiral from the start or can i wing it and start a spiral program off of one group of birds to start off?

[@patriciaschuller4259]

Is it possible to get a copy of these charts? Ty

[@TheFun4uall]

Does Bringing new blood means new type of quail?

[@warzburch]

Similar to horizontal breeding

[@shannynwiggins8407]

I am relatively new about this and once I’d heard about the clan/cycle breeding, I realised I would need 6 different bloodlines for three clans. 3 bloodlines for females and 3 bloodlines for males. Is this right? Or could you split two bloodlines into three clans and then cycle the Roos? Thank you 🙏

[@CoturnixCorner]

Three different bloodlines would be optimal, but you can split bloodlines and still be fine.

[@shannynwiggins8407]

@@CoturnixCorner oh yes I get you! Ok thank you so much. It’s been mulling through my mind for weeks now and driving me a tad crazy lol.

[@jordanott5464]

If I bought 4 dozen eggs from the same breeder, 1 dozen to start, one more dozen a week later, then 2 dozen one week after that, should I consider that 1 bloodline?

[@TT-_-]

Yes. They will likely be from the exact same parents. Unless the breeder has a large operation and you trust them and work with them to get different genetics each time... the genetics are likely more diverse within a batch of eggs than between batches (eggs from 10 different hens in 1st batch, eggs from the same 10 hens in all the others). Note that getting eggs from different small breeders is not a guarantee they are not closely related. One might have bought all their birds from the other.

[@TT-_-]

I bought my hatching eggs from a very small operation. I got 30 eggs from 5 different hens, based on the appearance of the eggs. Quail eggs have such individual markings it was easy to group eggs originating from a small flock. I separated the eggs close to hatch, and marked the newly hatched chicks according to the "mother line", as in the eggs they were born from. Guessing their relatedness from plumage colours or size/growth rate would have been very inaccurate: smallest and largest were born from the same hen, and each hen had some english white chicks and some 'coloured' chicks (so both the parents were tuxedoes😆). I wasn't planning on keeping a roo from these eggs, but I had only roos from one "mother line" so I'm considering keeping 2 after all. (Chick mortality was high: 18 hatched, 5 died/were put down due to a respiratory illness). The 3 roos from that hen have (/had, culled the smallest brother already) slightly curly-looking feathers, might be just some wear and tear or it might be genetic... 2 brother roos would enable me to cross them to new unrelated birds and check if it passes on, with uncle-niece crosses instead of father-daughter....

[@kenjiro2676]

Best to buy from different breeders to maintain genetic diversity, and eventually your own captive population that you can share with hobbyists.