Which Coturnix to get?

[bus2325]

Just starting to get into raising quail (hopefully for a little profit) and not sure which Coturnix to get. I’m leaning toward the natural colored birds. Not really into the white colors, but I am interested in money so color don’t matter.

I want to sell pickled eggs, eggs by the dozen and hatching eggs. I’m also interested in selling live and processed birds. All on a small scale.

Which variety of Coturnix should I start with? Ive got a brand new incuview up and running and I am ready to buy some eggs from here or Ebay or wherever I need to.

Thank you all for any help you can provide.

Brian

I love Tibetans and Rosettas. Great colors and fantastic temperament. They seem to be more open to handling, more assertive and far less skittish when introduced to other quails or new people.

 

[knicoll71]

Checkout Stillwater Quail out of Montana. He has some awesome birds! I bought 4 doz hatching eggs and all but 5 were viable on lockdown. He has jumbo wild, colors, and celadon. Selling live birds and hatching eggs I'm super lucky since they're pretty local to me.

 

[CliftonQuail]

FWIW, I placed an order with Sandy Hills Farm for 30 Jumbo wild eggs late evening on Monday, 2/13, they shipped on Thursday, 2/16, and I received 36 eggs on Saturday, 2/18. I'll be setting them on Sunday 2/19 evening. They're in SC and I'm in TX. I have no experience with this vendor, but will update with my hatch rate when possible.

Here's my hatching update. Out of 36 eggs received, only 9 hatched. There were 10 that didn't show any sign of development at lockdown and the rest just quit somewhere along the way. Of the 9 that hatched, three have died. One broke its neck, I found one dead for no apparent reason and the third seemed fine until yesterday afternoon. It was suddenly lethargic and wouldn't eat or drink. Its vent looked a little bit soiled, so I cleaned it with an Epsom salt bath and tried to get it to drink from a syringe. A few hours later, I found it dead. The remaining 6 seem just fine.

 

[Huntmaster]

Thank y’all for the help. I ended up buying 25+ on eBay for $30. I wanted to buy the JMF eggs from southwest gamebirds but they were a little more expensive and shipping is almost a month out. I’ll buy more soon. This incuview is holding its temp very well but the humidity seems very sensitive.

How did things go your with your eggs?

 

[bhaugh]

Hatch rates for me this year have been pretty dismal. I ended up buying chicks locally. Most of the eggs I’ve received had terrible packing and broke in transit. I opened them up at hatch and most not fertile. There’s a fine line selling eggs and calling yourself a breeder vs selling eggs and being one. I think I’ve set close to 5 dz and have 9 birds.

 

[CliftonQuail]

Hatch rates for me this year have been pretty dismal. I ended up buying chicks locally. Most of the eggs I’ve received had terrible packing and broke in transit. I opened them up at hatch and most not fertile. There’s a fine line selling eggs and calling yourself a breeder vs selling eggs and being one. I think I’ve set close to 5 dz and have 9 birds.

I have a few more birds than that, but I started with 5 dz and have had 4 or 5 hatches since. All of my hatches have been pretty poor, but I'm a newbie just trying to figure things out. I have multiple thermometers/hydrometers in the incubator and do a pretty good job of maintaining temp. Humidity is still a challenge.
My first batch of 60 eggs, only 24 hatched and 20 lived to grow out cages. I've run at least 4 batches of eggs from those birds, then I bought another 36 eggs and only got 9 to hatch from them. Like you, there were a lot that weren't fertile. As of now, I have two adult breeding colonies of 1 male/5 females, one set of 5 week old 1 male/4 females, two 5 week old excess males and the six 11 day old chicks. That's a total of 25 birds. Granted that I culled 7 males about two weeks ago, but I sure thought I'd have more birds by now.

 

[bhaugh]

Part of it is the time of year but I think people think just because theyre birds are laying the eggs are fertile. Heck I’ve had Roos in with the girls and the eggs were infertile. The age we live in these days I suppose and their popularity sure hasn’t helped to keep the rift raft out.