How many quail do I need to sustain my needs?

[BooneHillbilly]

I am in the cage planning stage and neeed to know how many courtinox(sp?) I will need to have quail for dinner for 6 once a week?? I also want/need eggs for breeding and pickling.. Many thanks in advance!

 

[saddina]

Quote:
How many chicken thighs would you use to feed the same group? you'll wanna swap them 1:1. What most of us do is eat the extra males, untill we have enough roo/5 hen harems for our egg needs, then keep the largest roo/hens for breeding and eat the smaller ones, till we have steady size then just hatch enough for 2 -3 weeks' dinners in each load (18 day incubation) and you should be good.

Example: each pen needs 1 roo, 5 girls = 6 quail. if you hatch 12 eggs, 4-6 should be hens and 4-6 should be roos, keep the biggest healthy male for breeding, the rest go into a grow out pen of butchering. The rest of the 4-6 girls can be his harem. You'll do this for each cage of breeders you need to give you enough eggs to restock and eat.

Here the "magic" number is 36 (6x6pens) to keep stocked. But I've a chest freezer so I'm stocking that as well.

 

[macnugget]

Quote:
COTURNIX good thing monarc didn't see you miss spell that lol 2 per person 12 a week . Start with 40 get your best birds and keep them for your breeders and start hatching every month

 

[Ironsun]

Hi,

Apart for my coloured Japanese quail, I also keep a group of 6 birds just to produce the needs for my household (there is only three of us now as the other three other darlings have flown the coop and are lining their own nests)

This group is 1 male and 5 females. Once eggs are freely coming on average 34 per week, these are incubated. These are incubated for the 18 days. For the next two weeks we eat the next lot of eggs.

After 18 days incubation the chicks arrive nornally between 24-32, these are reared until 6 weeks old. Then they are culled and put in the freezer.

When the above chicks are two weeks old, I collect all the next week of eggs from the group and repeat the process.

So I hatch the eggs every three weeks, Rear them for six. Doing this supplies us with all our needs, including eggs to eat. It like a circle of events never stopping or starting. There is even surplus frozen birds available when the little darling are fed up of eating their own cooking (mothers always cook the best food lol)

These groups are replaced every 6 months for maximim production.

If your a family of 6, you only need to double or treble the group to keep them well fed on food you have grown yourself, know what they have been fed on. No food miles.
Remember you don't need a lot to produce many.

Ironsun.