reading time: 7 Session minutes
Alexandra Douglas He has been raising and raising Coturnix quails for over a decade. It started, like many of us, by just getting a bird and going from there. Read about her early adventures and deepen her understanding of how to selectively breed quail.
Starting with Stella
I never knew I would be raising a Coturnix quail. I hadn’t heard of them until 2007, when I took an avian embryology class in college. The course ended up taking home a record 1 day old Coturnix quail. She named him Stella, after a brief scene from Gilmore Girls. Knowing absolutely nothing about this species, I bought an aquarium, a reptile lamp and mulch, and treated Stella as if she were a hamster. His growth was fantastic, and I documented everything, including the first crow signaling that he was a male.
Stella was a sweet, spoiled boy who needed a mate. I bought the Terra from a woman who said she had problems with aggressive males, but I didn’t have that problem with Stella.
Early education lessons
The two bred successfully, and I ended up with a lot of male chicks. That’s when I learned about “scalding”. When you put too many male quails together, they will nip each other’s heads, which can sometimes lead to severe injuries and even death. Fortunately, I found out coturnix Quick healing, and with a little Neosporin she was as good as new. I tried to hatch more eggs from Stella and Terra, but I kept getting males who wanted to kill each other. Since I don’t want aggressive birds, I started getting rid of the most aggressive birds. There was a lot of trial and error on my part, but gradually I began to learn more about “selective breeding”.
What is selective breeding?
Selective breeding can be done with any type of poultry. You start with a pair of parents who have traits you care about passing on to their offspring. These may be specific feather color patterns or specific bill heights or sizes. The options are endless. Offspring with the desired trait (feather pattern, size, disposition) are kept for future breeding; Chicks without these traits are culled.
There are two universal ways to breed for specific traits: breeding the breed and breeding the new livestock. In line breeding, you raise sons with their mothers or fathers to their daughters, thus continuing a specific genetic line. If you want to add new blood (new breeding) to the breed (which is considered good practice), you introduce new birds with the desired traits into your breeding program. My Jumbo Pharaoh line is at 43Research and development Generation by selective breeding, and fresh blood was added every few generations to avoid issues with unwanted genetic mutations.
coturnix
Coturnix quails come in many different varieties. They are all of the same sexcoturnix) but there are many more species within this genus. pharaoh quail (Phasianidae), also known as “Japanese quail” or “Coturnix japonicaStella and Terra were the standard Pharaoh Coturnix, and so I added some new Coturnix with different patterns of feathers to the covey: Red Range and English White.
At first, I was breeding for acting. I wanted calm birds and peaceful coffes, so I kept the more docile males and bred them with docile females. The offspring made great pets, and that was my primary goal. Stella died at the age of seven (the average age is 3 to 4 years). After a decade of breeding, my goals have changed. I am currently interested in breeding and being self-sufficient, using Coturnix quail as a food source rather than keeping pets.
The development of educational goals
I enjoyed having pets when I started out, and Stella has been the foundation of my current stock. However, the more I breed birds for certain traits, the more interested I become in breeding larger birds to create a dual-purpose (meat and egg) coffey. While I raise several quails for various reasons, my main focus is body size, egg size, color, and growth rate. Kofi was already selectively bred for easy disposal, which made breeding for additional traits easier. We currently sell quail chicks and hatching eggs and the Stellar Jumbo Pharaohs are a very popular breed with our customers.
Maintain volume
I absolutely love the plumage varieties of quail, so I selectively breed my Coturnix quail for certain colors and patterns. We have over 33 color variants in the Coturnix, including such well-known meat birds as Texas A&M and Jumbo Recessive White. I carefully multiply using the Jumbo Pharaoh line I created to add variety in color but still maintain the volume I’ve worked so hard for.
