What would you use quail for? From what I've read, it seems like you would keep them until they quit laying (around 6 months from what I've read?) and then butcher them for the meat. Do you keep them just for pleasure?
It all depends upon the individual owner. Some keep them for eggs, others for meat, and others for pets - many keep them for all three purposes.
I keep them for all three. They're sweet little pets and I love watching them scratch around in the dirt. Their eggs are utterly delicious, and they will lay for more than a year... and then they die shortly after, so it's not like chickens where you either have to butcher them or keep them long after they stop laying. Because they lay so much, you can incubate the eggs and eat the young at six weeks of age. The meat is delicious, and harvesting them is pretty straightforward. We plan to bring it up a notch in the spring and raise them for shooting practice. We'll keep those we're going to keep, and release the rest out where my husband & a friend hunt. They get target practice, and we get yummy meat. This is legal here, btw--but not everywhere. So, that's it in a nutshell. Quail are my current favorite fowl.
Call me crazy but I'm so attached to my birds that - to me - eating them would be like eating my cat or dog. They're just my pets and I raise them simply because I like them (and a little side income from selling hatching eggs isn't bad either ) I plan to start breeding for rare colors rather than striving for the traditional ones so that gives me a little something to look forward to.
