Starting with quail for meat on a shoestring budget

JordanCDollar said:

Hello all,

I have been a gardener my whole life, and have often though about keeping animals, but I have not lived where it is allowed, and I didn't think I could deal with processing. I was horrified when Safeway (owners of Randalls Grocery where I used to work) just announced that they would no longer be using pink slime in their meats, meats that I had been buying and eating for years. Recently I watched Food, Inc and decided that the commercial meat industry just seemed dangerous and irresponsible to me. Anyway, buying supermarket meat is really just outsourcing my squeemishnes to places where my meat animals would experience much worse treatment than I could give them at home.

I have started buying my meats at farmer's markets and from area producers, but that is very expensive and anyway, I would like to raise some animals myself. In a year I am moving and hope to move somewhere that I can have chickens and goats, but where I am now the HOA will not allow it. So that has me thinking about quail. I would be raising for both meat and eggs. I would probably go for A&M as my wife isn't really a huge fan of dark meat. I need to get started fairly cheap though. My wife is a teacher and I am a minister, so money isn't in great supply. I want to know some tips for building a very cheap quail setup so that I have plenty of money for feed and more expensive items like an incubator.

So please, I would like your budget tips on coops, runs, brooders and the like.

I also have a few miscelaneous questions:
will quail forage for bugs to supplement their diet like chickens do? If so is a quail tractor set up a good idea?

If I have 7 foot privacy fence and plug all the gaps could I let the quail run free in the backyard if I clip their wings, or can they fly over or will predator birds get them?

Is the difference between eggs that I will hatch and eggs that I will eat other than one goes in an incubator and the other in the fridge? In other words if I am wanting to keep some eggs to eat do I need to keep the males separate from the hens whose eggs I want to eat?

How many should I start with and how many should I keep if I want to feed my wife and I quail a couple of times a week?

Thanks,

Jordan in Austin TX

Click to expand...

JHaller said:

Hi, Jordan,

I'm an Austinite too, maybe we could split an order of 50-100 chicks or eggs and keep the cost down?

You don't want them loose in the yard under any circumstances. The tractor is a good idea, but they won't tear up the soil surface as well a chicken. You'll need to park the tractor at night so that raccoons can't dig under it, or move birds to a protected cage.

You want to make the quail cage so that a pack of roving pit bulls can't crash through the hardware cloth and get to your birds. I recently lost my breeding pair when some new animals in a nearby rent house tore loose aged fence pickets in two yards and got into my back yard. Predator protection is everything. The rest is easy. Allow about a cubic foot of floor space per bird

For weekly meals, figure on two birds per serving. Assuming you have freezer space, you probably want to slaughter 3-4 times per year. Quail need 6-8 weeks from hatch to slaughter, and you'll want 8 quail per week to supply two meals to two adults.

Keep a few extra birds to supply fresh eggs, which can also be boiled and pickled and kept in the refrigerator for salads and snacks. No need to separate males and females, eggs can eaten or hatched as needed.

I am still new to quail keeping, but I believe this is a great solution for city dwellers to supply themselves clean protein. Even apartments often have enough space for egg-laying quail.

Click to expand...