Celadon Quail
Celadon are the quail that lay the blue eggs. They add some fun color to every egg basket but how do you breed them or reproduce them? Find out the genetics behind a true blue celadon line and see if it is a project you want to tackle.
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Jennifer: 0:00
Welcome poultry enthusiasts to another exciting episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast.
Carey: 0:06
Whether you're raising backyard chickens, diving deep into the science of avian health, Are just obsessed with all things, feather and eggs. You're in the right place. I'm Carey.
Jennifer: 0:20
And I'm Jennifer, your host. And today we've got an episode packed with everything you need to know about celadons.
Carey: 0:28
From expert tips, fascinating facts. We're here to help you become the ultimate poultry pro. It's time to get nerdy. This episode is brought to you by. eggfoam. com. Coincidentally, we're talking about celadons and their beautiful blue eggs. Hatchery owners, farmers, egg enthusiasts, if you're looking for the best and safest way to ship your eggs, go to eggfoam. com. They're your go to source for premium solutions designed specifically for you. For egg shipping. EggFoam. com, they specialize in high quality, durable foam shippers that cradle each egg perfectly, providing the support you need during shipping. There's even a YouTube video where she put eggs in the box and kicked them around the barn and then they hatched. So that's pretty awesome. Whether it's chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, eggfoam. com has the perfect solution for you. They also have chick shipping boxes. All the supplies you need, the grow gel that you need, the packs to keep them warm so they don't freeze this time of year, everything you need to ship 12, 13 chicks, or even up to 20 quail will go in there. Eggfoam. com.
Jennifer: 2:03
Go there.
Carey: 2:04
Yeah. Celadons.
Jennifer: 2:06
Yes.
Carey: 2:07
They're beautiful, little, shiny, blue eggs. How does that happen?
Jennifer: 2:15
We'll see the quail. The hen, she lays an egg and you get these blue eggs, if y'all could see his face, you get these blue eggs,
Carey: 2:28
hen quail lay eggs, you
Jennifer: 2:32
asked, I'm going to give it to you,
Carey: 2:35
but like, okay, so I have seen their celadons is like right now, chicks, chickens. Eggs, hatching eggs, they're a huge hot topic. Everybody wants that shiny blue egg layer. Not really the dingy blue, not really the blue speckled y like a faro, you know, regular quail egg with some blue on it. No, they want that shiny blue egg. Mm
Jennifer: 3:14
hmm.
Carey: 3:15
And you have those. I do. How hard is it to make that happen?
Jennifer: 3:21
It's a royal pain. It's a pain. So first you have to buy or get, obtain the gene somehow. It doesn't just appear out of thin air. And any bird, any, we're talking quail, any quail can carry the gene. You cannot tell if it has it from just looking at it, unless it's a hen and she happens to be laying a blue egg at that moment. That's the only way you can tell. But a male, you have to breed and test breed and back cross and all of those things to confirm that he is homozygous for the celadon gene.
Carey: 4:12
So homozygous is what you want. That means he's got
Jennifer: 4:17
he's got
Carey: 4:17
it two times.
Jennifer: 4:19
Yes
Carey: 4:20
Okay,
Jennifer: 4:21
and you have to have a homozygous male in order to obtain a true blue line
Carey: 4:29
You know guys have been in charge of either making it right or Screwing it up forever.
Jennifer: 4:38
So let's, we're going to start at the beginning. Now I breed Celadons, but Kerry does not. So he's going to play the novice in this conversation for asking me all of the questions. Yeah,
Carey: 4:53
because like. You know, celadons is a huge thing right now. And Misunder, I asked, I asked you the question because I, I know you, you breed them and you was like, let's make a show out of it. And I was like, but I want the answer now, Um, because it is, it is a very interesting phenomenon to me. I understand it's a gene and you know. You can't tell by looking which kind of gives a mystery to it, but you have to obtain it and I guess Like how do you keep it? How do you get it bluer? How do you can you make it jumbo? Like how does that work?
Jennifer: 5:36
Well, that's a whole lot of questions wrapped up into one.
Carey: 5:39
Well
Jennifer: 5:41
so first of all a celadon egg is a shiny blue egg. And if you're lucky, it's robin's egg blue. Um, but most of the time it's more like a sky blue or a pale blue. I mean there's variations. And it could have speckles. Um, these are not splotches like a regular quail egg. These are actually raised speckles that you can kind of pop off with your fingernail. Now, on occasion, a regular quail may lay an egg with a bluish tint to it. This does not make her a celadon carrier. A hen is either a celadon or she's not. There's no heterozygous. So, you, you can't have a hen that just every once in a while lay celadon. That is not a thing. So, once you've confirmed that you have the blue gene in your hens, then you can do some test breeding and find it in a male. And then start working towards creating a true blue line.
