So for anyone curious, here's a detailed description of DD's experiment. (The reason why we hatched chicks in Nov.)
QUAIL:
Since it was for a sci project, we just bought local eggs. I simply asked for the best breed for eggs & she said Jumbo Corturnix. She warned us that spring is a better time to hatch & that fertility would be very low. (She predicted only about 30% would hatch.) However DD's project must be completed by January, so we went ahead. She understood & only charged us for eating eggs.
We bought 30 eggs from the breeder. The hatch went like this:
10 were left alone as a control, 5 hatched, (4 were clear, 1 developed but died)
10 were washed, put in the fridge & driven around to be the "farmer market eggs", 6 hatched (only 1 clear, 3 developed but died just before hatching)
plus 6 that were thrown in but not part of the experiment. 5 hatched (1 clear)
* 4 eggs were cracked open to check for bull's eyes before setting any eggs. They looked mostly fertile, 1 was a ?, & all were made into a mini omelet. LOL
Now comes the fun part of analyzing the data. 62% of the incubated eggs hatched. WOW! So much better than the breeder expected.
The control was 50% & the farmer market eggs were 60%. Yet, is it fair to include eggs that were clear?
If we don't count the clears, the control got 5/6 or 83% and the farmer market eggs got 6/9 or 67%. That makes more sense.
The only other variable I can think of is the position of the eggs in the incubator. Because they were grouped, the positions in the turner were not changed. The control group was along one side & the farmer market group was in the center of the incubator. The incubator is automated, so the lid was rarely lifted.
Does anyone have other thoughts or ideas to add?
We'll be giving most of the quail (& all the the chicks) away. DD wants to train a few quail, so I'm modifying my mom's old parakeet cage in case we decide to keep maybe 3 as house pets until spring. (about 18x36") The alternative is to simply grow all of them out & have quail for dinner in 6 wks. The kids are protesting that idea.
Anyway, on paper raising quail looks so easy. They're quiet, take up little space, mature quickly, & can be used for both meat & eggs. So, I suppose allowing the kids to keep a few will teach us if quail are a bird for us. (After reading about turkeys, guineas, geese, & ducks, none came even close to be considered.)
CHICKENS:
Because we didn't know if any quail would hatch, we did the same experiment using chicken eggs.
Control: 6/6 hatched = 100%
Farmer Market: 5/6 hatched = 83% (One was a blood ring by day 7.)
+ plus 2 eggs that were thrown in at last min & not part of the experiment.
As far as the 3rd group = eggs from the grocery store. We were unable to find any fertile chicken eggs from the stores (tried 6 diff brands of free range or pasture-raised eggs & ate a lot of omelets.) Gave up & didn't bother trying to incubate infertile eggs. All 3 brands of quail eggs we bought at the store looked fertile, but there was no way to calculate the packing date. The quail eggs we purchased & incubated may have been well over a week old. At least the chicken eggs had the Julian calendar number written on them.
