Kentucky people

[Mojo Chick'n]

Quote:
What on earth are you going to do with so many quail??

Not trying to run me out of business, are you?

I can get another 4 days' by Friday, or 5 days on Saturday. Maybe you could take me to Sano and pick the eggs up when you drop me off??

Unless of course you want 5 days, then you'd have to get them either late on Saturday (like after 7 pm) or sometime Sunday.

Come to think of it, you probably wouldn't be able to pick all of them up after Sano, since you have to feed your babies.....unless hubby lets you go alone

The jumbos seem to lay pretty late, I sometimes get some of their eggs for the day in the morning of the next day, cause they lay so late.

I'll do Saturday and take 5 days worth, and no, not trying to put ya out of business

I'd like about 100 eggs (would that be five days worth?) But, I figure I can sell them to neighbors (Jamie wants to try bbq-ing some

) and take a bunch to Liberty, or craigslist, etc...

meri

 

[shelleyd2008]

Mojo Chick'n :

Quote:
What on earth are you going to do with so many quail??

Not trying to run me out of business, are you?

I can get another 4 days' by Friday, or 5 days on Saturday. Maybe you could take me to Sano and pick the eggs up when you drop me off??

Unless of course you want 5 days, then you'd have to get them either late on Saturday (like after 7 pm) or sometime Sunday.

Come to think of it, you probably wouldn't be able to pick all of them up after Sano, since you have to feed your babies.....unless hubby lets you go alone

The jumbos seem to lay pretty late, I sometimes get some of their eggs for the day in the morning of the next day, cause they lay so late.

I'll do Saturday and take 5 days worth, and no, not trying to put ya out of business

I'd like about 100 eggs (would that be five days worth?) But, I figure I can sell them to neighbors (Jamie wants to try bbq-ing some

) and take a bunch to Liberty, or craigslist, etc...

meri​

Yeah, Saturday's eggs should make about 100, but like I said in the earlier post, the jumbos usually lay pretty late. So you should probably come by on Sunday to get them, so I have all the eggs. Unless you want to come by after you feed the calves on Saturday? Whichever is fine with me.

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

Quote:
I'll do Saturday and take 5 days worth, and no, not trying to put ya out of business

I'd like about 100 eggs (would that be five days worth?) But, I figure I can sell them to neighbors (Jamie wants to try bbq-ing some

) and take a bunch to Liberty, or craigslist, etc...

meri

Yeah, Saturday's eggs should make about 100, but like I said in the earlier post, the jumbos usually lay pretty late. So you should probably come by on Sunday to get them, so I have all the eggs. Unless you want to come by after you feed the calves on Saturday? Whichever is fine with me.

It'll probably be sunday morning after chores. That way I'm not so rushed to get home and make dinner

usually we don't eat until after nightly chores - around 7:30 or later.

Unless hubby wants to feed me where I don't have to cook... then maybe it'll be saturday night.

meri

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

Ok, final tally of hatched quail eggs from Shelley (I think they're done, gonna leave em another day , just in case)

Started with 77 from Shelley and one of mine - one went bad (probably mine, no idea how old it was) and one pipped and no hatch. That leaves 76 possible hatches - and I have 16 eggs left in the hatcher, so from 76 eggs I got 60 quail hatched - pretty good rate, IMO.

I just put three more babies into the brooder, though, so it is possible, I suppose, that one or two of the 16 left will hatch yet.

so, putting it into hubby's Virgo terms

20 bucks for 60 quail chicks = about 33 cents per chick.

78% hatch rate (for basically a first time try at it, before I had just hatched one or two of my own eggs and left them in the incubator/turner til something happened).

They are all happily hopping around chasing moths (been a lot of moths in the house last few days) and eating chick starter and mushed up hard boiled egg.

I'm ready for another batch

eta - now I just have to get my quail cages set up better to organize my breeders, then I can put the rest into a grow out pen for sale. Been pondering on whether I should use the cages I have, buy some, or make some new ones out of hardware cloth.

meri

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

So... I have cages - I have a triple cage each cell is 18x24 - not very big cells. I can put probably four in each cage at most. Some of these I had four in, and had to take two out of each for picking and fighting - the cages are boring and no room for "toys", so they pick.

