Blau

Blue has a wide variety of colors and range of shades. It hasn't been studied scientifically, so most of the citations are from breeders who have worked with the gene before.

In heterozygous form (one copy of blue), it will be one of the various shades of grey. It tends to turn pure pharaoh a light shade of blue, but be generally some color of grey all over(1) without the white wingtips in Silver or patches of regular color like in Andalusian. On a fawn base (without any EB), the blue gene will turn the bird a light shade of orange or ginger (1). On most hetero blue birds, it is usually possible to figure out the underlying base pattern because the gene just changes the color without altering the pattern.

In homozygous form, the bird will be a very light cream to a white. (2) It is very hard to tell the base color of a bird with two copies of blue--the quail may have some slight markings before the first adult molt, but if it is there, they will generally lose it at maturity. (3)

Though it is part of the Schofield Silver Collection, it is very different from both Silver, Andalusian, and Lavender. It doesn't have any known health defects in either heterozygous or homozygous form, and doesn't have the white wingtips found in both, nor the patches of base color from Andalusian. It has been tested on many of the known dilutions (1), and not found to be on the same gene or locus as any of them.

For the purposes here, Blue refers to the bird in heterozygous form, and Cream refers to the bird in homozygous form, while Plain is a bird without any copy of Blue.

Breeding with Blue:

Cream x Cream = 100% Cream

Cream x Plain = 100% Blue

Cream x Blue = 50% Cream, 50% Blue

Blue x Blue = 25% Cream, 50% Blue, 25% Plain

Blue x Plain = 50% Blue, 50% Plain

For more information about breeding with this kind of gene, including tips and tricks and a full explanation of how these results were calculated, please see here.