Carey: 7:00
It's oh, let me ask this if I get, so let's, let's say I'm searching on eBay because everybody seems to go to eBay for quality hatching eggs. Um, and I, and I, yeah, I mean, a few people. There's a few people there that have quality, but that's just because they sell everywhere.
Jennifer: 7:23
Mm hmm.
Carey: 7:24
Um, and I buy some blue eggs. Am I going to get a heterozygous male if I have a male?
Jennifer: 7:36
Let's see. Or do
Carey: 7:38
I still need to, like, test it out and find out?
Jennifer: 7:44
So you will get, if you're lucky, a homozygous male, but you'll still have to do a lot of testing to check for that. At minimum, you'll get some heterozygous, and that just means that he's a carrier. He has one copy of the celadon gene. Uh, homozygous means he has two copies. So, if you get a blue egg from a breeder that you don't know anything about, then you will have to do a lot of test, a lot of test hatching to find out if your line is true or not. If you even get one egg that is off, your line is not true blue.
Carey: 8:27
So, like, if you have one that was going through the printer and the ink cartridge was just messed up that day. You need to call it because it's not a true blue.
Jennifer: 8:38
Well, how do I explain this? So, so sometimes a regular quail can lay like a white egg that has the swatches on it. Um, I mean a celadon can do that. I have found that more often they're kind of They're very dull. They don't have a shiny finish on them. They might have a big splotch of speckles right at the pointy end. Um, or they could have so much pigment on them that they look almost, um, like a, like a turquoise gem almost, but they're so soft you really can't handle them. They just fall apart in your hand. So those are the quote unquote off eggs of a celadon.
Carey: 9:27
I gotcha. So So if I was, let's say I ordered three dozen hatched eggs and they were all blue, you know, the way they were supposed to be, and I hatched them out, I would want to get those birds to maturity level and probably like pair them up maybe, or just let them run wild until I find out who lay in the right colors and separate them. And like the ones that are lay in the real shiny, perfect blue, I want to keep those hens and the ones that are lay in the white or like the really dull color blue ones that the color's not consistent. I might would want to cull those. And then,
Jennifer: 10:27
Selection point.
Carey: 10:28
And take, if I, I'll probably wind up with just a couple of the pretty blue egg layers. And then once I have those, I'm guessing I want to just look at my bachelor pad and be like, who's getting lucky today, pull him out, stick him in with one of the hands and let them get to know each other for a week or so, and then throw some eggs in the incubator and see what happens. And then wait till those mature and see if the hens lay blue eggs and hope that I didn't get them mixed up.
Jennifer: 11:15
Yeah, the hoping part. So, Celadons are a record keeping, for me, nightmare for somebody with OCD. Maybe it would be their dream job. I don't know. Um, so if you are wanting to breed a true blue line, you have to keep immaculate records.
Carey: 11:44
I'm out. I'm screwed.
Jennifer: 11:47
So you have to, um, know where each Each of, let's just, well, let's just start at the beginning here. So each of my roosters have a leg band on them, and they are numbered, and then those eggs go in the incubator, and they are tagged with his number. And then those chicks that hatch go into a brooder, and their, um, lineage Is on blue tape. You know, I love my painter's tape.
Carey: 12:23
Painter's tape. Yeah.
Jennifer: 12:23
Um, the painter's tape stays with them the whole time. So in my case, um, my shorthand will say R47 and that tells, I mean, I can tell by looking at them that they're, they're celadons because I mean, I know what my birds look like. I was going to
Carey: 12:38
say, you don't care about the hen because you can see the egg and tell that it's a celadon hen. You're, you're tracking the rooster. To see if he makes Celadon producing kids,
Jennifer: 12:51
right? So the reason why I'm keeping up with it is because if any of those hens lay off, you know, 8 weeks later, um, then I know that Rue 47 was bad and that he needs to go in the coal pile. So I can go ahead and go all the way back to him, yank him out, make sure all of his sons are out. Now his daughters, if they lay blue, are okay. They're still Oh,
Carey: 13:20
so if this happens, our 47 and his sons
Jennifer: 13:27
Gone.
Carey: 13:28
They're all Tank food. They are. That's why your dog eats so good.
Jennifer: 13:37
But now his daughters, if they lay blue, they're still true. So I can keep them. So
Carey: 13:45
they'll survive.
Jennifer: 13:47
Yes, and I can put them with another rooster from a different line, but still tagged. And the brooder is still marked, and this goes on and on every single hatch.
