Forgive me for asking but whats the deal with button quail?

[speng5]

They appear like they would be too small to eat and not worth cleaning, do they lay eggs? Are they edible? Are they just purely pets? It seems lots of people have them, I am trying to figure out what the "point" of them is, lol.

 

[Nabiki]

They lay eggs, but the eggs are very tiny. They are ornamental and make pretty sounds. They are pets.

 

[speng5]

They lay eggs, but the eggs are very tiny. They are ornamental and make pretty sounds. They are pets.

Gotcha! Can they live outside?

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

They appear like they would be too small to eat and not worth cleaning, do they lay eggs? Are they edible? Are they just purely pets? It seems lots of people have them, I am trying to figure out what the "point" of them is, lol.

I'm more familiar with Japanese quail, but the eggs can be sold for a lot of money.

 

[Nabiki]

Gotcha! Can they live outside?

Only in warm climates. They're originally from SE Asia so they don't handle temps below 40 well.

 

[scyllarus]

Pets. You could raise them for pet food, as well - I keep a couple of snakes, so we often check out reptile conventions. It's becoming more and more common to need tiny eggs for egg-eating reptiles, as well as chicks and grown birds.

 

[Mantisquailman]

Button quail are only pets. But there laugh is so cute!! And there extremely jumpy

 

[Nabiki]

Pets. You could raise them for pet food, as well - I keep a couple of snakes, so we often check out reptile conventions. It's becoming more and more common to need tiny eggs for egg-eating reptiles, as well as chicks and grown birds.

I had a customer with a small egg eater snake that bought button eggs for it.

 

[scyllarus]

I had a customer with a small egg eater snake that bought button eggs for it.

Oh, egg-eating snakes. They're a huge PITA for captive breeding because the hatchlings need suuuuper small eggs - finch eggs are often recommended - and the males, who are smaller, can't always handle Coturnix eggs.

A lot of people will feed quail eggs to things like tegus and monitors, too.

 

[Finnie]

I used to breed caged birds, and one year I got into button quail. They were cute and they had neat color genetics to play around with, but they were WAY more trouble than they were worth!!

The males fight and scalp each other and even get aggressive with the females. I had to keep separating them into different cages until they were all housed separately. I finally just sold them all.

The little tiny babies were sure cute when they hatched though!