How many should I buy?

[smilingmama]

Hi. My husband and I are planning on buying 3 day old baby quails. We are hoping to end up with 4 females and 1 male. How many babies do I need to buy to get what I want? What do you do with the extras quails? We are trying to take care of our family of 3 with our own little family of quails. This year we wanted to start with one group and next year we will add some more. Thank You!

 

[wishful suburbanite]

If you really want to be sure about what sex you're getting, you could consider buying adult birds.

If you want to go with chicks, assume that maybe half are male. Try 8? There's no guarantee, though.

 

[veggiecanner]

The breeder should be able to help you pick them out.
The one who we got ours from said that even at that young there was some differences.
But you need to do the math and figure out how many eggs you want, and if you eat meat how many eggs you want to save up in 7-10 days for incubation.
Include in that a few to raise replacement stock.

 

[dc3085]

Welcome to BYC

It's almost impossible to sex coturnix chicks until they are feathered. I have between 40-60% roosters every hatch so you surely want extras. Processing a quail only takes about 3-5 minutes so if you have extra roosters it's easy enough to solve. There are videos on youtube that will help guide you through the slaughter and cleaning. I would get 8-10 chicks if I was trying to get four females. Extra females people will buy, extra males you will have eat or maybe you can give them away.

Avoid any chicks with poop crusted on their butts, chicks with wings drooping, and limping or slow moving chicks. Look at the parent birds, they should be clean and fully feathered with straight beaks and toes. Hens being feather picked on the back of the head is acceptable to most people (it comes from too few hens per rooster) but can be avoided. Birds being feather picked all over usually means improper diet or crowding. Pens should be clean with no poop build up, feeders and waterers should be clear of poop also. Any problems the breeder has will come home with you so don't be afraid to walk away from a dirty facility or poor quality birds.

Good luck starting your flock!

 

[smilingmama]

We eat eggs probably once or twice a week so we were thinking 4 hens would work good for this year. Our cage current is 6 square feet and we plan on building them a small run. I've hears 1 quail per a square feet. Next year we are building a much larger coop and run but we just don't have the time this year for that. We bought our house a little over a year ago and we need to finish our fencing and pull out some terrible thorny trees before the area we want to put them will be ready. We figured we would start with what we were able to house and do eggs this year then expand and get a lot more so we can use them for meat and eggs. I probably should get adults but part of the fun of raising quail is the babies. So I guess I will get more then I need and get some meat this year. I'm just wondering where I will house the extra. I've been offered a 55 Gallon fish tank that is 48 1/4 x 12 3/4 x 21. Would that work? or would it be too narrow.

 

[smilingmama]

Also the bread that is local is Coturnix. I was told they are great layers and easy to keep maybe I should look at another breed?

 

[veggiecanner]

There are lots of coturnix variations. for meat and eggs you want the jumbo browns, texas a&m's

 

[smilingmama]

ok So I need to ask which Variation they have. I found them because they sell the eggs.

 

[dc3085]

Stick to coturnix they are the easiest to raise. If you want them for meat you should look from someone who has jumbo coturnix. The jumbo and standard are the same in looks but the standard is about half the size (smaller eggs too). You can keep the extra males in anything, the aquarium will work but you will be cleaning it a lot if you have more than a couple birds in there. Quail are poop machines and coturnix have a moist poo so its very prone to building up around their feet. If they are on wire 1 sq ft per bird is fine but on sand/shaving they would be hard to keep clean in that small of a space. My breeding pens are 19"x 23" and i keep 3-4 birds per level on wire. The pen below is 4'x6' sand bottomed and I usually keep one rooster and six hens in it. That keeps them happy and clean feet and feathers and I only clean it 2-3 times a month. You will find that quail love sand more than any creature reasonably should and they are happiest with sand under their feet.



For a bigger cage you can put something like this one together in about an hour and it costs under $50. Another Idea is to check craigslist for rabbit hutches, they recycle into quail cages really well with a little bleach and a hose down. You wont have any problem getting started with what you have though.

 

[smilingmama]

Thank You. The Cage I currently have has a wire bottom. We are recycling an old rabbit hutch. My breeding set would be in the wire bottom cage and the extras would go in the fish tank until old enough to head to the butcher. The rabbit hutch is 6 square feet and I planned on putting in 5 quail so I would probably have 3-5 in the fish tank.