In what order would you go?

[saddina]

So I've been reasearching/reading for months now on various poultry. Hubby, being a man who knows to get outta the way and let me do things my way (love that trait in a man), suggested we simply buy a house outside the city so I can raise more livestock/gardens (told you he was a keeper).

We're teachers at a charter school, so 80% of our days we work from a home office.

Right now, we're still in town, which limits us to 5 "crowing fowl" which includes chickens, ducks, geese, guienas & turkeys. Currently there are 3 hens in the coop. We're plnning on adding one type of animal at a time, so that we're not overwhelmed with overadding on.

Planned fowl:
Quail
Muscovy ducks
Heritage Turkeys
Geese
more chickens
perhaps guneas?

and a really solid incubator. Ideally I'd raise 1-2 breeds of each sort, and inprove the flock while the culls would hit the dinner plate.

I'm thinking of adding quail next month, but it'll be summer, which means 100+ days, every day.

Can they take the heat like that?

In what order would you add in? easiest > hardest? Large pens are an option, but coyotes are thick outside of town, so I'm not so sure on free range, even with more room.

Plusses, minuses, pitfalls, things you wish you did differently?

 

[monarc23]

theres a lady that has coturnix quails in AZ on here they pant a lot but she's finding ways to make it work to keep her birds cool and theres many in CA with coturnix quails so i think you'd be fine!

 

[gabrielle1976]

Dont mind her she is a Cortunix pusher yeah I mixed up some of the letters lol
Be carefull its an addiction there sooooooo cute

 

[saddina]

I know she is, I read alot more than I post, read all 30-some pages of the quail sticky, it's how they got onto the list. Cute or not, they're bite sized and years of biology classes have made butchering easy. I may go A&M as hubby's into white meat, but I could just as easily do both in 4 pens, and then raise more of what he wants to eat.
Right now only the 3 cats and 2 pet bunnies have immunity from the oven.

 

[Steve_of_sandspoultry]

Quote:
Your list order looks fine to me

the quail are easy and don't take much room
Muscovies are also easy and just about maintenance free
turkeys take more work to get started but once going are easy
we like our geese but they eat alot and can be noisy

For the incubator go for a GQF Sportsman you can't go wrong there

Steve in NC

 

[Florida chick]

LOVED our GQF!
I have to say Muscovies are the easiest, and breed like crazy.... TOO WELL> We had to sell off hundreds last year. I finally got out of them as they were just everywhere and always flying into horse waters etc. We had hens hatching 25 ducklings at a time!
I LOVE our Peas...
We had turkeys and Guineas.... They just weren't for me.. the Guineas were fun to watch but drove everyone insane.

 

[saddina]

Hmm, hundreds? I figuered we could happily eat 30-50 ducks a year. Still not too bad, keep some for us, and put the babies up for sale. There's a good size asian population in town, so getting rid of extra ducks may be easy.

Some of our friends own restruants, I wonder what we'd need to do to sell to them legally?

 

[rachel]

I'm one of the ladies that keeps coturnix quail in AZ.

This is my first year with the quail, it's pretty obvious that they're going to be uncomfortable, but I'm sticking open frozen water bottles on top of fabric and that keeps them from panting in 105 degree weather, but it's definitely extra work. I think I'm going to do some experimenting with fans.
While all the chickens and quail are panting the muscovies are walking around like it's 75 degrees. They have great personalities, will hatch all kinds of eggs for you and from what I hear, good meat.
I'd do muscovies next, and when one goes broody you can buy fertile eggs and use her as an incubator to hatch out more chickens/ducks etc.

 

[Boyd]

Desert Ca, and Arizona...... Time for a swamp cooler

http://www.air-conditioner-home.com...tp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler

 

[saddina]

The hens and buns each have a personal mister, that I origionally bought to mist me in the hammock, while I relax.. however I forgot to take in account that I never have time to lie in it and relax anyways.

http://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Arizona...?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1242794387&sr=1-10

Isn't it like 1AM there Boyd? you guarding the bator?