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On the forums of poultry farmers there are endless battles on the topic “Does the golden phoenix quail exist or is it a myth”? Some believe that these are inventions of sellers in order to increase egg sales and in fact it is a Manchurian quail. Others, referring to the breed standard of the Manchurian quail, which weighs about 200 grams, argue that the Golden Phoenix as a breed of quail exists, since the birds of this breed weigh twice as much as the Manchurian.
In reality, Golden Phoenix quail is most likely a French broiler branch of the Manchurian quail.
Description of the breed Golden Phoenix
With the Manchurian phoenix, it has a beautiful light yellow plumage, which in certain lighting gives the impression of gold, but the phoenix weighs 400g and is a broiler breed.
Like any broiler bird breed, the golden phoenix has a fleshy chest and powerful paws.
Females are 50 – 150 g larger than males. Although quails grow to full size two months after hatching, females begin to rush after a month and a half. The average weight of an ordinary egg in this breed is 15 grams, but according to the owners of these quails, if you feed the birds with food for broilers, then the eggs are more than 20 g. This size of eggs does not have a very good effect on the health of females and the production of young animals, but it all depends on the goals : sale of eggs or breeding of quails.
Productive characteristics
Consuming 40 g of food per day, female phoenixes, according to advertising, carry 300 eggs per year. True, the owners of these quails claim that the Manchurian quail has higher egg production, and the Manchurian lays 220 eggs per year. To establish where the truth is possible only empirically.
As it is easy to understand from the situation around the “nest”, the photo is advertising. In fact, domesticated quails lack the brooding instinct, and the Golden Phoenix is no exception. With a high degree of fertilization of eggs, offspring from them will have to be obtained in an incubator.
Fortunately, quails are unpretentious not only in keeping, but also in hatchery breeding of chicks. Quails manage to breed well even in a primitive “bowl with a fan” class incubator, which requires manual turning of eggs and does not have a temperature controller. The hatchability of quails in such an incubator with eggs turning twice a day is about 50%. This is despite the fact that this model is suitable only for chicken and quail eggs, the eggs of other types of poultry simply go bad in it. In a normal incubator with automatic egg turning and temperature control, the quail hatchability is 85%.
Another advantage of the breed is their light plumage, due to which the carcasses do not have a dark skin tone and meat, which scares off uninformed buyers. The carcasses of females of dark colors also show blackening on the abdomen, which is not the case with the golden phoenix. When slaughtering dark quails during molting, after plucking, dark stumps of not yet grown feathers will remain in the skin. The phoenix has a light feather imperceptibly in the same light skin.
The content of quails of the Phoenix breed
The density of quails per unit area varies depending on the purpose of their maintenance. To obtain a food egg, 135 square meters are required. see one quail. To get an incubation egg, one quail is planted on 150 square meters. cm.
To obtain food eggs, quails are kept separately from quails.
How to tell a male from a female
You can determine the sex of quails from about a month, when the young are completely overgrown with feathers. Cockerels have a dark mask on their heads and an orange chest without dark specks. Sometimes, as in the photo, there may be white eyebrows.
Females have a light head without a mask and a chest close in color to the main plumage with dark speckles.
Therefore, after two months, when selecting for a tribe, it is better to make sure that there will be full-fledged males in the herd. To do this, you have to look under the tail.
How to distinguish a female from a male by the cloaca
To determine the sex of a quail by the appearance of the cloaca, you need to push the feather between the tail and the cloaca and find out if there are any tubercles there.
In the male, between the cloaca and the tail, there is a secretory gland, which, when pressed, releases a foamy white secret. The male cloaca looks like this:
This dark pink roller just above the cloaca is the secretory gland. When you click on it, the picture will be as follows:
Sometimes the gland may look like a tubercle in the cloaca.
The female has no such tubercle.
There is no roller above the cloaca.
How sex determination in quails looks like in dynamics, you can watch the video.
Quail feeding
From a biological point of view, quails are the same chickens and any chicken feed and bait are quite suitable for them. Just like chickens, quails need lime supplements and sand to help them digest their food.
The only difference is that it is better not to give them whole grains for reasons of better absorption of feed. Quail stomachs are small, large grains will be digested for a very long time. But they are well suited for millet and any grain crushed.
Like chickens, quails love greens and vegetables, which can be given to them in finely chopped form in the morning or in the afternoon.
If it is possible to walk quails on the grass, they will provide themselves with green fodder. At the same time, either because of their small size, or because of more intelligent manners, but quails do not have such a destructive effect (empty land), as from chickens. Quail, of course, will destroy delicious berries and leaves, but the roots and earthworms will not be touched.
Reviews of Belarusian owners of golden phoenixes
Conclusion
Breeding quails is very profitable in terms of the return of products per 1 feed unit. In addition, quails grow much faster than chickens and require much less space, and meat and eggs are more expensive than chicken ones. Broiler breeds such as Golden Phoenix can almost completely replace chickens.