There are currently no agreed standards among Coturnix breeders and communities. But breeders in the United States and Europe have different opinions about what these criteria should be for selecting poultry. I hope that soon we can agree on standards for domestic quail breeding, similar to the standards used to define chicken and other poultry breeds. In the meantime, I’ll share what I’m looking for in Jumbo Pharaoh Coturnix.
Important foundations
When I started, the jumbo-sized quail was fairly new among local quail breeders. There have been legends of this one-pound quail, but no consistent breeding lines or documentation.
Stella was a weak 5 ounce bird, but I loved it. By breeding him to larger females, I was able to increase the size of the offspring over several generations and still keep his blood in stock. I kept males from larger eggs weighing 12 ounces or more, and females weighing 13 ounces or more. The larger size of both sexes was significant, but the somewhat lighter males reproduced more easily than the really heavy males. Current generations are now a good 14 to 15 ounces in both sexes.
A person can start with a small cove like I did and build up to larger birds. It’s even easier now, because larger or “jumbo” quail chicks and hatching eggs are more readily available for purchase to add to or start your feed. If you are interested in more genetic details, or deeper explanations of the specifics of my selective breeding process, you can find plenty of information in my book coturnix revolutionwas published in 2013.
What are your goals?
When working on a line and selectively breeding toward certain traits, be sure to know the proportions of your basic quail stock. Determine your breeding goals. Do you want bigger birds? More eggs per hatch? specific plumage colours? write down your goal; What do you want to achieve in a particular pairing?
Record keeping
Start your breeding program by tying the birds with colorful zip ties to keep track of parenting pairs and their offspring. Then keep accurate records, as this will help you keep track of your breeding programme. Record each breeding attempt as well as fertility and hatching rates. Each of our generations has a different colored zip tie to identify their lineage, breed and traits we love in them. Postal links work as a great form of identification. They are easy to attach and change, if necessary. Marking birds also helps prevent inbreeding, especially when selectively trying to mate. You want to keep the original bloodlines intact, but breeding birds that are too closely related will eventually result in genetic mutations you don’t want and can’t predict.
Example
My research and personal breeding experiences show that egg and chick sizes are directly related: bigger eggs mean bigger chicks. We are currently looking for these specific weights to keep our Jumbo Pharaoh line the same:
- 21-day-old (3-week-old) chicks should weigh 120 grams (about 4 ounces).
- 28-day-old (4-week-old) chicks should weigh 200 grams (about 7 ounces).
- 42-day-old (6-week-old) chicks should weigh 275 grams (about 8 ounces).
- Chicks of 63 days (9 weeks) and over should weigh 340 grams (about 11 ounces).
By having a standard, we can carefully weed out underweight birds and track our breeding effectiveness. Based on my experience, this is a steady growth rate to produce a larger bird. Most of my eggs are 14 grams or more for jumbo pharaohs. I have some birds that lay slightly smaller eggs, but they may have traits that would improve another group’s breeding or color diversity. You can find more information about grading eggs in my book.
Any breeding project will take time, but with dedication and purpose, it will be worth it. Compared to other birds, the advantage of raising and raising Coturnix quails is that they have a very fast maturation rate. Selective breeding can take half the time to achieve your goals compared to raising chickens to a standard of perfection. Quail are delightful birds, and will enjoy both the projects and their breeding possibilities.
Alexandra Douglas Born in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of nine, I started breeding parrots. When I moved to Oregon for college in 2005, I majored in animal science at Oregon State University with an emphasis in veterinary and poultry medicine. Alexandra was hooked on quail as soon as she delivered a day-old Pharaoh coturnix. Currently, she owns Stellar Game Birds, Poultry, Waterfowl LLC, a poultry farm that sells chicks, hatching eggs, egg eats, and meat. I have appeared in Poultry farming Europe She has been honored by the American Heritage Poultry Breeders Association for her quail research. Her book on Japanese quail, Coturnix revolutionis a comprehensive guide to breeding and understanding these domesticated birds. Visit her website or follow her on Facebook.