Tell me all about Quail

[JosieMaeChickens]

We currently have 25+ chickens and I keep seeing post on Facebook about Quail eggs or hatching the eggs. I know nothing about quails but super interested in knowing more. Anyone willing to give me a lesson in quails? Do you have them just for eggs? Sell the chicks?

 

[Nabiki]

I keep quail for eggs and meat. I came from an urban environment where chickens were not a good option.

You might want to start here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/categories/quail.32/

 

[CliftonQuail]

We currently have 25+ chickens and I keep seeing post on Facebook about Quail eggs or hatching the eggs. I know nothing about quails but super interested in knowing more. Anyone willing to give me a lesson in quails? Do you have them just for eggs? Sell the chicks?

Like @Nabiki, I started keeping quail (Jumbo Coturnix) for eggs and meat in an urban setting. I've recently started selling hatching eggs locally and one person bought some older eggs (1-3 week old) to help train baby opossums how to open eggs in her animal rescue. I decided that I didn't want to sell any eggs older than 7 days as hatching eggs due to the reduced viability at that point. I've seen that some people collect eggs for even longer before incubating and may modify my process in the future.

The jumbo birds can get up to about 16 oz. live weight and their eggs are about 16 grams. It takes 3-4 quail eggs to equate to 1 chicken egg and it can be fun telling people that I ate a 15 egg omelet . I've seen some references that people with chicken egg allergies might be able to tolerate quail eggs, but that's not a concern for me.

Quail take around 17 - 18 days (more or less) to hatch and start laying eggs at around 6 weeks. They reach full weight around 10 weeks old, but many people harvest excess males around 8 weeks since the incremental weight gain isn't worth the extra feed cost. The birds that I raise are feather sexable, so there's minimal guessing which are males and females once they're around 3 weeks old.

They take up very little room compared to chicken or larger poultry. They are also much quieter. I live in a townhouse and share a driveway with one neighbor. They're the only ones in the neighborhood that know I have the birds. I'm currently keeping 25 birds in tiered cages in my garage and have room for several more birds. Their cages take up a 2' x 3' floor space. There's a 5 gallon bucket on top of the cages that provides water to each cage. That bucket provides about 5 days worth of water and I fill it from a hose whenever it feels light. My feed and waste management setup probably takes about twice as much garage floor space as the cage. I've got a trash can full of fresh pine shavings, another one into which the used shavings get scraped and a third can that holds a bag of game bird layer feed. Finally, I have a couple of 5 gallon buckets that I use to store game bird starter feed for my hatchlings and juveniles.

I'm building a homestead in the country and will be moving there as soon as I have a place for the quail. I'm already taking all of my pine shaving waste out there and building a compost pile with it. Once I move, I intend to increase my cage space and the number of birds in my flock. In fact, I'll probably build new cages before actually moving. I think that will make the whole move a lot less stressful.

I plan to get chickens after I move to the country, but I also plan to keep raising quail as another source of protein because they're so easy.