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Faramir, front viewFaramir, back and wing patternFaramir, second view
Range 4 · Exhibited at the Boulder County Fair

Faramir

Carries Fee over a Range base. Noticeably softer and sandier than the non-Fee birds beside him, with the scalloping and shaft streaks still clearly readable, which is exactly what Fee is described as doing: it pulls the red back and leaves the pattern alone. He is also by a wide margin the smallest bird here.

Size: read this before you buyFaramir is genuinely small: 3.4 oz, weighed twice. That is well under the 121 g published average for a normal-sized Coturnix male, let alone a jumbo. We are not going to dress that up: he is a tiny bird and he should not be bought as breeding stock by anyone selecting for size. He is here for his color genetics and because he is a good-natured little bird.
VarietyRange (jumbo line)
Pen IDRange 4
SexMale (vent-checked, not feather-sexed)
TuxedoYes
FeeYes
Weight96 g (3.4 oz)
TemperamentHandled daily since hatch; calm in the hand
Raised byColin, 4-H poultry project, Lyons, Colorado
Order eggs or chicks How these genes work

How Faramir weighs up

96 g · 3.4 oz

Weighed 3 Aug 2026

This bird96 g
Published mean, large-sized strain, adult male 188.0 g
Published mean, normal-sized strain, adult male 121.1 g

That puts him about 49% below the published mean for a large-sized strain, and well clear of a normal-sized one. One honest caveat: that study weighed its birds at 16 weeks, and strain, age, feed and season all move the number. Treat this as a real measurement of one bird, not a guarantee about his offspring.

Haqani MI, Kawamura K, Takenouchi A, Kabir MH, Nakamura Y, Ishikawa A, Tsudzuki M. A growth performance and nonlinear growth curve functions of large- and normal-sized Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica). The Journal of Poultry Science 2021;58(2):88–96. Read the source

What Faramir would bring to a breeding pen

Faramir weighed 96 g on 3 Aug 2026, which is about 49% below the published mean for an adult male of a large-sized strain. That is a measurement of one bird on one day, not a promise about his offspring.

He brings white tuxedo marking and Fee, the red-reduction trait. Worth knowing before you bid: tuxedo is probably, but not provably, the published white-spotting locus, and Fee has no published gene at all. Both are breeder conventions. We can tell you what this bird looks like and what its parents looked like; we cannot quote you inheritance ratios, and anyone who does is going beyond the evidence.

Handled almost every day since hatch by Colin and his sisters, so he sits calmly in the hand and does not flare or scramble when picked up. Temperament is worth asking about and worth watching, but it is a product of how a bird is raised as much as of its breeding, so treat it as a fact about this bird rather than a promise about its chicks.

Faramir was sexed by vent examination, not by plumage. Range is built on extended brown, which overwrites the wild-type breast pattern, so Range birds, tuxedo or not, cannot be feather-sexed. White on the chest here means tuxedo and nothing else.

He sells through the Boulder County Fair poultry sale, not through us directly. The sale sets the price, not a list.

What we have not measured: we do not keep individual laying records, fertility rates or hatch rates on these birds. If we quoted you a number for any of those, we would be guessing, so we don't. Ask us at the pen and we will tell you exactly what we have seen and what we haven't.