Tomorrow, my quail will turn 5 weeks old. When I was getting ready to incubate the eggs that I received from JMF, I took "one egg" from quail that were hatched from a hatchery (that will remain nameless) and put it in with the rest. We marked the one egg and was surprised when it made it to lock down, and were even more surprised when it hatched. We were all in agreement that we would never know which chick was produced from that one egg.... well, that is, until now. For the past 3 weeks, my 16 yo daughter has been pulling the roos out of the cage when they crow and put them into an "all male" cage. This weekend, my daughter pulled out the smallest quail, and we are POSITIVE that it was the "one egg". We stuck him on a scale, and grabbed the average sized male which was 9 ounces and our little roo just made it to 6 ounces. I know, you're thinking, "but that's only a difference of 3 ounces"... when we put him back, he is "dwarfed" be the rest of the males. There is one monster quail (that I've been calling T-Rex) that weighs 9.8 ounces, and I'm sure he'll end up be one of my studs. So, if you want large quail, go with JMF. James
Out of the JMF eggs I got I Have one pure white bird half the size of the rest. Not sure the sex yet. But I have a recipe in mind.
Well I have JMF jumbo browns rather then the a&m but thought I would add my results on to this thread. My chicks are only 11-12 days old but already over 3/4ths of the forty chicks are eighty grams or more.....meeting the 14 day tatanka guideline. I have one I call Big Momma who is already over 100grams. My eggs had really rough handling by the post office and only 40/105 eggs hatched but what made is looking really good. I have 70 more eggs hatching in a week from a breeder in California who claims his birds are 16-19 ounces when mature so I will be doing a close comparison of these two lines of birds.
Please post the results of the comparisons! I should be getting some JMF Pharaoh Quail in here soon. These are my first quail and I'm super excited!
I will try to eventually post final results. Last night I managed to get all forty chicks banded and have their first official recorded weigh in at two weeks old Smallest bird was a 69gram rooster, largest was 110 gram hen, all but six chicks well over 80 grams. Did a few spot checks tonight to see daily weight gains and every one I checked gained at least 10 grams and one gained close to 20 grams in just one day. I hope to do full checks on everyone once a week to be able to best choose my new breeders. Butchered 9 birds from my old stock of standard browns tonight as well....weights on them at almost 7 weeks were only 200-235grams...just over 7 ounces. So far the James Marie birds looking to be much better.
