➡ Quail Hatch Along🥚

[littleprairieheartsfarm]

I am going to do this taste test with quail my next butcher date!


Great idea!

Yay! You'll definitely have to report back on your findings.

 

[Morrigan]

Good information. We have a couple of extra rabbit hutches that I could convert, but I'm not quite sure yet. My husband choked a bit when I mentioned that it take 5 quail eggs to equal 1 chicken egg. He was not enthused with the idea of cracking 20 eggs open to make an omelet. And, we'd either have a semi-perminant brooder going on in our basement, or we would need to find a way to run electricity to our rabbit hutch area.

We just ate one of our Dorking cockerels that other day and it was really, really good, even better then the Cornish X we raise (and we're big fans of those). So, I'm thinking of starting a small flock of Dorkings, with the hope that the females go broody take care of the chick raising for us, and we can get self-sustaining meat that way. I would like to get away form the big batch of mail order CX chicks each Fall.

 

[Morrigan]

Yay! You'll definitely have to report back on your findings.

Ditto that.

 

[BReeder!]

View attachment 1632445 View attachment 1632446 View attachment 1632447 View attachment 1632451 So I candeled several. About 30 of them. Then my eyes hurt. There's 103 eggs after all... quite a bit to candle. A few possibly yellow. That alien green glow is incredible hard to get a picture though because the candling light (Samsung phone flashlight) bleaches it out in the photo. I used a peice of egg cylinder foam - thanks @RUNuts for the idea - to set the egg over the light and block the light that was going ot around the egg. This made it much easier to see, but it was still difficult with darker eggs.

This is the best shot I have of the green alien glow as I call it.

View attachment 1632445

This one concerns me. I am not sure if this is veins or a blood ring. It doesn't go all the way around the egg, but it is thicker than the other veins I saw in other eggs.
View attachment 1632446

I spotted behind under the dark making of this egg. Hard to see though. This one was when my eyes started hurting. View attachment 1632447
The real fun was catching some geart beats! I yelled to my wife and made her look at the first egg I found a heart beat in. I was stoked! I tried getting video of it but it was tiny blibs basically that didnt show up in the video.

I will definitely be getting an egg candler that is brighter and purpose built. I like the idea of something like 1000 lumens if not more to see into these eggs. I will candle again before lockdown. I plan to hatch plenty more quail in the future so the candler will be a good investment I now realize.

***If you see this elsewhere, I am posting in a few threads. Sorry if its a bother.

 

[Kiki]

Yay! You'll definitely have to report back on your findings.

Of course I will.

 

[Kiki]

View attachment 1632445 View attachment 1632446 View attachment 1632447 View attachment 1632451 So I candeled several. About 30 of them. Then my eyes hurt. There's 103 eggs after all... quite a bit to candle. A few possibly yellow. That alien green glow is incredible hard to get a picture though because the candling light (Samsung phone flashlight) bleaches it out in the photo. I used a peice of egg cylinder foam - thanks @RUNuts for the idea - to set the egg over the light and block the light that was going ot around the egg. This made it much easier to see, but it was still difficult with darker eggs.

This is the best shot I have of the green alien glow as I call it.

View attachment 1632445

This one concerns me. I am not sure if this is veins or a blood ring. It doesn't go all the way around the egg, but it is thicker than the other veins I saw in other eggs.
View attachment 1632446

I spotted behind under the dark making of this egg. Hard to see though. This one was when my eyes started hurting. View attachment 1632447
The real fun was catching some geart beats! I yelled to my wife and made her look at the first egg I found a heart beat in. I was stoked! I tried getting video of it but it was tiny blibs basically that didnt show up in the video.

I will definitely be getting an egg candler that is brighter and purpose built. I like the idea of something like 1000 lumens if not more to see into these eggs. I will candle again before lockdown. I plan to hatch plenty more quail in the future so the candler will be a good investment I now realize.

***If you see this elsewhere, I am posting in a few threads. Sorry if its a bother.

Great photos!

 

[Kiki]

I always write on the calendar right after I set a batch of eggs.

I wrote yesterday's setting of eggs on my new BYC calendar.

I'm adding the batch to @mill-j 's program now.

 

[Kiki]

Jan. 2019's first batch.

 

[Nyla]

I'm sorry you went through that!

He's dead.



Never again am I doing this.

 

[Sara L]

Is it cold there right now?
What's your weather like?

It's been in the 40s to 50s. The past few days there was frost on the ground in the morning. Around new year's there was even ice on the water that was outside.

For those raising quail for meat.

Do you have to rest it after butchering, as you do chicken?

Do quail every go broody? If not, how time intensive is the brooding process? DH likes the thought of a continuous, ready-to-eat supply of quail meat, but not the idea of continuously brooding quail chicks.

Quail is tasty dark meat, not as strong tasting as wild game though. I rest mine for about 2 days. I've been told it's possible to butcher and cook right away and not have rigor mortis, but I've never had that happen. Usually I get about halfway through the birds and the first ones are starting to get stiff. I probably need more experience for that not to happen. They don't stay stiff as long as a chicken or turkey though, but I still rest a full two days to be sure the meat won't be tough.

Coturnix will rarely go broody, but it's more likely to happen if the enclosure is set up like an aviary that mimics a natural landscape not in a wire cage. There's a few threads about broody coturnix here on BYC. As someone else mentioned, it would be easier to hatch a ton at once and then butcher and freeze.