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Italian × Italian: What Color Chicks Do You Get?

This pairing gives you 66.7% Italian / Manchurian gold and 33.3% Pharaoh (wild-type brown). About 25% of the fertile eggs will not hatch — those embryos inherited Yellow from both parents — so the percentages are of the chicks that actually live.

The hatch, chick by chick

Chick looks likeCarries, but does not showEgg shell (hens)Share of hatch
Italian / Manchurian gold—Normal66.7%
Pharaoh (wild-type brown)—Normal33.3%

Expect a smaller hatch, and that is not your incubator

The Yellow gene is homozygous-lethal: chicks that inherit it from both parents die in the shell. About 25% of the fertile eggs from this pairing will not hatch, every time, no matter how good your temperature and humidity are. Pairing a gold bird to a Pharaoh instead avoids the loss entirely.

The Punnett square

Yellow

Yy+
YY/YY/y+
y+Y/y+y+/y+

Yellow: Dominant and homozygous-lethal. One copy gives the gold Italian / Manchurian look; chicks that inherit it from both parents die in the shell, so every living gold bird carries exactly one copy.

What each parent brings

Italian (Fawn)

Yellow heterozygote. No living Italian is homozygous, because double-Yellow embryos die in the shell.

Italian is built on the Yellow (Y) mutation, and here's the rule: Yellow is homozygous-lethal. Chicks that inherit Yellow from both parents die in the shell, so every living Italian is heterozygous. Italian × Italian hatches run about 25% smaller than expected (the lost double-Yellows) and throw ~1 in 3 Pharaoh-colored chicks. Italian × Pharaoh gives you roughly half of each with no losses — the smarter pairing.

Full Italian (Fawn) 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 × ItalianEnglish White × ItalianManchurian Gold × ItalianItalian × PharaohItalian × RosettaItalian × RouxItalian × TibetanItalian × Tuxedo
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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 →