I have two 30x30 cages, with bottom trays (thanks Cindy

) and one big cage that has a broody hen in it sitting eggs - that cage is probably 36 x 48. Problem with these cages is getting my arm back into the back of the cages to gather eggs, clean, etc...

So, I am considering just building some hutch type cages with a solid area for weather protection, and caged area for getting outside a bit.
Not sure on size, yet, but the easy thing to do would be make them 4 foot long by 2 foot deep and 2 foot high. I could fit 8 -10 quail in there - I don't want to crowd them too much, though, because of the picking and fighting.

I would need at least three of those, plus grow out pens. Or, if I didn't care too much about keeping colors seperate, I could make due with two pens, and then grow out pens (with fewer breeders that way). Most expensive part would be the hardware cloth.

hmmm... still reading up on it and figuring out the plan

meri

 

[shelleyd2008]

Technically, you only really need 2 pens if you aren't too worried about colors. You can put the goldens with the browns, which would give you mostly golden chicks; you could put the tibetan/rosetta/tuxedos in with the A&Ms, which would give you mostly tuxedos, with some tibetans and A&Ms popping up once in a while. Or you could put the goldens with the tibetans, which would give you mostly tibetan babies, with golden popping up once in a while.
Picking and fighting is largely due to the individual birds. No matter how much space they have, they'll still fight (some of them). I've been lucky, and haven't had too many aggressive ones. I play musical cages (moved the pharaoh out of the jumbos cause they were picking on her, then moved a rosetta tibetan from the goldens into the tuxedos--didn't work, so I moved her into the reds pen--no problems there

).
Recommendations are 1 sq. ft. per bird, but none of mine have that and they are fine.

 

[shelleyd2008]

Oh, and you could also put the A&M with either the golden or the browns, which would result in chicks that are the dominant color (A&M is recessive). If you put them with jumbos, you would get jumbo-ish birds that are brown and carry the A&M gene. So breed those back to each other, resulting in 50/50 A&M/jumbo brown. These should be bigger than regular A&M (since most of them are small), so just keep doing that and eventually you'd have big A&Ms.

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

Quote:
Now that sounds like a great project!!

I'd like the A&M for meat, since it is white meat and they are smaller (mine are smaller, anyway) so if I could make them bigger, that would rock.

I have two extra males again (older hatch) and I think I'm gonna butcher these and taste them, to see if I like them. They are in with that button I hatched

her male is in a pen with an A&M right now (all of them are inside the house). That button girl loves those jumbo quail - I guess cause every time I hatched some, I would put the babies in with her til they grew big and then take them out and replace with babies again.

I'm considering selling the four other buttons, and putting her and the wild color male into the big tank - maybe he won't pick on her if they have more room? (I hope).

With Jon gone, I'm moving a lot of my books and uummm... "stuff"

over to Sam's room (he is taking Jon's room, because it is bigger than his current room) so I can organize the hatcher room better. I need to get all the egg cartons and other chicken stuff off the floor and such.

I'm gonna move the two stacked big cages out of that room, and put them either into a coop, the barn or in the garage to put birds into.

I got a lot of A&M chicks with this hatch, and I have a TON of the wilds, so I'll try concentrating on those and throw in a few golden and tuxedos just for eye candy.

Gee, Shelley, thanks for giving me something ELSE to work on

Just kidding, I needed a new "thing" anyway

meri (who has to go move the new trailer so hubby can put lights on it. brb )

BAK

 

[shelleyd2008]

The A&M seem to hatch really well, I got (what did I say?) 19 I think from this hatch? And there were 48 chicks that hatched total. I have half as many A&M as I do browns, but the majority are A&M chicks. It's possible that some of the A&M are from the tuxedo pen, since that breeding (tux-tux) can result in 50% tibetan, 25% tux, and 25% A&M. But I don't have all that many tux hens, so it's probably that the A&M just hatch real well.

Some of your wilds could be rosettas, they look very similar if you don't know the difference. I wish I could come over there and see them myself, it would be much easier to show you on your new babies, than to show you on mine that are like 2 weeks old. But I'll show you either way, it will give you an idea anyway.

 

[Mojo Chick'n]

Quote:
Other than being pretty, are rosettas special? (or especially sought after?)

I'll get some pics of the babies, and maybe you can tell from those, or do ya need to see the fronts, undersides, etc...?

ok, bad pic,....

meri