Raising meat birds...

[VickieB57]

I have a question for those of you raising your Jumbo browns for meat. I have 3 large cages for my birds once they leave their brooder cages. I am going to dispatch at 6 weeks. I've not been separating the males from the females. In order to do this I would need to put dividers in the cages, and since the batches sometimes are very heavy on one side, (9 hens to 3 roos) that would crowd the over populated side too much. I was hoping I could just keep them together until dispatch date. Will that cause a problem? I have one brood that is at 4 weeks and I haven't seen any problems yet...

 

[SIMZ]

Sorry -- I was thinking these were chickens. I have no idea about quail.

 

[Quail Jailer]

All well and good Vickie, but at 6 weeks you'll be cheating yourself, your birds wont hit full weight til 8 or 10 weeks.

and in that case I would feed 30% start to finish, but thats just me...

 

[dc3085]

I have a question for those of you raising your Jumbo browns for meat. I have 3 large cages for my birds once they leave their brooder cages. I am going to dispatch at 6 weeks. I've not been separating the males from the females. In order to do this I would need to put dividers in the cages, and since the batches sometimes are very heavy on one side, (9 hens to 3 roos) that would crowd the over populated side too much. I was hoping I could just keep them together until dispatch date. Will that cause a problem? I have one brood that is at 4 weeks and I haven't seen any problems yet...

You may experience some fighting but what is going to be a bother is the crowing. When you have a bunch of mixed males and females, the males will usually start crowing around 3 AM and continue through the day. If they can't see the females they're much quieter.

I agree with QuailJailer, that at 6 weeks you are tossing out money. At least go to 8 weeks which is the top of the growth curve. Coturnix aren't filled out to a full body until 12 weeks. I don't butcher before 10 weeks unless I'm running a lot of birds.

 

[VickieB57]

I decided to dispatch before the 8 week dispatch date for several reasons. First, I had read that quail at 8 weeks, though a little larger, is tougher than 7 week birds. So I was going to shoot for the 7 week birds, until I talked to Robbie at JMF, which is where I got my eggs. I felt he would know my birds better than anyone. He told me that he dispatched at 5 1/2 to 6 weeks, which he did because they would be more uniform in size, which is what the restaurants wanted. Once they past the 6 week stage, the roo, though getting larger, would slim down in the breast area. That created a problem with the restaurants, which wanted uniform birds. My daughter brought some birds over last week, some were 6 weeks, and some were 8 weeks. I could definitely see a difference in the quail breasts of the larger birds. Robbie did say the birds got a couple of ounces larger, but that it didn't really warrant the extra week of feed in his opinion. I tend to agree with that.

When Robbie told me this, it solved another problem I was having, that I had no more room for another cage. The area where I keep my cages was completely filled, but I needed another 30x36 cage to take the birds all the way to 7 weeks. So the 6 week dispatch date really works best for me.

I am really just at the start of raising birds for meat. I've been raising them for the last 9 months for eggs, but that only required two cages. I'm finding that it is requiring a lot more work from me for the meat and I may not be able to continue. Besides my job I am running for County Assessor this year, so I have been overwhelmed with things that have to get done. I'm almost afraid that raising quail to 6 weeks is a little more on my plate than I can handle. I'll just have to wait and see...