White texas quail
The Texas Quail, or Texas Pharaoh, is a high-yielding meat breed. His weight is one of the largest of all the varieties of this species. Egg production is rather low, but this is fully compensated by meat productivity. The maintenance and breeding of quail is simple, it is recommended for both industrial and home cultivation.
Texas quail
Description of the breed
White Texas quail is a broiler with a corresponding body structure. The birds are large, stocky and muscular. They gain weight very quickly, although in some cases they can be obese. It is quite easy to distinguish this variety by its appearance. The description of the appearance of the Texas quail and its features are as follows:
- The head is average.
- The eyes are dark.
- The beak is light, sometimes has a dark tip.
- The neck is short.
- The body is plump, full, small growth.
- The breast protrudes strongly.
- The back is widened, bent in an arc.
- The legs are well developed and well muscled.
The Texas quail is albino, the color is white, there are small black dots on the back of the head, sometimes they are scattered throughout the body, forming a marble pattern. When buying quails, you should choose individuals that have few black blotches. You also need to take a good look at the structure of the plumage: it should be fluffy, a little loose. Such birds gain weight better. You can see the appearance and features of Texas white quails in the photo.
Breed productivity
The ancestor of the Texas white quail was the Japanese and English white quail. Also, other breeds were used in breeding. From English birds, the Texan received a white plumage and good weight gain. The broiler species boasts the following product characteristics:
- A live bird weighs an average of 400 g.
- The mass of the finished carcass is 250-260 g.
- Low egg production - about 120-160 eggs per year.
- Egg weight - 12-14 g.
- Females begin to rush at 50-60 days.
Some individuals can gain weight up to 550 g. But such quails are not suitable for breeding. Their weight is achieved mainly due to their high fat content. The chick weight gain table shows that they gain weight very quickly. Pharaoh's quail carcass has a light shade, the skin is yellowish. Meat contains more than 20 useful elements and vitamins, low cholesterol content. It is recommended for dietary nutrition for children, allergy sufferers, with heart pathologies and gastrointestinal diseases.
Advantages and disadvantages of the breed
The Texas quail breed is rapidly gaining market share. This is one of the most promising breeds for industrial breeding in any climatic conditions. You can keep birds at home if the main purpose of growing is to get meat. The breed has many advantages, here are the main ones:
- Rapid growth and mass gain.
- Good taste and compositional characteristics of the meat.
- No problems with the oviducts.
- Undemanding content.
- Simple maintenance with minimal cost.
- Good carcass appearance.
- Feathers easily come off the skin.
- Although the quail rushes poorly, the weight of its testicles is higher than that of other breeds.
Like any breed, the Texan has a number of disadvantages. The disadvantages include:
- Low egg production.
- Fertilization of eggs is not too high.
- Relatively high feed consumption.
- It is difficult to determine the sex of a Texas quail.
- Males are too passive.
- Chicks are often born weak.
Most of the shortcomings are fully compensated by the advantages of the breed, which is why it is so popular among poultry farmers and constantly receives positive reviews. So it's worth buying these birds for your farm.
Quail content
For quail breeding, it is enough to allocate a barn with an area of 10-15 m². In such a room, it is realistic to contain more than a hundred birds. Cells are bought or made by hand. The width of the box should be 40 cm, length - 90 cm, and height - 20 cm (at a higher height, the quails can break their heads). For 1 quail in a cage, 50 cm² of area is allocated. If the livestock is actively fed, males and females are housed separately. In the parent flock, there should be no more than 2 female quails per 1 male.
Metal feeders and drinkers are attached to the outside of the cages. The front grille should have such gaps that only the head can penetrate, but cannot squeeze through the whole body. In the lower part, special trays are placed for collecting eggs and droppings. They need to be checked and cleaned in a timely manner, without this there will be an untidy smell in the house. Texas white quail are quite resistant to various diseases. But improper care and dirt in the cells can trigger infections.
Keeping Texas quails requires proper lighting, ventilation and temperature control. Quails do not like bright light, cages should not be placed near the window. It is best to equip the house with a fluorescent lamp with a power of about 25 kW. The ideal temperature in the poultry house is 18-22 ° C, in winter it is worthwhile to provide for heating. Good ventilation is also required, but no drafts. Household humidity should be kept at 55-65%.
