This is Day Eight of the March Madness poultry judging. For previous pairings, instructions, and a copy of the bracket, please see our other posts here.
Rosetta Quail: ROSE9 and ROSE2
A thing to note here: quail, unlike almost all chickens and waterfowl accepted into the APA, don't have separate featherings for hens and roosters. With ducks, most drakes have the reliably curly tail feather. With almost every breed of chicken (save for two accepted breeds), roosters will have differently shaped saddle and hackle feathers that allow you to sex them. In the hen-feathered breeds, a larger comb will be an easy giveaway. Quail, however, do not have combs nor do they have saddle or hackle feathers. The shape of the feathers is the same across the body regardless of sex.
About 2/3 of the color varieties in quail though have what's called sexual dimorphism, which is a fancy way of saying in this case that the color of the feather is different in males compared to females. That's why, with the pharaoh class, we were still able to present one male and one female. However, Rosetta has another color on top called Extended Brown (EB), which increases eumelanin pigment in the feathers--the same thing that makes human eyes brown also makes the quail feathers darker and changes the patterning enough that the natural sexual dimorphism is covered up.
All of this is a very long-winded way to say that you cannot tell males from females in rosetta-based quail, so both of the birds here could be cocks or they could be hens. Treat it as a simple Best of Variety pairing, and work to pay attention to the type, structure, bone, and condition of the bird over the coloration, and don't get distracted by lighting differences.
I'd love to hear which bird you chose to advance and why--the best few explanations will be posted here in the following days!
Thank you to Rebecca Lynch for providing images of her breeders!
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