Jumbo coturnix breeding

crazyquaillady4

In the Brooder
Feb 21, 2017
12
1
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I want some pretty colors in my flock, but my husband says we need to just stick to the jumbo brown coturnix because we are breeding for meat and eggs and they are bigger on both accounts and we don't want to breed the size out of them. Are there any pretty colored quail that are as big as the jumbos and lay as big of eggs?
 
I'm pretty new to quail, but I'm sure there are jumbos in different colors. Like Texas A&M jumbos, which are snow white. And I've seen jumbo tuxedo coturnix, but I guess they're rare because I can't find them anymore.
 
I agree with brewer12345, breed your own.

Do you already have jumbos?

If you choose a color that's caused by a dominant gene, it would be pretty easy. Using tuxedo as an example: cross a tuxedo bird to a jumbo coturnix. Keep the largest tuxedo offspring, and cross to a jumbo coturnix. Keep the largest tuxedo offspring and cross to a jumbo coturnix. etc. Or select for egg laying, or both, depending on your goals. It shouldn't take very many generations until you have tuxedos that are just as good as the jumbos you started with.

Any dominant gene would work the same way--recessive ones take a few extra steps and a few more generations.

If you're trying to convince your husband, I suggest keeping mostly jumbos at first and just a few of whatever color you're working with. Find what measurements matter to your husband--weight of birds at a certain age, or number of eggs per female each week, for example. Then check some of both kinds of birds. (If he just likes the way the jumbos look, keep all kinds! But if he only cares about the production, you can breed for and then prove equally good production for other colors too.)

You don't have to measure everything, just enough for your purposes--weighing 10 same-age birds on a single day might be enough, rather than weighing every bird produced in a year; or counting egg production for two pens for one week.

And if you want lots of colors: just add one at a time, and get each one "productive enough" before adding another.
 
I agree with what everybody else has said, maybe you can just convince him to experiment, and keep those separate from your browns. There are breeds that are as big as jumbo's, some actually even bigger, but with a slower growth rate. Tennessee Reds(about the same as jumbo's), and Georgia Giants(can get 14-18 ounces), which are both types of Bobwhite Quail, are some great breeds, and have nice colors. But as I said their maturity rate takes much longer than Coturnix. Eggs take about 24 days to hatch, 22 weeks to mature, 30 weeks to lay. There's really nothing, with the fast rate like Coturnix, but if you already have jumbo's, you wouldn't just be relying on the others. Just a thought.
 
If you can find some "silver collection" coturnix, you will have a huge variety of colors. I purchased 30 birds and I have at least 9 distinctly differnt colors. Some are pretty good size already, but I plan to cross some jumbo size into them and select for size afterwards. It is definitely doable. Even without crossing to jumbos, if you continuously select the largest for breeding, you will increase the size.

It would be easy to introduce a dominate color, like said above, just keep the largest that have the color each generation.

If you want to introduce a recessive color, it wouldn't be too hard either, just more time. Even if you only purchased two males (of the same color) and put 6 or so jumbo hens to them (first cross). Crossing the largest offspring together should produce a percentage of the desired color (second cross). Take the largest of those displaying the color and cross back to the jumbos (third cross).
From their you could breed the largest together for a percentage of the color you are after, and/or breed to the largest from the second batch that already have the color for a larger percentage. Personally, I would do both, it gives you more to choose from.

You could easily do this with only 2 or 3 cages, depending how often you hatch and need growouts cages. So they wouldn't take up a lot of space that way. Plus, you get a lot of birds to eat or sell from the excess.
 
Or, find Tibetan and mamanchurian. If you can find jumbos of them, awesome, if not Get the largest ones you can find, one cock of each color. Put them with your jumbo brown hens. You should get 3 colors from the first batch (Italian, brown and rosetta). Crossing from there should give you at least 5 colors (Tibetan, rosetta, brown, Italian and manchurian), possibly more, depending on if the manchurian has roux genetics. (If he does, you could also end up producing range, scarlet, Egyptian, and autumn amber.)
 

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