Carey: 14:02
So, like your best case, absolutely most lucky situation. You're 16 weeks minimum, not be longer than that because you still got to incubate the last set. So you're, you're six months.
Jennifer: 14:26
Yeah, it takes a long time. And so each let's just, um, how
Carey: 14:33
long have you been working on yourself? Like the, because I know you started with them a good hot minute back.
Jennifer: 14:41
I want to say 22 22 maybe 2022. I'm not good with time. You know that 2022 now I had to bring the gene in Michael at Southwest gave me birds And they got mixed up with some non celadon birds. So I had to breed them back true again, which in my, he offered to send me more birds. I declined the offer because I'm like,
Carey: 15:07
no, I want a challenge.
Jennifer: 15:08
Well, I felt like moving them back forward again, then I would fully grasp everything that needs to be done to make a true blue line. And it's true. Um, yep.
Carey: 15:20
I
Jennifer: 15:21
have. You know, they are laying blue. I mean, pretty regular. I mean, all the time. I'm confident when I send them out that people are getting what they're, they're asking for, you know,
Carey: 15:36
so, I mean, that's huge. That's huge because there's a lot of people out there. It seems like everybody's selling celadons and it seems like everybody just got them five minutes ago. There's some people that have had them for years and they can, like what you, you know, they can tell the whole process, but other people, I mean, they've never talked about a blue egg and now they're selling them. And, you know, I think for Celadons do bring, I don't know a whole lot about it. But I do know the price difference.
Jennifer: 16:16
They take up a lot of space. There's a price difference in
Carey: 16:19
the old Celadons. Yeah. But apparently that's because to have good quality Celadons, that is not a fast process.
Jennifer: 16:30
No. And there's a
Carey: 16:31
lot of work. So you can't, you can't just be a replicator. You've got to be an actual breeder.
Jennifer: 16:37
Yes. So if you want to be a true blue breeder. Then in my case, I'm just going to speak to how I do it because I don't know, there's only a handful of true blue breeders out there. Um, I'm only going to speak to how I do it. And I use the hatching time cages and I have the dividers in it. And, um, when the birds become old enough to start laying. So I have, um, home built grow out cages. When I see that first egg in that grow out cage, then every bird in there gets put in their own section of a hatching time cage.
Carey: 17:20
I was going to say, they get, they get an instant condo upgrade. Correct. Cause I've been in your barn and I've been like, why do you have one bird in here?
Jennifer: 17:30
Yep, I have two whole stacks just, well, kind of two and a half stacks just for that. And so, the, that stack will be marked with the rooster number, the lineage number. And then make sure all those hens lay blue. So I don't have any problem. You still have to check every time, because if you're going to have a problem, you want to snip it in the butt and go back to the source. And so, then, once all those girls have laid, I usually eat three to five eggs, depends on how busy I am. I look at the three to five eggs that are in the tray, and then I look at the bird, make sure that she's good, that she's a, a jumbo size that she don't have any health issues that you know her conformation is correct, her face is correct, there's no missing toes or cross beak or anything is going on with that bird. Then I look at her eggs. And I want to see shiny blue eggs. I prefer no speckles, but I understand that people like speckles. So I do keep some, um, that have speckles. But I don't do heavy speckle. I just don't like them, and it's my barn. So I don't do it.
Carey: 18:48
Well, I mean, and I've seen, like I've seen some of yours that they look like they might have got a little bit of pepper dropped on.
Jennifer: 18:56
Mm hmm.
Carey: 18:57
And I've seen, like, I've seen others where You literally would roll the door up and you're just throwing them.
Jennifer: 19:06
I do.
Carey: 19:07
Like, and your pigs are at the other end of the barn like, heck yeah, send it to me, keep them coming. And I'm just, I'm like, what? And you're like, it's not blue enough. And so what you're saying is if I want to get in the Celadon game, I'm going to have to start with some. I probably should start with like a breeder group, just drop the cash, get, get a breeder group that's confirmed and then pray that I don't accidentally have an OG Pharaoh that slides his way into the cage because then I'm screwed. So that, keeping them together, like what you do with keeping them your own in their Like, everybody in this cage, your celadon, R47 or whoever the lucky cat is, this is his cage until you hatch the eggs and he either turns into tank food or he becomes a confirmed breeder.
Jennifer: 20:22
Right,
Carey: 20:24
and then you That's a lot.
