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Tuxedo × Tuxedo: What Color Chicks Do You Get?

This pairing gives you 50% Tuxedo-type Pharaoh, 25% English White and 25% Pharaoh (wild-type brown).

The hatch, chick by chick

Chick looks likeCarries, but does not showEgg shell (hens)Share of hatch
Tuxedo-type PharaohNormal50%
English WhiteNormal25%
Pharaoh (wild-type brown)Normal25%

The Punnett square

White spotting

ww+
ww/ww/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

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

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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 →