It's actually a good experience to intentionally experiment with inbreeding a little so you better understand the cause/effect of it.. If you avoid pairing siblings I've never found any real limits in line breeding these birds as long as you're within reason. Good notes are key. Traits I wasn't even aware of as a beginner but really desired later on were getting wasted. Doing some of the color work on my lost golden line (Raccoon ate both of my control groups among others and I'm still too butt hurt to start over yet lol) I used sibling pairings sparingly because it damages fertility quickly but you can't get as good of a color bleed any other way sometimes. It was surprisingly easy to fix too though, by bringing back in some of the P1 genes from when i first noticed the new patterns, I restored fertility to acceptable and didnt damage my patterns too much. I also learned along the way that the lethal gene in goldens can be diluted out by smartly using pharaohs in your breeding system. You can also overdo that and get a golden bird that when crossed with a pharaoh generates very few golden birds at all. You really don't know what you can do with these things until you try, and as much research as I do and have done, nothing is as useful as what I learned just using 'brute force and ignorance' as the saying goes (but take good notes they are key). Remember the all the silver coturnix in the world started with one bird so you just never know what is possible with these guys.
It's pretty addicting though once you get into it and it's a good idea to establish your rep as a breeder locally so you can offload extras if you want to hatch often. I haven't bothered with it since the coon got my lines and right now my birds are still Robbie's JMF American line basically. When I started selling them I did things a little....excessively...but what I learned is priceless and I made a good profit for a hobby considering they usually just cost you money. For a few year I hatched and grew out (for 3 day to as many as 8 weeks depending on what my specific goals were) over 1000 birds a year to sell, using 26 hens, all in my back yard in the burbs. That allowed me to do two things, it gave me a good idea which patterns i had a better chance to duplicate because they would show up in higher numbers per hatch and gave me access to more color variations than I was seeing in small hatches. When you are looking at 60-150 birds you have a lot better idea what the common patterns are in your lines vs trying to isolate and improve traits with 20-30 examples to choose from. Also thanks to the laws murphy and mathematics you'll see that some groups will have a hen that is producing less offspring than the others but may just be the bird throwing the exact trait you are looking for, you just didn't get see enough of her chicks in small hatches.
Don't expect to make a fortune selling them but you don't have to take a loss very often if you're careful, do your due diligence and you can turn a profit. I live in one of the most expensive economies in the US, but I've made a decent amount of spending change doing it. I clear $1-3k a year after cost of feed if I go full speed like that. There is a good market here for cots so I can sell day olds for $3-5 each and 8 week hens for $8-10 with no real issue moving inventory. When I'm selling birds on CL there is no way someone is going to choose my local competitors until I run out if they can help it. I dont have any feather picked or scalped birds and my equipment is way cleaner than the others around. I never hatch more than will fit in mine and my friends and families freezers though cause I got stuck with 100 once, which is a tasty problem to have really but you don't want to know how long it takes to process a 100 cots without help. Obviously you don't have to approach that scale but even if you only sell 100 baby chicks a year for $3+ each that still adds up to a lot of quail food you didn't have to buy. It only really makes sense if you are doing it for the love of the hobby or genetic projects and the like because youll never make the kind of money doing it that will pay you right for the time you invest on a hobby level op.
It's pretty addicting though once you get into it and it's a good idea to establish your rep as a breeder locally so you can offload extras if you want to hatch often. I haven't bothered with it since the coon got my lines and right now my birds are still Robbie's JMF American line basically. When I started selling them I did things a little....excessively...but what I learned is priceless and I made a good profit for a hobby considering they usually just cost you money. For a few year I hatched and grew out (for 3 day to as many as 8 weeks depending on what my specific goals were) over 1000 birds a year to sell, using 26 hens, all in my back yard in the burbs. That allowed me to do two things, it gave me a good idea which patterns i had a better chance to duplicate because they would show up in higher numbers per hatch and gave me access to more color variations than I was seeing in small hatches. When you are looking at 60-150 birds you have a lot better idea what the common patterns are in your lines vs trying to isolate and improve traits with 20-30 examples to choose from. Also thanks to the laws murphy and mathematics you'll see that some groups will have a hen that is producing less offspring than the others but may just be the bird throwing the exact trait you are looking for, you just didn't get see enough of her chicks in small hatches.
Don't expect to make a fortune selling them but you don't have to take a loss very often if you're careful, do your due diligence and you can turn a profit. I live in one of the most expensive economies in the US, but I've made a decent amount of spending change doing it. I clear $1-3k a year after cost of feed if I go full speed like that. There is a good market here for cots so I can sell day olds for $3-5 each and 8 week hens for $8-10 with no real issue moving inventory. When I'm selling birds on CL there is no way someone is going to choose my local competitors until I run out if they can help it. I dont have any feather picked or scalped birds and my equipment is way cleaner than the others around. I never hatch more than will fit in mine and my friends and families freezers though cause I got stuck with 100 once, which is a tasty problem to have really but you don't want to know how long it takes to process a 100 cots without help. Obviously you don't have to approach that scale but even if you only sell 100 baby chicks a year for $3+ each that still adds up to a lot of quail food you didn't have to buy. It only really makes sense if you are doing it for the love of the hobby or genetic projects and the like because youll never make the kind of money doing it that will pay you right for the time you invest on a hobby level op.
