weigh in starting 1 week and egg production

[Darkestcon]

Everything written in this line of post and every thing within is my opinion. If i say something that you disagree with feel free to say so. Please dont be offended. This is my opinion and my views and not intended to hurt any feelings.

Our quail hatched 6 days ago. 114+ out of 240 eggs. (whole thread on that) first few popped 7 days ago.

Lowest weight .75 oz
average 1.05
highest 1.3 oz


As many of you know Jumbo quail arent a line, its not a breed, nor is it a species. Using the term "jumbo" is like saying 2 adults are "tall". Their children have the chance to be "tall" as well. But its not a guarantee. Genetics say that both parents being tall mean the children stand a good chance, but in the end they are just people. In order to be Jumbo you must continue to breed for "jumbo" size. If you just allow a big bird to breed with a regular bird without care for size. Simply put you just have a bird. All too often i see people spewing Jumbo Coturnix for sale and i call em asking how big the parents are? The response i get? "im selling the babies". Yeah yeah, i know. But how big are the parents? Answer: "8 oz" sometimes i get "10 oz". Yeah yeah i know your thinking "10 oz is jumbo".

10 oz is my cutoff for Jumbo on the small side.

All this is stated so that we understand what I am aiming for/what makes a good layer and meat bird. It doesnt mean that is what im going to get. I bought James Marie "egg and meat birds". In other words they should be prolific layers with some decent meat.

I dont expect a 14 oz bird. I expect 10 oz? As it should be decent on meat i expect that this should be achievable. I know often times people aim for that jumbo line and i like it. I like the meatyness. But im curious to see what weight James Marie found to be a prolific egg layer and a meat bird.

I know that the birds we had previously from this same category from him often times layed 2 eggs a day. I even had a few dropping 3 a day. I swear to you I had 1 lay 4 in a day, to this day i think i had to be mistaken. I did not ever ever weigh them to see what they weighed.

 

[redranger209]

Two eggs a day?!?

 

[redranger209]

Oh and I think 10+ ounces per bird is good. It’s more than my Cochin when she broods.

 

[Darkestcon]

Two eggs a day?!?

Yeah we had 20 females in our last setup and were getting 28 or more eggs a day. note that often times a few layed none due to taking a day off. so in reality 14-16 were laying in that day of 28 eggs. Like most egg layers they would on occasion take a day off but we found it to be 1 in 7-14 days.

 

[DK newbie]

I've read somewhere they can produce an egg every 18 hours when everything is optimal - age, feed, light and such. So two a day happens. 3 a day should be pretty unusual though. I've only had mine for a bit less than a month and I don't collect eggs every day so I haven't really paied attention to how many they lay. I also haven't weighed the birds, but they look pretty big to me.. They were not labeled as jumbos though, just as 'euro quail'.

 

[Darkestcon]

I've read somewhere they can produce an egg every 18 hours when everything is optimal - age, feed, light and such. So two a day happens. 3 a day should be pretty unusual though. I've only had mine for a bit less than a month and I don't collect eggs every day so I haven't really paied attention to how many they lay. I also haven't weighed the birds, but they look pretty big to me.. They were not labeled as jumbos though, just as 'euro quail'.

the time would make sense as usually we got eggs in morning and more later. dont take that 4 eggs in a day to the bank. Still think something fish happened with that. Though i have surely had females with 2 eggs in morning all the time. 300 eggs a year is 1.13 eggs per day every 18 hrs is 486.66 eggs per bird. bit of a difference there. One thing of interest is that most say 300 eggs a year however every study i have read never really focuses on how to maximize the egg production. One study hinted that with the proper energy and protein level higher egg production would need to be studied. All egg count aside I may spend some time on this flock to see if i can find a way to increase or hold steady a higher amount of egg production with differing protein energy and calcium levels.

 

[Darkestcon]

So spent a little while doing a bit of research and found something interesting. A scientific study states that mixing 5% residual autolysed beer yeast to quail feed increased egg production by 30% at the highest number 50 quail laid 97 eggs in a day. Thats an average of 1.94 eggs per quail per day. (at highest count). This is most amusing to me because our last batch of quail we were messing with fermented feed for them. We used Beer yeast as my buddy worked at a brewery. We didnt do it for egg production but for feed costs. Im wondering if that had something to do with it.

 

[mdees88]

I weighed one of my bigger hens last week. She was exactly 8 weeks and weighed 13.7 ounces. She is one of 4 that are all about the same size. I have several birds that consistently give me 15+ gram eggs daily, one or two consistently give 16+ gram eggs. These birds came from Orchard Hill Poultry. I have some JMF birds that will start laying in a week or 2.

Looking forward to you keeping track of your weight gain...

 

[Darkestcon]

I weighed one of my bigger hens last week. She was exactly 8 weeks and weighed 13.7 ounces. She is one of 4 that are all about the same size. I have several birds that consistently give me 15+ ounce eggs daily, one or two consistently give 16+ ounce eggs. These birds came from Orchard Hill Poultry. I have some JMF birds that will start laying in a week or 2.

Looking forward to you keeping track of your weight gain...

did you happen to weigh your birds as they grew mdees88?

 

[mdees88]

did you happen to weigh your birds as they grew mdees88?

Unfortunately no. But I will when I start incubating my own eggs.

I have been weighing my eggs. I'm averaging 13.5-14 grams and I think I will be closer to 15 grams once my JMF birds start laying. I have a couple hens that lay small 11 gram eggs that I will cull once I have new layers.