A PSA about Quail Roos and Population Control

[CoturnixComplex]

I have noticed there has been a bit of a rush of people concerned with what to do with all their extra male quail lately, and unfortunately some people are realizing they're not able to keep them all far after getting attached to them.

If you hatch quail, you will end up with 50% males.

If you have coturnix, you MUST be willing to process ~75% of your males. There is just no other good solution. Bachelor pens don't work like they do with chickens and keeping them in solitary their whole lives is good for nobody.

For buttons, you will need to have separate cages for every M/F pair at maturity you plan to keep.

Nobody hatches chickens without thinking about how to handle the roosters. Same principle here.

If this isn't a possibility for you, hatching is probably not the right choice. Look for local adult sexed birds!

In the wild, this would be taken care of by nature. But by taking hatching into your own hands you are choosing to take on the responsibility of population control. It's good thing to think about and plan for BEFORE you hatch. It is a bummer seeing stressed birds and heartbroken owners

 

[Quailguy728]

I think once more people try quail as a dish, they'll know what to do with the extra males. Very delicious.

If youre not able to process them yourself, see if a local farmer is willing to process them for you. Or even just give them to someone who is willing to have them taken care of in a humane manner. Its much better than them getting bullied to death, or getting depressed from separation. These are flock animals, after all.

Cheers! Very good PSA!

 

[le_bwah]

Thank you—this is something many people underestimate when getting into quail, myself included. I'll likely be culling a single male sometime this month (thought I could make two territorial males get along—learn from my error!).

Culling is really hard for some people, especially if they've never processed an animal before. One can take the head off with sharp kitchen or garden shears for a painless death—just make sure to do it quickly and precisely.

Good flock management means doing what's best for the birds, not necessarily what's most comfortable for the owner!

 

[Ebony Rose]

...the best thing they can do is learn to do it themselves and let them out the easiest way possible. Once they leave your hands their fate is also out of your hands....

Preparing quail for the table or freezer takes about five minutes. You may as well benefit from your care and attention to their well being by enjoying the fruits of your labor. You know they were treated with dignity, tenderness and respect during their lifetime with you. There are some excellent videos to watch on youtube on how complete this final task and you shouldn't feel guilty for ensuring that their death will be treated just as kindly as you treated their life.

 

[ChristineR]

Also, hunters. I'm having a hard time finding game birds in small quantities to train my dogs (they will be treated humanely). You can buy them from game bird farms, but you have to order in quantities of 100. I just want a few quail to plant, to teach my English Setter to "whoa," steady to wing and shot, etc.

 

[Ebony Rose]

...and I don't know why.

All bets are off once they reach sexual maturity if there are any females nearby. Depending on the property and terrain, a quail whistle call can be heard over a distance of 550 yards, so unless you can move your girls that far away, it's a craps shoot keeping males together in the same hutch.

 

[702Quails]

They should sell guillotines for quail. That way, people don't need to see it as "culling" the birds. It'll just be reenacting the French revolution.

 

[le_bwah]

What about California/Valley quail (or really any quail species) in an aviary?

Or even say, 2 pairs in 100 square feet. Would that be okay?

100 square feet might be adequate for Coturnix flocks with 2 males, but not for the wilder, more territorial species—those should be kept in male-female pairs during breeding season for everyone's benefit.

 

[Ebony Rose]

Youtube video on how to process quail. It really is this humane and easy.

This is the video that I viewed to learn how to process quail. Kitchen shears work VERY well for this, I do not recommend knives for this task. Notice how she sacrifices the skin to eliminate the need to pluck. The technique you see where she's cutting down the spine is called splaycocking, and TOTALLY makes the processing of the birds super fast without wasting any meat. This whole process takes me about 3 minutes from livestock to the broiler.

 

[le_bwah]

I thought that as long as the males are raised together you could keep them in the same enclosure with other females.

That's not how it works, unfortunately. Males are highly territorial, willing and able to kill to defend what they see as theirs. Sorry you lost a bird, but now you need to make the call—which will you keep and which will you cull?