the cycle of life (coturnix)

[john in wa]

so i am thinking. why keep adult birds? i don't sell the eggs or sell any birds. i only use them for eggs and meat. i have a nice batch of new chicks more than i need really. i have more eggs than i can eat. so why not cull all my adult birds. i was think that if i cull every 10 weeks. i will always have quail in the freezer and that will give the hens time to start laying for the next batch of chicks. and i don't need to feed adult birds all the time. kind of start a little cycle with the birds. i think this will work and save a little cash on feed. what do you guys think?

 

[miss_thenorth]

I'm starting to work on a 12 week cycle. that way, too, the oldest birds are still young, and therefore tender, as opposed to keeping specific breeder birds. Only problem I haven't figured out yet though is keeping through the winter--will I get enough eggs to keep the cycle going? ( I just started in April.)

 

[shelleyd2008]

From what I've heard, the meat is always tender, regardless of how old they are. You could always cut down on the number of adults you have, and then just hatch all the eggs you get. Then you would have a constant supply of birds growing out.

Say for instance, you keep 3 females and 1 male. Theoretically you should get from 12-21 eggs a week. Set the eggs weekly, so that you have chicks hatching every week. Of course, not all the eggs will hatch, and not all the chicks would live. This would still give you plenty of birds, and you wouldn't have to wait for the babies to grow (once your system is established). Or you could keep 2 females and set bi-weekly, so as not to have so many chicks growing out.

Keep all male chicks for food (easy to do if you breed only browns, goldens, or cinnamons), and sell the females. People are always wanting female birds. Then when your 'parent' hens are getting too old you can swap them out with some of the younger females.

If I ate my birds, I'd do this

Only keeping your breeders till they are 12 weeks would create a huge gap between when you'd have birds to process, and when the next ones would be ready, unless you raised a huge number of birds.

 

[miss_thenorth]

I'm still playing around with it. My incubator holds 60 quail eggs. It takes 18-19 days to hatch them all out. brooder for three weeks, then out they go. Once mature, select largest ones and set up breeding sets-3 hens to one roo. Collect their eggs to incubate next. collect all other eggs for eating. Process all excess roos after 8 weeks. when brooder is empty have another batch ready to go in there. rinse and repeat. I haven't worked out the bugs, but it goes something like that.

 

[john in wa]

well i went ahead and culled all my adult birds today ecept my golden roo and my only A&M hen. sorry they are just to cute pluss she lays a blue egg every day. then i moved the older chicks to the adult cages. they are at the age were they should start laying in a week or 2. I also unplugged my 2 incubators today and put them back in the boxes till later. i have enough chicks to last me for a while so i dont think i need to hatch more right now maybe in a month i will do another hatch. when my young birds start laying.