Which Coturnix to get?

[White Apple Homestead]

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

 

[CliftonQuail]

I have Jumbo Wild Coturnix. I got the eggs from MyShire Farms and hatched them last June. Wilds are the largest type. They'll start laying around 6 weeks old. I just checked on MyShire's website and they're showing 22-24 weeks lead time on shipping Jumbo Wild eggs. They show 8-10 weeks on Jumbo Egyptians which are a bit smaller than the Wilds. There are other hatcheries that I've seen mentioned on here, but haven't dealt with them.
FWIW, I ordered 50 eggs, they shipped 60, but only 24 hatched (I suspect it was my inexperience with incubating). Zack at MyShire insisted on giving me a 50% refund since I didn't hit the 50% guaranteed hatch rate. I would definitely order from them again. I've been hatching my own eggs trying to work out the bugs in the process before I actually buy anymore, though.
Welcome to the club.

 

[Nabiki]

If you don't care about colour and just want eggs, any will do. If you want them for meat and eggs, get jumbo wild types.

 

[Hourman]

The only thing I would add to the previous comments is this. If you plan on selling processed whole birds, look into jumbo whites. Most consumers, and almost all chefs, prefer birds which are plucked with the skin still intact. The white birds clean up just a little better and look nicer after plucking.

 

[White Apple Homestead]

Thank y’all for the responses. I am going to keep my shire in mind but want to get started a little sooner than that. Y’all helped me a lot.

 

[AmeliaBedelia]

You may also want to check your local market to see if the celadon eggs are something people would be interested in. Or the different colored birds. If people are wanting them for pets/eggs, there could be a market for that. But it would be a lot more complicated keeping track of all that when breeding.

 

[bhaugh]

I don't want to sound like a downer here but I've been in quail awhile. All these crazy new names for colors are just that names. Although some are larger than others, they are all still coturnix quail. So to answer you OP, the most common is pharaoh. They are the brown wild type. Females are easy to sex from males with dots on their chests. You can also sex Italians the same way and some of the other colors like snowies. I breed for temperament and I've found pharaohs to be more aggressive then other colors I'm guessing because more people have them and don't care about temperament. How many birds will determine cage size. Watch your male to female ratio and having more than one male in your cage, some males will tolerate sharing others won't and can kill the looser. Quail are not like chickens and are scrappy birds.
There are several farms that sell eggs. Google quail sale and see whose out there to buy from. But way more than you need so you can count for losses on the unhatched eggs. Btw 50% on hatched eggs is pretty good.

 

[CliftonQuail]

Thank y’all for the responses. I am going to keep my shire in mind but want to get started a little sooner than that. Y’all helped me a lot.

FWIW, I placed an order with Sandy Soils 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.

 

[threeepeat]

For future reference, if you later decide to go with a color, I keep hearing that the Scarlet/ Range roux hens lay more eggs and for longer period of time than most other colors. I can't verify this personally; however, my one Range hen has laid a big egg every day since she started 3 weeks ago.

 

[White Apple Homestead]

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.