Anyone raise quail professionally?

[Champion]

I have been raising coturnix quails for a few months now and I love it! I love it so much that I want to make a living doing it. I just purchased a domain name http://eggscellenteggs.com and hope to setup a site to sell pickled eggs and other stuff.

Have/does anyone on here make a living off of quail?

 

[dc3085]

Start small and grow your business to the market instead of trying to generate more of a market when you are starting out and you'll do ok. A good rule of thumb is don't raise more birds than you can eat until you have an established market for them.

Pickling requires a special license in every state I'm aware of and is taken quite seriously by the FDA because of the risk of botulism.

Try to find a private mill and get a deal to get your food cost down while still feeding quality feed so your birds stay thrifty.

Read everything you can about quail husbandry, poultry production, etc. so you can get as much thrift as possible per bird. Cull unthrifty birds heavily, when it's a business you're losing money on a bird that isn't thrifty. Don't try to fix or heal injured birds, eat them. It's too time consuming to try to hospital birds and then integrate a bird back into a group. That bird is only capable of producing one egg (thereby $1 or less) per day so if you spend a hour on it you just (maybe) made a dollar for that hour of your time.

Biosecurity can ruin a livestock business in one forgetful moment so research good biosecurity and stick to it. If you know people with chickens you'll have to forbid them from handling your quail or quail equipment. Do not bring live birds home, because often you're just bringing live disease home. Don't mess with your quail until you shower if you've been around chickens, or even someone elses quail flock. This member touched a coryza infected chicken then touched this quail thats how easy it is. Diseases like the one in that thread cannot be cured, tested for, or vaccinated against. You are the only line of protection from diseases like coryza, MG, and blackhead. Once a bird contracts one of these diseases it will carry it for life assuming it survives and it will transmit the disease freely.

Good Luck.