JMF Golden layer or regular JMF jumbo egg layer?

[Timothy Menezes]

Hi guys and gals, been looking at the Kansas City Quail website and they have some awesome new quail strains from James Maria Farms. So many beautiful color patterns!

The purpose (or excuse lol) for me getting these birds is to make healthy eggs for the family. And meat from the culls I suppose, but not looking forward to that. Anyways, the most commonly used quail for this purpose is the jumbo egg maker strain. The big plus to this wild coloration strain is you can easily tell the males from the females as early as 3 weeks old.

However, they have a Golden Layer strain that supposedly lays big beautiful eggs as well. Their body size is not quite as big as their jumbo cousins but their eggs are very nearly the same size. The color sexing may not be quite as obvious as the original but i’m Guessing it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out.

I’ll try to put the link below, can you guys take a look and tell me what you think of them?

Thanks!

http://kcquailfarm.com/shop/

 

[007Sean]

Either one would be fine, really depends on what purpose you intend to use them for and what color variant you want.

 

[DK newbie]

Their golden layers seems to be pretty similar to italians. The second picture shows a male. It shouldn't be too hard to sex those - I have 18 italian colored chicks that are 2 weeks today and several of them are already showing either a nicely speckled chest or one with no spots, so I expect them to be easy to sex.

 

[Derrin]

If you want eggs and meat I would suggest the jm jumbo. The reason people get the others is they love the color variant. If you want some birds that are not plain grab those. Of course there is always the option to get both. They house together pretty well and if you do not want to miss them, they do not take much space.

 

[Erkenstein]

As you already pointed out, the pharaoh are easy to sex early. If you plan to sell to other people, that can be an advantage because you can sell them young, which is cheaper for the customer, allows them to know they are getting a bird with a full laying life ahead of it, and lets you cycle new hatches faster.

If you are just looking mainly to enjoy them and like the colors, it's not a problem to have to wait longer to sex them. You will definitely be able to sex them by 6 or 7 weeks.

Processing them for meat is never fun, but it is quite easy, and the meat is delicious in my opinion. It's great to be able to produce your own protein, both eggs and meat.

 

[Timothy Menezes]

Thanks guys! Really appreciate the input. Just had a really strange experience I wanted to share.

I was just about to put in my order for these Quail when my wife said she heard this out of the way feed store had silkies and she wanted some.

Wow, that was the strangest feed store I have ever been to! Seriously I was thinking it was a shell corporation for laundering money or something. It was the largest private feed store I have ever seen, but was like a ghost town inside and out. Signs all over the place showing every feed under the sun for sale, but the shelves and accompanying warehouse were empty and covered in dust.

They had huge walk in style aviaries with a few exotic looking birds, like tiny parrots. However lots of “not for sale” signs on them. They did have a ton of silkies, several hundred Rhode Island Reds, Americanas, and White Leghorns. Strange to have so many birds at the end of the season. Usually only in the spring, and even then it was still allot.

The guy working there said the white leghorns were heavy meat birds intended for meat production. I told him he was thinking of Cornish crosses. He said he had worked there a long time and had sold a great many birds and was positive they were meat birds. Great, so he didn’t know his products. Not the first time that has happened.

My wife picked out a few silkies, and as I was about to pay, another customer walked in and asked for chicken scratch. The guy says they were out of scratch! Figured if they had nothing else they would have scratch.

Then he turns his attention back to me says he is out of chick starter but recommended the turkey starter he has been using. Claimed they grew fantastically fast on the stuff. I said no thanks of course.

So the guy says, I owe him $53. I was surprised and said “53 bucks for 4 silkies and 4 leghorns? Yep. Ok so i hand him three $20 bills. He opens the cash register and there is not a single coin in it! No singles, fives, tens, or twenties either. Completely empty!

Closest I could get was $45 bucks, and he said that was fine. Then he raised the money tray and put the 20’s in a large wad of other 20’s hidden underneath...

Left there feeling weird and thinking he was a cartel front. We have had allot of cartel move into the area since California decided growing weed was ok. So who knows, just felt I had to relate this.

Will probably copy and paste this somewhere else, just didn’t see a general forum. Looked like every forum was dedicated to something in particular. Any suggestions about where to repost this?

 

[DK newbie]

That's a strange story indeed.. But if they were laundering money you'd think they'd have enough to keep at least the most common types of feed on their shelves? I work in a pet shop and a common sign of bad management is the lack of coins (the boss doesn't get us new ones when we run out) - and a common sign of lack of money is empty shelves.. I suppose having shitloads of chickens at the end of the season could be bad management as well - sometimes my boss just sees a good price and buys more animals/feed/whatever than we have room for and we end up not being able to sell all of it..

 

[Erkenstein]

Let us know how those leghorns dress out at 8 weeks!

 

[Timothy Menezes]

Lol yeah I'll do that, I had him confirm on the order that they were White Leghorns. He also stated he confirmed they were heavy meat birds so I was just a bit nervous but they are definitely Leghorns. Right now my brown egg layers are taking a break, hoping its not for the winter, and my 4 silver leghorns are laying well. Only bummer about the silver's eggs is they are only medium size.

 

[Timothy Menezes]

Oh and DK, I was thinking that was a possibility about mismanagement. Until I saw the massive was of big bills under the drawer. Just last week my local sheriff department took down a massive cartel marijuana grow. Over 50 thousand plants and estimated at $60 million dollars! They said the weed grow looked legit at first, but someone finally noticed the Social security number on the permit came back to a 7yr old kid! They barely caught it in time as the plants were ready for harvest with many already hung upside down to dry.