Does a Italian × Rosetta pairing breed true?

No. This pairing segregates — you will get 4 different outcomes in the same hatch, in the proportions listed on this page.

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Italian × Rosetta: What Color Chicks Do You Get?

This pairing gives you 25% Gold-toned Rosetta, 25% Italian / Manchurian gold, 25% Pharaoh (wild-type brown) and 25% Rosetta.

The hatch, chick by chick

Chick looks like	Carries, but does not show	Egg shell (hens)	Share of hatch
Gold-toned Rosetta	—	Normal	25%
Italian / Manchurian gold	—	Normal	25%
Pharaoh (wild-type brown)	—	Normal	25%
Rosetta	—	Normal	25%

Gold-toned Rosetta: Yellow on an Extended Brown base is the territory hatcheries market as "Range". The shade varies and the label is not a fixed genotype.

The Punnett squares

Extended Brown

	E	e+
e+	E/e+	e+/e+
e+	E/e+	e+/e+

Yellow

	y+	y+
Y	Y/y+	Y/y+
y+	y+/y+	y+/y+

Extended Brown: Incompletely dominant. Two copies make a Tibetan, one copy makes a Rosetta, and no copies leaves the wild Pharaoh base — which is why a Rosetta pen can never breed true.

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 →

Rosetta

Extended Brown heterozygote (E/e+). One dark gene, one wild-type — which is why no Rosetta pen breeds true.

Rosetta is Extended Brown heterozygous (E/e+). Because they carry one dark gene and one wild-type, Rosetta × Rosetta splits roughly 25% Tibetan / 50% Rosetta / 25% Pharaoh — you can never have a pure-breeding Rosetta pen, and every hatch is a surprise assortment. Tibetan × Pharaoh makes 100% Rosettas if you want a whole covey of them.

Full Rosetta 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

Parent 1 varietyParent 2 variety

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 × Italian Celadon × Rosetta English White × Italian English White × Rosetta Manchurian Gold × Italian Manchurian Gold × Rosetta Italian × Italian Italian × Pharaoh

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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 →