Comparing quail sizes

[James the Bald]

Just to add my comments, I have 30 JMF Texas A&Ms that hatched the 2nd of July this year. I didn't track their progress like was done here (with 30 birds, it would have been a real fiasco), but like everyone else, I wanted only the biggest of the quail to reproduce. So, at 8 week (last tuesday), the family got together and we weighed each bird, weighing some birds 2 times because I have some "houdinis". Starting with the males, because I only have 8 of them, I have 2 that are 13 ounces; the rest are between 9 - 12 ounces. I put colored zip ties on the 2 big guys, as they will alternate as breeders. We then weighed all of the hens, and used colored zip ties for the hens that weighed 12 and 13 ounces. Three are 13 ounces, and the rest are between 10 and 12 ounces. We took the 4 biggest hens and put them into the same cage as one of the large males.
Having only 8 roos out of a hatch of 30 was a real surprise to me. I thought for sure that I would have 15 or so males to butcher after keeping 2 for breeding, so I lucked out on that one. I have 1 extremely agressive male from a previous hatch (non JMF) that has been taken out of the breeding plan (and will go into the freezer next weekend when the 6 other roos get chopped); besides the fact that he is 9 ounces and can't mount the JMF hens, but he has injured every hen from his hatch (before the JMF hens reached maturity). Those 4 little hens lay average size eggs and wont be bred again. Right now, I have eggs out the wazoo, which was the reason I began keeping quail.
James

 

[chrishw]

Wow! That's a great hatch rate for the situation. I'm glad I went ahead and started communication this early.
I am thinking of starting with the JMF eggs, breeding them for a year then adding in some from the guy in california to get genetic diversity and prevent to much line breeding. I would be the only one in my area with true jumbos so I think I could sell them well. And of course enjoy larger birds for the table.

Um... the only way to maintain the size is line breeding. If you bring in other genetics to introduce into your line to add some certain traits, that's great BUT if you are looking at maintaining the appx. 16oz size, that only can be maintained by line breeding. I personally do keep some lines bred towards the natural state of the species, and in this case diversity is good. To introduce diversity into a "family" of quail actually breeds back towards the natural state meaning they loose their sizes. With combining these two similar (they could be actually the same lines) your going to probaby have some runts and a greater number of culling for 4-5 generations until you line breed the diversity back out of them.

Another way to look at it is if you breed 6 JMF birds (or any other line) and don't cull, it may take only 5 generations to regress back to normal sizes. This is why many so called jumbos are no longer jumbos, a basic lack of understanding of genetics by too many backyard breeders. This happened to the entire Texas A&M line where over time the birds just got smaller and smaller until certain people (including Robbie) decided to rebuild the line via line breeding and severe culling.

So, for wacko mutations like seen in West Virginia Mountains or the old European royalty, line breeding is bad. but, what are these jumbo quail? Just quail that have a giant size mutation. If you add diversity there will be less of the mutants so you will have more culling of many many more normal sized birds just to maintain your breeding stock.

To properly combine the two lines (if they are in fact seperate- many people are "reselling" JMF birds) you need to just mate single pairs and check their offspring, picking the biggest and breeding them back to their brothers or parents until you get as much diversity (small birds) bred back out of the new line.

Even JMF, when they ship, only ships from one line. If you cross their A and B line you will have the same diversity of sizes as you would crossing a small bird and a big bird...

 

[Momhunter]

Um... the only way to maintain the size is line breeding. If you bring in other genetics to introduce into your line to add some certain traits, that's great BUT if you are looking at maintaining the appx. 16oz size, that only can be maintained by line breeding. I personally do keep some lines bred towards the natural state of the species, and in this case diversity is good. To introduce diversity into a "family" of quail actually breeds back towards the natural state meaning they loose their sizes. With combining these two similar (they could be actually the same lines) your going to probaby have some runts and a greater number of culling for 4-5 generations until you line breed the diversity back out of them.

Another way to look at it is if you breed 6 JMF birds (or any other line) and don't cull, it may take only 5 generations to regress back to normal sizes. This is why many so called jumbos are no longer jumbos, a basic lack of understanding of genetics by too many backyard breeders. This happened to the entire Texas A&M line where over time the birds just got smaller and smaller until certain people (including Robbie) decided to rebuild the line via line breeding and severe culling.

