Selective breeding cooperation

[Jetmon135]

Whiskey bear,

I am very interested in the larger egg hatching. My goal is trading my large eggs to other folks for similar sized incubating eggs to maintain a better gene pool. I plan to start weighing my eggs and birds soon. I’m new to quail raising but enjoying the eggs, incubation process, and looking forward to having good sized meat birds to eat. I’m also interested in getting my birds off the commercial bagged feed and onto more natural local sourced feed or make my own. Thanks in advance for any help.

Alex

 

[Butchers Wife]

My second post tonight, but on an entirely different topic.

When I started with quail this time last year it was with the understanding that jumbo strains had been developed and that with such a fast breeding cycle, stock size could be optimized rapidly. I started this spring experimenting with only incubating huge eggs. It paid off. Last year, I started with birds from Blue Ridge, eggs from Southwest and Myshire. I kept a couple dozen hens averaging 12oz over winter. My first hatch this spring incubating only eggs over 16 grams gave me 10 hens averaging 15 oz. All bigger than their mothers. Bigger eggs do indeed hatch into bigger birds. I now have 20 hens from them to keep over winter for next year. I’ll repeat the process.

This season’s getting late, I’m just doing some large, non-selective hatches to fill my freezer for the winter. Between collecting for those I have a lot of bigger eggs from the old ladies and their bigger daughters going to waste. If I had others looking to optimize breeding stock I would be happy to give them these eggs. Next year, I would love to have such from those people. New blood. Myshire and Southwest will send me whatever eggs they gather the day they send them. Individuals intent on selective breeding could swap select eggs of a certain size. Is anyone interested in setting up a circle for egg swapping like this in the US?

Like! Buddying up according to the desire for certain traits is a spectacular idea! It could even push those traits a few cycles ahead in 1/2 the time. Hybrid vigor is where it's at.

 

[CliftonQuail]

This is an interesting thread. I have jumbo wilds from MyShire that I first hatched in June 2022. I have eggs in lockdown right now that I deliberately used every egg on hand that was over 14 g because I wanted to see if they'd be bigger birds and lay bigger eggs. I'm currently in the Dallas, TX area, but will be moving towards the Texas Hill Country in coming months. I'd definitely be interested in sharing swapping eggs, but also want to stay with just the jumbo wilds.

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

It would also be interesting to note whether leg injuries become more common in your larger birds. Wondering if there is a functional size limit where their health suffers (broken legs being a potential example).

 

[Whiskybear]

It would also be interesting to note whether leg injuries become more common in your larger birds. Wondering if there is a functional size limit where their health suffers (broken legs being a potential example).

Hmm. That’s a thought.

 

[HomesteadNowhere]

Curious if anyone worked on this and has updates to share.

 

[CliftonQuail]

Curious if anyone worked on this and has updates to share.

In my case, I ended up with only 9 birds hatching. Seven survived to go into grow out cages, 3 roos and 4 hens. I put one of the males in with the females and the other two in a bachelor pad. The smaller of those two did a number on the scalp of the other, but he's still surviving. I never got around to weighing them and none of them seem very large. Also, in the cage with 1 roo/4 hens, one of the hens was scalped and died before I realized it. A second hen was scalped, but I got her out and was nursing her to health when she managed to break her neck in the isolation cage. I pulled the male out and put him in with the other males from that hatch. Last week, I found one of the remaining hens scalped and dead so the culprit may have been the 4th hen all along. I'll be culling the remaining birds, including the hen, because I don't want that kind of aggression in my flock. All of the progenitors were MyShire lineage and I've heard anecdotal comments about aggression being an issue with their birds. However, I still have one breeding colony of all MyShire birds (1 male/5 females) that I don't have any problems with. I've got a second colony that all 5 hens are MyShire lineage, but the male is Sandy Soil Farms and no issues there either.

 

[Whiskybear]

I never heard any great clamor of interest. Myself, I'm scaling back quail this year as I set up chickens. With staggering smaller hatches just to keep some meat coming, it’ll be hard to do "project" hatches.