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Celadon × Tuxedo: What Color Chicks Do You Get?

This pairing gives you 50% Pharaoh (wild-type brown) and 50% Tuxedo-type Pharaoh.

None of these chicks will lay blue eggs — but every single one carries the celadon gene and will pass it on. This is exactly how blue skips a generation and reappears.

The hatch, chick by chick

Chick looks likeCarries, but does not showEgg shell (hens)Share of hatch
Pharaoh (wild-type brown)celadonNormal50%
Tuxedo-type PharaohceladonNormal50%

The Punnett square

White spotting

ww+
w+w/w+w+/w+
w+w/w+w+/w+

White spotting: Dose-dependent, not cleanly recessive. Two copies give the mostly-white English White; ONE copy shows as partial white — the tuxedo bibs and patches — and how much white you get varies from bird to bird. Perfect symmetrical bibs are the exception, not the rule.

What each parent brings

Celadon (Blue Egg Layers)

Celadon is an egg-shell trait, not a plumage variety. A celadon bird is modelled here as wild-type Pharaoh plumage carrying two copies of ce — if your celadon line is also colored, run the plumage cross separately.

The ce gene is recessive: a hen needs two copies to lay blue, and roosters carry it invisibly. Celadon × celadon breeds true for blue eggs. A celadon hen's daughters by a non-carrier male all carry one copy and lay normal eggs — which is how blue 'disappears' for a generation and returns.

Full Celadon (Blue Egg Layers) guide →

Tuxedo

A single dose of white spotting. This is why Tuxedo × Tuxedo "throws a range — some crisp tuxedos, some mostly-white, some mostly-dark": that range is the ordinary 1:2:1 of one gene at half dose. HOW MUCH white a single dose puts on a bird varies a great deal, so treat the pattern as a probability and the symmetry as luck.

Tuxedo comes from the white-spotting family in an intermediate dose — commonly from pairing dark-based birds carrying spotting (breeding English-White-type spotting into E-family bases). Tuxedo × Tuxedo throws a range: some crisp tuxedos, some mostly-white, some mostly-dark. Perfect symmetrical bibs are the exception, not the rule.

Full Tuxedo guide →

What this assumes

  • Both parents are exactly what they are sold as. A bird carrying a hidden recessive — roux, celadon, white spotting — changes these numbers. Recessive carriers are invisible, which is the whole reason surprises happen.
  • These are per-chick probabilities, not a quota. A 50/50 split does not mean half your hatch of ten will be each. Small hatches swing hard; the ratios show up over dozens of chicks, not eight.
  • Coturnix inheritance is debated and varies by line. The modes used here are the ones consistently reported by breeders, and they match what our own variety guide says — but verify against your own stock before you plan a season around it.
  • Color only. Size, lay rate and temperament come from line selection, not from these genes.

Try a different pairing

Need a trait that is not a named variety? Use the full genetics calculator to set alleles directly for recessive, dominant, incomplete-dominant and sex-linked traits.

Other pairings keepers ask about

Celadon × CeladonCeladon × English WhiteCeladon × Manchurian GoldCeladon × ItalianCeladon × PharaohCeladon × RosettaCeladon × RouxCeladon × Tibetan
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Stop guessing which bird carries what

Quail Keeper Max stores every bird's variety and celadon status, builds 4-generation pedigrees, and predicts the hatch from your actual pairings — so the invisible carriers in your covey stop being invisible.

See Breeding & Genetics →