Sorry, aprophet, but my birds are bigger than 12 oz. already. What you underlined, is not a problem for me, not at all. I do not have A&M Whites, my J Browns have white tenderloin meat, not white breast meat and they have white or light leg meat. My Jumbo M Golds (not quite up to weight for me,yet) have light meat on tenderloin and legs and are mild in flavor at 6 and 7 weeks. I processed a large 5 month old hen that had a white tenderloin and light legs and was still mild flavored and somewhat tender - less the breast meat of coarse, really suprised me. But I still need to work with them before they are ready to leave.
But then I am already working with Jumbos from here in Texas. My own breeder program will begin with the 1/1/11 hatch and I will be using the F2 generation from my breeders eggs to begin with. I probably should wait for the F3, but I don't think he will mind. He knows what I want out of my own birds and he will be taking eggs from this generation, too. And he has a lot lot more birds than I do, so I should not have to worry about inbreeding or genetic regression. At least not for awhile, a long while.
I could be wrong, but I don't think so, hope not. Not after this weekend when my son saw the 6-7 weekers. He was here for the original hatch and growout and saw the difference in the birds immediately. He didn't need a scale to notice the difference and he could tell me which were Female/Male by size alone. He has no clue about feather sexing or the need for consistency in size of well bred birds. Yes, my freezer is about empty.
Go back to that Agi newsprint from 2005 I think, on the Diamond Ranch and reread it for when to process, don't question it, just do it. You will notice a few things happening with the birds, as I have hinted at here and there. For one thing, it makes you choose your breeders sooner than most people do. So it will cost you less in feed as you can cull earlier and just watch your chosen breeders weights, if you really want to, its not necessary. You will see an immediate difference in the birds as they growout. Less time wasted so if you have the climate and the set up you can breed more often. I must have read that thing at least 20 times over the past 4 years, thinking there had to be something there. Sometimes, I am a little slow to catch on to subtle hints.
Soooo, when they are ready (see above post), they will go around the country to a few breeders, who can get them out there. I want everyone to have Jumbos. There's no reason not to have them, if they want them. Not everyone wants Jumbo's, they are more expensive to feed and tend to. But maybe the eggs need to go with clearer instructions this time for raising them. And I think a Jumbo Co-op for trading and selling eggs is a good idea to keep the genetics going for people that don't want to raise a lot of birds. Or maybe they just want to raise them now and again. That is what I wanted originally, until I saw these birds grow out and saw what they could be. Now we have this ability for easy communication and should take advantage of it to keep the birds going once they are back. Should make for a much larger gene pool. If they can't migrate in the Americas', we'll just have to help them do it to keep those genetics flowing along the right path. As you can tell, I don't care where they came from, just where they are going and that they stay around.
Feed is extremely important, cage size and height is important (for different reasons than I have read on here), I have found that even the dustbaths are important in keeping them calm. And to my knowledge Texas A&M Whites were never at 1lb and are hard to get to even the higher weights. But the Texas A&M Jumbo Browns were further developed and were called Giants and pretty much lost and people around the country are trying to bring them back. I do not remember when they have to be 1lb. to be considered a Giant. Don't know if I kept the brochure, as I couldn't get the birds after the local breeder retired, some years ago. So no, my birds are not of that line, but the potential is there. So, we'll see and I do have more than high hopes.