Meat Quail

[GreatBreeder]

Any experienced quail keepers please come and feel welcome to contradict anything I say.

I'm thinking about meat quail and was going to use a Courtnix strain. I saw the Texas A&M and Jumbos. From what I've read, the A&M were bred by a university to be heavily muscled. The Jumbos I think are a hatchery strain bred for more meat. Although the Jumbos will get an ounce or two bigger, I'm not sure which one will be superior. I'm leaning towards the A&M.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

I can't comment, but your post got me thinking about why people raise quail for meat. It seems like a lot more work, other than a faster incubation time and perhaps growth period? Or is there a different taste, or...? I'm just curious.

 

[GreatBreeder]

Quail may be smaller in size, but have a faster growth rate. They are also considered a delicacy in many parts of the world and the Japanese emperor was thought to have been cured of tuberculosis by eating it (likely not true but impacted quail for meat)

Also the quail I mention here are bred to be larger still with the short growth period.

P.S. This is all researched from articles made by experienced keepers and facts, I don't have quail as said before.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Very neat. I did learn on here that the eggs supposedly have some benefits over chicken eggs, nutritionally, so it sounds like they are a great animal to raise.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Quails are tiny but hit adulthood around 6-8 weeks and start laying eggs. If chickens grew up that fast it'd be pretty spectacular.

 

[DaveMorehouse]

" If chickens grew up that fast it'd be pretty spectacular."

Chickens are spectacular. So are quail.

 

[feedman77]

I guess it will depend on your color preference. Which one you choose.

I have a few a& m, jmf meatmakers and some rosettas.

My meatmakers get the largest, then Rosetta and a&ms. But not a whole lot of size difference.

All of these are strains of cotournix quail. Ready to butcher or breed by 8 weeks old usually.

If you incubate. 12 hens and 2 roos will keep you in plenty of eggs to eat and incubate.

I have about 20 hens and have hatched I think over 500 so far this year and didn't get a good start til may. I have probably given a few hundred eggs away for others to hatch.

They are fun little birds to raise and eat.

 

[GreatBreeder]

Thank you!

 

[cottontail farm]

I've raised both and vote for the jumbo browns. I wrote a pretty lengthy write up on my blog about the costs and results of my meat quail project.
http://cottontailfarm.blogspot.com/2017/05/quail-harvest-butchering-results-costs.html?m=1

Just got another batch out of the incubator that are two weeks old now. Once you have a mating group it cuts final cost considerably plus I sold off my laying females once these hatched which should cover a lot of the feed costs too. It's a great hobby.

 

[Kusanar]

I don't have Quail yet, so am watching for input, but my plans were to get pharaoh colored ones, and then selectively breed for size and laying ability both. I was going to keep my largest, fastest growing roosters (is that what you call them??) with the best laying females. Start recording egg production at 8 weeks, record for another 3 months or so, then the cage with the highest number of eggs gets split into 2 groups and each group gets a rooster (again, selected for largest), and those will be the breeding group until the hens hit about 9 months old (5 months when they go in the breeder, so they get 4 months in the breeder pen) or until another group of young hens beats out the record for number of eggs laid in 3 months. That way you are always breeding the hens with the highest number of eggs early in life to the largest roosters. The roosters will also be replaced as they get older, they can go to 9 months old or until another one beats their weight. Will probably weigh roosters at 10 weeks to give them a little more time to hit full size.

Any roosters not meeting the cut will be eaten/turned into cat food, any hens not meeting the cut to be breeders (only 2 cages of breeders) will be layers or as they age out and start dropping in production (data will be put on a spreadsheet with trend line, once the trend line starts going down for a certain period of time they will be deemed to be dropping production) they will also be processed.

I'm thinking having 8 hens per cage, then 4 hens and 1 roo in each breeder cage, so somewhere around 50 eggs a week to set from the breeders and then around 100 layers to lay eggs to sell.

Primarily I will be focusing on eggs, but the ones that don't meet the grade will be food, so I want them as meaty as possible.

Does this plan sound like it would work?