Tatanka Breeders Club: Meat Quail project with history, discussion, pictures and videos

lukem5 said:

Seems dumor is trash feed, wouldnt be surprised if it was contaminated. Although some feed seems to be batch dependant- one year its good the next it’s different.

Im really interested in breeding bigger quail, any idea where I can get some fertile eggs? Thanks for all your hard work guys. Bigger quail and eggs are essential to competing with the damn chickens lol.

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After reading some of the pages in this thread I can see tatanka breeders aren’t giving or selling their line - which is understandable. If I wanted to start breeding out a line of bigger quail/ eggs where should I start? Any commercial breeders selling a line that would be a good starting point vs regular cotirnix which may take many decades to work my way up to >15g eggs.

Get the biggest out of every hatch, keep them, breed them to the other 'biggest of hatch' and a few generations down the line.. or buy a bantam chicken

lukem5 said:

After reading some of the pages in this thread I can see tatanka breeders aren’t giving or selling their line - which is understandable. If I wanted to start breeding out a line of bigger quail/ eggs where should I start? Any commercial breeders selling a line that would be a good starting point vs regular cotirnix which may take many decades to work my way up to >15g eggs.

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I bought jumbo browns they just started laying and I already have several eggs over 15g. Ill definitely be using all the great advice in this thread to make the most of my browns. I started in quail to fill my freezer and bigger birds will fill it faster.

So whats the heaviest weights so far observed in the tatankas? Live weight, cleaned weight, egg weights. I know there have been posts saying over X in weights but was there ever a record holding massive bird?

How do you guys determine the age of the quail? Is it when they're put into a brooder or when they hatch? I believe it would be more accurate to start recording their weight when they're actually put into a brooder, because it's not like they can gain weight in an incubator. Also, at what times of the day are you recording their weights? If you put them in a brooder in the morning and then record their weights at night, you're essentially giving them an extra half a day to grow. Quail of course grow fast, so this can significantly alter the measurements for the first two weeks.

What were the other factors behind these recordings? Brooder / cage size, substrate / floor, light per day, feed and water. I'm just trying to get an idea what would be the best set-up to get quail to the largest size possible by 6 weeks. For chickens, I've read that they overall grow faster with 18 hours of light. For quail, a forum claimed that 8 hours of light will delay sexual maturity and therefore make them grow faster (no fighting or males trying to mate). These are conflicting, so it would be nice to narrow down what works best.