Quail are not chickens!

[Charlie Wooster]

Every 6-8 weeks I sell the cocks or stock my freezers.. it’s worth it in the end.. Jumbos are Jummmmbo for a reason..

 

[Nabiki]

Yes to all of this. I am excited about a quicker moving production cycle. Far, far better feed conversion with quail initially. It would be interesting to see dressed weight with a quail and the associated food cost, compared to a broiler chicken. Comparatively, the chicken seemed to eat way more.

Gosh - multiple times I thought - why am i chasing this single ounce bird around like a madman, about 100 times this weekend. I nearly said forget it. I thought I'd leave it alone and maybe, like a chicken, it would try to get back into the brooder at some point. Wrong.

I had to go to the store and buy a fishing net. I have one, but the holes are too big. All and all, it was a resolve tester. No doubt.

I use a butterfly net.

 

[BastyPutt]

I use a butterfly net.

Most of all I am thankful I am not the only one with this problem.

Just ordered my butterfly net off the zon. Thanks for the tip!

 

[kurby22]

Most of all I am thankful I am not the only one with this problem.

Just ordered my butterfly net off the zon. Thanks for the tip!

I too, use a butterfly net! They are slippery little buggers even when you are experienced at handling them! That net has saved a lot of time!

 

[BastyPutt]

I too, use a butterfly net! They are slippery little buggers even when you are experienced at handling them! That net has saved a lot of time!

And embassment. I have 5 sons, and opposed to offering help, in typically prepubescent fashion, they chose to laugh so hard at me that they couldn't breathe.

 

[kurby22]

And embassment. I have 5 sons, and opposed to offering help, in typically prepubescent fashion, they chose to laugh so hard at me that they couldn't breathe.

Haha, how rude! You will have to make them do it next time Isn't it nice you were able to entertain them? That's when you have to remind them you brought them into this world...hahaha.

 

[BastyPutt]

Haha, how rude! You will have to make them do it next time Isn't it nice you were able to entertain them? That's when you have to remind them you brought them into this world...hahaha.

Oh that is a daily reminder that fails.

 

[Poultrybonkers]

My first quail was years ago bought them at a pet store they where buttons thought oh they will clean up my budgie cages...so they ate seeds never thought to eat the eggs or feed them chicken feed so female died of prolaspe and male escaped... Now I have coturnix for eggs and meat but wish id new then what I do now lol

 

[FloorCandy]

Sure, I'd be happy to.

First and foremost is the gender structure. Aside from fertilizing hens, a rooster has no earthly purpose to the covey. A chicken rooster can provide protection, establish a pecking order, etc. a quail rooster is similar to a drone honey bee, they just exist in order to further the species.

At most the you can have one rooster to 4 hens. If the ratio is less, they will overbreed and can even kill the incredibly valuable hens.

With those two things said, you can generally either get hatching eggs, or straight run chicks (hard to find). So we will assume 50% are roosters. Of that 50%, you can only keep 25% if you want a sustainable covey. In the event you hatched 100 quail (w/ the 50/50 assumption) this leaves you with around 60 quail in your covey, and 40 roosters that you or someone else will butcher, or that you will feed out the rest of their short life.

The moral of the first story - you must be okay with butchering and eating your quail, or know someone who will. And before you think you can, finding someone to buy the roosters on Craigslist is just as difficult. It isn't like an ornamental chicken rooster. Anyone who you would think would buy them, most likely has a lot of their own to deal with.

- next - you can't just easily crack an egg. You need a special pair of scissors.

- they can "fly" at 2 weeks old. Your brooder MUST be covered. I spent an hour and a half this weekend chasing a dang cortunix quail for what amounted to 3 miles, until I finally caught it, after it jumped out of the brooder.

- you need to grind their food, or make a mash of it for atlesst the first week. We lost 2 birds to not grinding.

- you must have something to keep them out of the food, or they will kick it out in a matter of
Minutes. This includes the typical chick feeder with the holes on top. Never seen anything like a quail throwing that food out. A mayo jar with holes drilled in it, and 1" pvc elbows is what I finally came up with and works good. Similar to a chicken port feeder.

- they are really difficult to monitor for any kind of ailment. With chicken chicks they are very telling when something is wrong because they just kind of walk around. A quail is like a bolt of lighting. We had one that somehow got a small string around its foot. Even within the brooder, I started getting dizzy trying to catch it. When it walked, it limped a bit. But at full speed it was difficult to differentiate from the rest.

- and last but not least is the habitat. I am going to be doing an aviary and it is absolutely nothing like a chicken coop. I see why a lot of folks settle on battery type cages. Furnishing the aviary is night a day. Id comment more, but I'm still trying to figure it out.

For habitat, you can get all kinds of crazy things you think they’ll like and spend a ton of money, but honestly, cinderblocks, plastic bins or cardboard boxes with holes on front and side so they can break line of sight, and they’re crazy for anything to hide under, like I have a wooden wall of an old hutch leaned on 2 cinderblocks, it’s like they have rooms leading onto a covered deck. It used to be hard finding all the eggs, but seriously, lift up the leaning wooden wall panel, and 99% of eggs are there lol. My quail particularly like cinder block or boxes placed around open spaces to break up the space, if you have an aviary, quail won’t want to use the middle, they won’t want to cross the wide open gap, so just put cinderblocks every few feet and they’ll be out and about running between them.

 

[Charlie Wooster]

If my legs were as strong as my quails/pound for pound I could stand flat footed and jump over the house.. instinct tells you to handle them lightly and hold close to your chest.. well, that’s the springboard they need to squirt out and hit the ground runnin.. I learned long ago to enclose my quail pens into a seperate smaller area just in case and to have a long handle lightweight net handy.. and the big white dogs standing on the outside lookin in tends to freeze them in their tracks more often than not..