Coturnix and Jumbo eggs...?

[Bettacreek]

Well, there's a woman on ebay selling 100+ coturnix, and she has the jumbos as well as some others that would be interesting for me (I wouldn't mind a few A&M's, tuxes, goldens, etc). Anyways, I haven't set up the incubator yet (I have to figure out my heating control, and then I have everything), but I'm wondering how big I need to go for approximately 100 jumbos and a few extra (I guess 20-30) regular size coturnix eggs? I have plastic "egg crate", but it's 1/4" x 1/4", would I be able to use this as a rack for the eggs? Any help is much appreciated. I'm also hoping to pick up some button eggs from a local guy, would they work in the egg crate that I have?

 

[shelleyd2008]

You don't have a turner? The turners for the LG and hovabators have quail egg racks available that hold 120 eggs

 

[Bettacreek]

Hubby was just laid off, so I'm trying to keep it as inexpensive as possible. We're hoping to raise them so that we can cut costs on our food bill, and hopefully trade/sell eggs and meat birds and such for other stuff that we need. I know that we won't live off of these birds, but any bit would help, plus the fact that I feel better feeding our family food that we've raised or locally raised food that we traded for, even if we just cut even or even loose a little bit.

It's a homemade bator... Lol.

 

[monarc23]

if i could picture what kinda crate you mean i might be able to give some oppinons but i dunno.

Im sorry about your hubby getting layed off

 

[Bettacreek]

Well, my camera seems to have walked off. It's a plastic grid type, and it's actually just a tad under 5/8" x 5/8" and it's about 3/8" from "front" to "back". Sorry that I messed up on the size, I'm TERRIBLE with estimations, good thing I decided to actually measure it.
Found a picture of basically the same thing...
http://www.louversintl.com/products/louver_eggcrate.html

And, the layoff, well, that's the story of the country.

We're supposed to be in a recession-proof town though.

 

[monarc23]

Quote:
I think something like that could work but im being dumb about the estimations....but i guess do this....take a nickle and put taht on your egg crate pretend that's a coturnix egg (as they're around that diameter but the realy big ones are a bit wider). In a very little space you can have over 50 eggs.....in a shoebox i had 50 eggs fit nicely onetime....so the possibilities are almost endless.

 

[Bettacreek]

Hmm. Well, I don't think I would be able to use all of the slots, because the nickle hangs over, but, I might be able to do like a checkerboard pattern or something similar, since the end that would go into the holes should fit just about perfect. I have two of these egg crate pieces, and the one has like 320 holes, and the other is similar sized, so I should be good.

The nickle is the same width (approximately) as the jumbo eggs right? Anything to compare to the regulars and button eggs? I can't really get a good comparison with eggs on google, they're all laying down on their sides.

 

[monarc23]

Quote:
let me get you some pictures of my eggs i gotta find a jumbo egg htough lol

 

[Bettacreek]

Lol. Thank you.

I'm getting excited about all of this. I'm actually even excited about the first slaugher, though I have hubby as backup in case I chicken out. I'm going to have to keep the breeders/layers seperate from the meat birds, then I can bond with the breeders/layers and not get too attached to the meat birds, lol.

 

[monarc23]

Quote:
lol you're welcome.

As for separating the meat birds from teh layers...that's easy...at 3-4 weeks you can tell male from females (as long as your birds are browns or goldens), and all the excess males you can grow up the rest of the way for meat birds least that's what I did.

Browns and goldens, the males you can tell from the hends at 3-4 weeks via their chest feather colors. Males are cinnamon/rusty feathered, hens are black spotted ---if you want pictures of this for help you can click on my sig link below about coturnix educational info if you haven't already.

Im still adding on to it anytime i have anything new to add to it.

As for eggs to nickle sizes....well all eggs are different in coturnix iive noticed, some jumbo eggs are reasonably sized others are MASSIVE!!! So even going off of what Im about to show you wont help you completley depends on what size each individual egg is.

I found 2 hatched eggs I kept from past hatches and my pullet egg from my hen that she just layed about an hour and a half ago

I hpe this helps:

I thikn these are jumbo eggs but it's hard because i only have a pullet egg to compair them to lol *the pullet egg is from a jumbo hen and it's big but not as big as some jumbo eggs*

and this is the pullet jumbo egg: