Processed coturnix for the first time!!

[LilRalphieRoosmama]

And I have to say it was very simple, and I much prefer these over doing chickens (because it could be done in the kitchen with little mess). I only had time to do 5 and struggled with the first one. Ended up skinning it and splitting it down the back. The rest I plucked clean and left whole.

I did buy a decent pair of poultry shears from Target for only about $20, and a good chef's knife.

I don't know how you all do it in just minutes; maybe with more practice I'll get quicker (plucking took a long time too). It took me about 30 minutes per bird.

Overall I was very pleased with the results, although it will take quite a few of these little birds to make a meal. That's the downside. On the upside, I've got 43 more eggs going in the incubator tonight!!

 

[sweetshoplady]

I've decided too that quail are an ideal meat bird for us.

Practice will help you get faster.

Yummy arent they?

 

[sandspoultry]

Yes I agree with practice you get much much quicker, the first ones we ever did we plucked and it took forever. Now with skinning it's less than a minute per bird.

And they really are the ideal meat bird.

From the last batch we processed about 50-ish, we hatched 60 eggs before we processed. And from that batch I just picked up the first egg from them this morning. We will process about 2/3 of them and winter over the rest, next spring hatch out some more. The only thing we have talked about in the future is maybe go to a larger quail but, by doing that they would

1) eat more
2) take longer to grow out
3) we would have to keep less.

Steve in NC