Jennifer: 20:28
Yep. So then once the roosters confirmed Then he gets a little check mark beside his name that he's been confirmed And so currently everybody in my barn is confirmed. So I have no issues so now That everybody is confirmed in my barn and has been for a long time. I'm actually working on Um, bird size and egg size. You know, I love my larger eggs. So I actually just go through there when I'm pulling for, for me for the week to hatch out of, I pull all the largest eggs. I mean, that I know aren't double yokers and I pull all of them. And then that's what I'm working on at this point. And of course, the larger birds and I really don't like white birds. So, White birds don't stay very long. They don't ever make it to my breeder sets. It's just a preference. It's just what I like. So we didn't talk about plumage colors. You didn't ask me about plumage colors.
Carey: 21:36
Well, you know, to be honest, when everything I see people talking about, I mean, I know that because I've seen looking at yours. I know that you can have different, you can have tuxedo, you can have Egyptian, you can have pharaoh, they can all have the celadon gene. But I don't see anybody asking about that.
Jennifer: 22:04
You
Carey: 22:05
know, Every once in a while you'll see somebody mention a color, but most of the time it's. I want the blue eggs.
Jennifer: 22:12
Yeah, um, supposedly there's somebody out there with a feather sexable line of celadons and every once in a while I'll see it pop up on a Facebook group or something and I have dogged them for eggs and I can't get any eggs. So, I don't know that they actually have them or they just don't want to share. I don't know what the deal is. Mine are Rosetta. Tibetan and the tuxedo combination. Um, I have found in my, my line, now everybody's line is different. My line, the tuxedo birds are larger. But I prefer the look of the Rosetta. I don't particularly care for the range, so I have sort of selected all of those out. It's the majority of my line. I'm not going to say 100%, is Rosetta Tibetan or Tux thereof? It's
Carey: 23:11
kind of sad too, because, you know, I'm a red fan. I like the range.
Jennifer: 23:20
Yeah, I'm not a fan. I
Carey: 23:22
like I had some one time and, you know, for me, my big thing is I want a huge bird. I want Bantam size eggs that aren't double yokers and I want a pound and I, I tried so hard and it was like the, the range they're, they're just designed to be. I mean, I could get them into what people consider jumbo, which I think that's like 12 ounces,
Jennifer: 24:05
10,
Carey: 24:06
10, but to me, a 10 ounce bird is not jumbo. I mean, hey, your, your buttons are almost to the point of not needing special quail rails. Like, you know, so.
Jennifer: 24:24
I can't grow anything small here.
Carey: 24:26
I don't know. I mean, it's they they just I couldn't do it, but. I do like a huge bird that's also celadon.
Jennifer: 24:42
Working on it.
Carey: 24:43
That would be like, I want to say the cat's meow, but that has nothing to do with poultry.
Jennifer: 24:52
You know, I have to just put this out there though. I mean, it's an egg. It tastes like an egg. It cooks like an egg. It's an egg. The pigs don't care what color it is. I mean, I have them. They're, they're cool. They're nifty, but I don't know. I just,
Carey: 25:11
I mean, most people that you see going nuts over them online, they're, they're, they just, they want them to look at.
Jennifer: 25:19
Yeah. Um, me personally, if I was going to say my, my favorite kind of quail egg. Occasionally, I mean, not occasionally, but I get them every day, but I don't know who's laying them. Um, it's a regular quail egg, but it looks more like a marble. It kind of has a caramel swirl to it. Yeah, that's my favorite. Not the splotchy ones, just, they look like marbles. If I could, maybe one day I'll sort the Pharaoh's. Find who lays those marbles and maybe breed, breed those. I don't know. That's a whole other day of stuff to do.
Carey: 26:04
Well, I appreciate you telling me about Celadons. Um, we will have to continue this conversation'cause I do want to know more, but I'm gonna have to figure, I'm gonna have to figure out the record keeping way first.'cause I might have to, I'm gonna have to figure out a cheat sheet for that or something because
Jennifer: 26:23
mm-hmm
Carey: 26:24
Yeah,
Jennifer: 26:26
now if you just want to throw celadons in and get a mixed basket now, that's easy
Carey: 26:32
Yeah, I don't do that.
Jennifer: 26:33
So I sell a lot of the hens choice eggs, and I always throw celadons in there So you'll always get something here and there in your basket that way.
Carey: 26:43
There you go Alright, cool deal.
Jennifer: 26:48
Well, hopefully that was an intro to celadons.
Carey: 26:50
Yeah, we'll have to continue later and dive deeper is I figured out some of the record keeping and it's time for lesson number two.
Jennifer: 27:01
Sounds good.
Carey: 27:02
Yeah. I have a good one.
Jennifer: 27:03
Bye.
27:05
Mhm.
