I have been raising quail in Thailand for most of the last 19 years and not long ago I started a project to breed large birds.
I got 100 eggs of Jumbo Brown Quail called Meat Busters and 100 eggs of Texas A&M Whites all from James Marie farms in Louisiana. I later got 100 eggs for a jumbo golden colored quail from a friend and I believe the bloodline came from Australia.
I made several batches of each breed and culled for size. For those birds I made 3 cages one each for all the hens of a bloodline and then put in males from the other two bloodlines. I did keep a few of the whites pure. From these crosses I selected eggs over 14 grams and one batch was even 14.5 grams and hatched several batches. There is a recessive gene that gives a very pretty dark color mutation that I am keeping. That is basically where I am at. I will usually get a few birds over 280 grams at 6 weeks and the odd 300 gram hen. I have hit 330 grams so far. My goal is a 400 gram bird in 1 more years.
Breeding for size is very different from a commercial egg operation. If you want to make money on eggs, I would recommend getting 2 bloodlines of Thai birds and going from there.
I make my own grower feed and fix a supplement for my layers. They get more room and there are a few more things I do to get the size. My eggs are considerably larger so require more feed, but I do make money on the eggs and culled males and spent layers. Breeding for size does require a certain amount of record keeping to track what works. I have a very good idea of what my FCR is out to 8 weeks, hatch rates, feed consumption of layers…….. My next project is to try an even higher protein mix for my growers.
If anyone else out there is doing anything like this I would love to hear about it or from anyone with quail.