Falb Fee Coturnix Quail
The Fee dilute on a wild-type base — a silvery, blue-grey bird that keeps the wild pattern in soft pewter tones. Elegant, increasingly popular, and feather-sexable if your eye is decent.
What they look like
Falb Fee birds look like a Pharaoh sketched in silverpoint: the same wild pattern rendered in silvery blue-grey and soft fawn instead of warm brown. Males keep a plain (now greyish-rose) breast, hens keep speckles, so the pattern logic survives the recolor.
How the genetics work
Fee is a dilution gene of European origin ('Fee' families include Falb Fee on wild-type and Pearl Fee variants). It reliably softens dark pigment to the blue-silver range. Fee lines in the US vary in exact expression — some run silvery, some more lavender — so line-consistency comes from the breeder's selection.
Sexing Falb Fees
Feather-sexable with practice — the male's plain breast vs the hen's speckling still shows, just in muted tones. Sort at 3–4 weeks in good light.
Eggs, size & production
No inherent production penalty; as always, size tracks the line. Fee birds are still uncommon enough that many lines lag jumbo weights — improving that is an open project for US breeders.
Who this variety is for
Keepers who want something visibly special without giving up feather-sexing, and breeders wanting to work with a fashionable, still-improvable variety.
Before you buy
Fee-family stock commands a premium; expect to pay more per egg than for Pharaoh. Buy from someone who can tell you their line's history — 'grey quail' covers several unrelated genes.
Keep or breed Falb Fee?
Show off your birds and compare notes in the free Quail Keeper Community — keepers post their coveys, hatch results, and honest line reviews. Joining also unlocks the Quail Keeper Max app free.
Planning a Falb Fee breeding project?
Quail Keeper Max has a built-in color genetics calculator — pick two parents and see what the hatch should throw — plus pedigree tracking, breeding pair records, and hatch-rate stats so you can actually see which pairings work. It's the tool this guide's genetics notes come from.
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Related varieties
A note from one keeper to another: variety names in Coturnix are not tightly standardized — different breeders' lines under the same name can differ in shade, size, and how crosses behave, and several newer varieties are still being mapped by the breeding community. Treat this guide as a working keeper's reference, buy from breeders who know their lines' genetics, and trust real hatch results over any label.