Range 6 · Exhibited at the Boulder County Fair

Gimli

Tuxedo over a Range base, with rust that stays rust. His earlier photographs were taken in juvenile plumage and look far drabber than he does now, which is how he ended up recorded two different ways, a good illustration of why color calls on young birds are worth re-checking once the adult feathers are in.

Fee: how we made this callGimli was recorded both ways in our own files earlier this summer. We settled it by putting him beside the two birds we are certain about. Fee dilutes the red pigment and leaves the black alone, so a Fee bird loses its rust and keeps its dark markings. Legolas, our confirmed Fee bird, has no rust anywhere. His back is gray-khaki with strong dark barring. Gimli's back is saturated rust-chestnut with dark barring over the top of it. He has the red the Fee birds have lost. We are calling him non-Fee. This is a visual call against known reference birds, not a test cross, and we will say so to any buyer.

Variety	Range (jumbo line)
Pen ID	Range 6
Sex	Male (vent-checked, not feather-sexed)
Tuxedo	Yes
Fee	No
Weight	207 g (7.3 oz)
Temperament	Handled daily since hatch; calm in the hand
Raised by	Colin, 4-H poultry project, Lyons, Colorado

Order eggs or chicks How these genes work

How Gimli weighs up

207 g · 7.3 oz

Weighed 3 Aug 2026

This bird	207 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 10% above 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 Gimli would bring to a breeding pen

Gimli weighed 207 g on 3 Aug 2026, which is about 10% above 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. 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.

Gimli 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.