Quail feeding
Feeding white Texas quail is easy. A hundred birds eat about 4.5 kg of feed per month. By that time, the chicks are gaining sufficient mass, at about 1.5 months, until the quails begin to molt, they can be sent for slaughter. If the female rushes well, she can be kept up to 7-8 months.
On industrial farms, they prefer to use ready-made feed for broiler chickens. They include crushed grains of corn, barley, wheat, bran. About 30% are protein supplements (meat and bone and fish meal, soybean meal, lysine). Also, the compound feed includes mineral supplements and vitamins. Growing a house of Texas quails on ready-made compound feed is also profitable, because its cost is not so high, and until the slaughter age, only 9-10 kg will go to a hundred heads.
At home, you can make food for quails yourself. To do this, you need to take equal parts of corn, wheat and barley flour, add meat and bone meal, chalk, salt, unrefined sunflower oil to them. Also at home, quails are fed with vegetables: boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, in the summer they give zucchini, pumpkin, green grass. For intensive feeding, boiled peas are well suited. You can mix minced fish, broth into food.
Quail breeding
Breeding Texas quail is only possible in an incubator. Like most domestic breeds, he has lost his hatching instinct. First of all, you need to form a parent flock. Since Texan males are not very active, more than 2 females should not be added to them. The more heaped content leads to the fact that the percentage of fertilization of eggs falls. It is necessary to take eggs up to 3-4 months, then the breeding birds are sent for slaughter and a new flock is formed.
Before replanting, you need to determine the sex of the white Texas quail.It is not always easy to distinguish between birds, since the color and size of males and females are approximately the same. To distinguish individuals, it is necessary to carefully examine the cloaca. In females, it has a bluish tint, in males it is pink. In addition, males have a small nodule, if you press on it, a frothy yellow liquid will begin to stand out from the cloaca. Sex determination is best done at 8 weeks of age.
Eggs for incubating the Texas White Quail breed should not be stored for more than a week. If you put a seven-day-old material in an incubator, hatchability will be 80%, for a ten-day one - 60%, chicks may not hatch at all from older eggs. To hatch chicks, you can use a standard incubator, but you should put a special tray for small eggs with a lattice in it. Incubation temperature - 38-38.5 ° С, humidity - 65-70%. Quails hatch after 16-17 days.
Care and feeding of young animals
The better the care of white broiler quails, the more of them survive. For the first week, babies are kept in a brooder or heated box. The temperature should be 33-35 ° C. In the second week, the temperature is reduced to 30-32 ° С, in the third - to 26-28 ° С. Humidity is maintained at 60-70%. The room should be well ventilated, you can process it from time to time with an ultraviolet lamp.
Broiler quail chicks eat from the first hours of life. First, they are given a boiled egg, from 2-3 days they add curd to the diet, at least 2 g per head. After 4 days, they give chopped corn grits, greens, wheat bran. By 8 days, they begin to mix feed for broilers and at 2 weeks completely the chicks are transferred to them. Since the month they have been eating adult food.
Broiler quails grow very quickly. At 1.5-2 months they are sent for slaughter. Before that, a selection is carried out, the best females and males are left for breeding, and the rest are sent to intensive fattening. Birds of different sexes are housed in separate cages, fed with high-calorie mixtures consisting of grain, boiled peas and protein supplements.
How much does a Texas quail breed cost? Hatching eggs can be bought for 15-20 rubles, daily chicks cost about 40 rubles. The price of weekly quails is 60 rubles, and monthly quails are 140 rubles. An adult Texas quail costs 220-240 rubles. In most cases, prices for this variety are higher than for other breeds. This is due to the large mass of the Texas White broiler quail and its high productivity.
When buying, you need to carefully choose a poultry farm and a backyard farm. It is advisable to read reviews about the breeder, find out how long he has been breeding the breed. It also does not hurt to carefully consider the photos and videos of Texas quails, so as not to purchase a cross with low productivity.