Favorite breed for eating?

[hoffmanmama]

Hi Everyone,

New to quail questions? A) of the different breeds, which is your favorite to raise for meat and why? And B) any experience letting a bantam breed chicken hatch them for you? I'm imagining one of these determined cochin girls will be much more successful than my incubators ever have been... I've heard of people using Cochins to hatch their turkey or peacocks, any harm giving them quail eggs to brood over?

Thanks!

 

[subhanalah]

Hi Everyone,

New to quail questions? A) of the different breeds, which is your favorite to raise for meat and why? And B) any experience letting a bantam breed chicken hatch them for you? I'm imagining one of these determined cochin girls will be much more successful than my incubators ever have been... I've heard of people using Cochins to hatch their turkey or peacocks, any harm giving them quail eggs to brood over?

Thanks!

maybe bantam cochin on coturnix eggs

 

[dc3085]

I can't recommend using a disease farming chicken for anything to do with quail. I can see no good reason to endanger the health of the quail chicks if you have an incubator already. Also If you look at the current experiment thread ChickenLegs is running, her bantam has managed to kill 9-10 chicks already stepping on them.


Coturnix-Dark succulent meat throughout. Good flavor but not the best.

Bobwhites- White meat breast, really good but once cooked can be hard to tell apart from coturnix other than subtle flavors.

Valleys- I prefer above all other types of quail. White meat breast, but better than bobwhites. Not worth raising for meat but I don't miss a day of quail of season if I can help it.

Chukars-You didn't ask but I'll throw them in. They taste like a bobwhite, white meat breast, dark meat legs. If you plan to raise bobs for meat you should just go with chukars, they both take 16 weeks but a chukar is fully twice the size of a bobwhite. They have good feed conversion too.

 

[hoffmanmama]

Thanks, I guess since I haven't had any issues -yet- (other than rescuing and nursing back to health a small group of chickens that weren't being cared for), I didn't really think about the cross species disease sharing. And I would have planned to move them to a brooder after hatch. But I tend to agree, incubator sounds better.

Thanks for your suggestions, I hadn't considered chukars, but will definitely look into them. I had thought I would get a small number of a few breeds to raise and process for a taste test.... This points me in the right direction.