So, for wacko mutations like seen in West Virginia Mountains or the old European royalty, line breeding is bad. but, what are these jumbo quail? Just quail that have a giant size mutation. If you add diversity there will be less of the mutants so you will have more culling of many many more normal sized birds just to maintain your breeding stock.

To properly combine the two lines (if they are in fact seperate- many people are "reselling" JMF birds) you need to just mate single pairs and check their offspring, picking the biggest and breeding them back to their brothers or parents until you get as much diversity (small birds) bred back out of the new line.

Even JMF, when they ship, only ships from one line. If you cross their A and B line you will have the same diversity of sizes as you would crossing a small bird and a big bird...

Ok, so you are saying that if we want to continue breeding large birds we should hatch then cull strict, only kerping the largest birds for breeding. Then just continue doing that even over several years time. Not bringing in new blood. I thought that a lot of people started getting smaller A&Ms due to continual breeding of the same flock and never bringing in new blood. But if I understand you right the issue was that they didn't cull, just let them all breed.
So we should just keep selecting only the proper size birds to keep for breeders, which makes sense, and I would thinking people would do. At what age would you let the birds get to before culling? And people who buy eggs or chicks need to realize that there will be some diversity, they all won't be 14-16oz birds just because the parent stock was.

 

[Momhunter]

Just finished a phone call with Robbie from JMF, very nice guy and I learned a lot. Very excited about getting my 200 James Marie Pharaoh hatching eggs end of Sept.

 

[Reedgirl20]

Yay! Please keep us all informed how your chicks go. It's good to see how others weights are going. I understand that not all chicks will end up 13+ounces but if m y overall average improves over my current 7 oz will be nice. I have all my jumbos banded or will be banded so I can keep the lines separate initially but later on will probably cross some of the biggest of the two jumbo lines. I agree some line breeding is good but over several generations it can become a problem. I believe with starting with two good jumbo lines and cull aggressively you shouldn't revert to a smaller average as long as you choose only the best for breeding.

On another note, I got another quail killed last night but managed to trap a large feral cat that I think was the culprit. He got neutered and relocated today so hopefully I won't lose anyone else. Luckily the one he got was a male not in the running for being a top breeder.

 

[chrishw]

Exactly-

The number of culls vs keepers might be 1in 100, which is quite hard for most of us mere mortals to do ESPECIALLY IF YOUR SELLING HATCHING EGGS LOL. that's why we see the downfall of certain lines. Robbie knows more than most (perhaps anyone else) and he often mixes and matches for selling meat birds or non-hatching eggs. So, for us, if we have 200, I might keep the best 2-5 pairs as my breeding line for hatching eggs for new breeders. Then the next 25 hens and 5-10 cocks for egg production (which you can hatch these eggs for meat birds). I'll put bands with number the 5 breeders pairs and record their offspring, but for the "production line" they just get color banded and usually more hens per males. The hatched meat birds from the 50 production never go to laying, just to the table so no point to even band these, just band their cage.

This way you keep the line as pure as possible. The top 1-5% of the best of the best lay all the eggs to be hatched for production breeding/egg laying. The eggs the next best lay only get hatched for only culls. Sure if I find something special I might seperate it and work on it for 3-5 generations before it goes to the top 1-5%

As you can see, this is quite a task for many of us, and really involves hatching a few thousand birds. Now, it make more sense for most breeders to just reorder their production (top 20%) every year or two from JMF (or other similar options). Heck, even if you just re-order every 3-4 generations its not too bad.

This is quite complicated to explain, but I hope I've done it. Adding diversity just adds other mutations and dilutes the stock, if you breed in a three (or even higher) pyramid you shouldn't have too much of a breakdown. But if your just working a single level, things tend to go downhill quick.

Group A, 5 pairs, top 1-2%, only very special birds get added after several generations of testing
Group B, hatched from group A eggs, top 20%
Group C, hatched from group B egg, 100% "culled"

This into to be confused with the 3 lines of one family JMF and others have, each line has their pyramid

Also, largest isn't always the best if you solely select on size, soon you will have birds with bad feet and hearts. This isn't bad to eat in 6 weeks but they can't ever live long enough to breed, you want to make sure the colors are exact, the texture of feathers, temperament, down to shapes/sizes/colors of the eggs. Usually size does make the easiest 1st culling and it doesn't matter so much for group B because their problems never go father than their eggs or the freezer. It is totally essential for group A

I hope I'm making sense, many "backyard breeders" don't worry about the A group and that's more than fine except when, like the A&M, no one is keeping a A Group. Its a whole lot different when you get into these levels of production, quail are about the only pratical animal (besides rats) simple folks like us can play mad scientist like the people at Tyson and Purdue with their production chickens!

Ok, so you are saying that if we want to continue breeding large birds we should hatch then cull strict, only kerping the largest birds for breeding. Then just continue doing that even over several years time. Not bringing in new blood. I thought that a lot of people started getting smaller A&Ms due to continual breeding of the same flock and never bringing in new blood. But if I understand you right the issue was that they didn't cull, just let them all breed.
So we should just keep selecting only the proper size birds to keep for breeders, which makes sense, and I would thinking people would do. At what age would you let the birds get to before culling? And people who buy eggs or chicks need to realize that there will be some diversity, they all won't be 14-16oz birds just because the parent stock was.

 

[Reedgirl20]

So finally am able to make the first comparisons of two different lines of jumbos. My california-line (CL) coturnix are now two weeks old and had first weigh-ins today. They seem to be a hardy, calm disposition similar to the JMF chicks. I had a 46/75 (61%)hatch with no chick death up to this point, 40% with JMF and no chick death. In the JMF I culled two chicks in the first week for crooked toes, thus far no crook toes or other obvious defaults in the CL chicks.

JMF 2wk hens range (69-110 grams) average: 84.55gram
JMF 2 wk Roos range (69-91 grams average: 83.11gram

CL 2 wk hens range (65-101 grams) average 87.4 gram
CL 2 wk roo range (68-106 grams) average 89.1 gram

JMF 3 wk hens range (116-172) average: 138.71gram
JMF 3 wk roo range (117-148) average: 137.82

JMF 4 wk hens range (155-216) average: 179 gram
JMF 4 wk roo range (157-190) average: 177.3 gram

Of the hens there is two who are significantly smaller then the rest and if the average is done without them it would go up to 89 grams. I'm leaving them in because I did not cull any of the JMF chicks for size until week four and I want to be fair to both lines so I get the best overall picture instead of only seeing results of the biggest birds. I think seeing what your average bird size is will be important for meat birds, not just the size of the top 10% to choose my breeders.

 

[GhislaineDel]

Great thread! Thanks for doing this.

 

[Reedgirl20]

Okay, weigh-ins for the JMF crew today. Everyone seems to be settled in well to the new cages and all switched over to nipple waterers easily.

JMF 2wk hens range (69-110 grams) average: 84.55gram
JMF 2 wk Roos range (69-91 grams average: 83.11gram

CL 2 wk hens range (65-101 grams) average 87.4 gram
CL 2 wk roo range (68-106 grams) average 89.1 gram

JMF 3 wk hens range (116-172) average: 138.71gram
JMF 3 wk roo range (117-148) average: 137.82

JMF 4 wk hens range (155-216) average: 179 gram
JMF 4 wk roo range (157-190) average: 177.3 gram

JMF 5 wk hen range (179-236) average: 201.3 gram
JMF 5 wk roo range (185-223) average: 201.5 gram


So average size this week is 7.1 ounces. Will be starting to cull the smallest soon but as of now still tracking 21 hens and 15 roos.

Tomorrow will be the first weights on the control group out of my own eggs, should be interesting, visually these chicks look smaller. The parent stock was obtained from random seller on eBay about one year ago as 'jumbos' but I've never hatched any over 9-10 ounces even at several months old, average six week weights have been 6-7oz.

 

[Reedgirl20]

Today was first weigh in for chicks from my own set. As expected they were much smaller. I have one chick from the California line that was a late hatcher growing up with this crew. He is not included in the averages but was a nice 91 gram chick, in line with what was see with his earlier hatched cohorts. I will call this line standard browns (SB)

JMF 2wk hens range (69-110 grams) average: 84.55gram
JMF 2 wk Roos range (69-91 grams average: 83.11gram

CL 2 wk hens range (65-101 grams) average 87.4 gram
CL 2 wk roo range (68-106 grams) average 89.1 gram


SB 2 wk hens range (59-87) average 72 gram
SB 2 wk roo range (57-78) average 72.4 gram.


It is pretty obvious the size difference between this line versus the true jumbos even at this young stage, especially since they are raised under identical circumstances. I only have 5 hens and 5 roos in this sample group but I think it is still a valid comparison.