Well said. For what they ultimately give me, those little meat birds deserve the best care and attention I can give them.
Trials And Tribulations Of Suburban Meat Bird Production
- Thread starter Birdinhand
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #212
Well, this year, much to my chagrin, Jenks hatchery no longer carries Cornish cross. I did give a decent look for a new source that was still close enough to allow a quick overnight shipment with low mortality and just have not been successful. This, combined with how my wife and daughter no longer eat chicken, I warmed up to my friends idea of raising quail for meat. He kept extolling the virtues, and even started inviting me over for meals. First it was a meal of an already prepared bird, which I found quite tasty. He had mentioned how, since the roosters don’t crow, that a perpetual breeding colony can easily be maintained even in the suburbs of Seattle, where it’s essentially illegal to breed chickens, because roosters are too loud. I was warming up to the idea and so he kept nudging me. One night I showed up at his house and he said, ok, let’s go harvest dinner. We walked out to his coop, selected two quail, walked into his house, used a pair of scissors and dispatched them right there in his sink. I normally wouldn’t go into details about this except my jaw dropped when he dispatched and cleaned two quail on all of 60 seconds, with a pair of scissors, then threw them in a frying pan and added herbs, onions and potatoes. There was hardly any mess, no chicken plucker to deal with, no resting of the meat, no taking the bird off food… it was so easy it could be done with spontaneity and they are much cleaner than chickens. It kind of rocked my world. They were surprisingly tasty and had a reasonable amount of meat on them, as he had been selectively breeding for larger breast size and overall weight. By the end of the evening I was hooked on the idea of giving it a try. He had a pile of eggs sitting in a bowl on his counter which he sent me home with. I popped them into my incubator and a new chapter began. That was less than 3 weeks ago, yesterday they started to hatch. The cutest darn things ever. My kids are now teenagers, but my daughter still got excited about them.
I have been doing some researching on jumbo cortunix and will try ordering some of those eggs once I determine if there is an ideal line to start with and if there are any downsides with the larger bird, that gets up to a pound.
There are several things about this that appeals to me. They still grow out fairly quickly, they can be harvested “as you go”, quickly and cooked right away without being tough and with minimal mess. They are small and dainty, cleaner and just take very little effort to clean. They don’t crow, they can be bread in my back yard… no more relying on mail order for the chicks. The smaller amount of meat actually seems to fit our current need better… no need for an extra freezer and a big production over a week to get them prepped, rested and frozen.
I will update this thread as I gain more experience but I just wanted to pass on this development in case others like me had not come to the realization that quail could actually be a viable source of meat and eggs, one that can be self sustained in a breeding colony due to the fact that the males don’t create a noise ordinance issue that leads to complaints.
I have been doing some researching on jumbo cortunix and will try ordering some of those eggs once I determine if there is an ideal line to start with and if there are any downsides with the larger bird, that gets up to a pound.
There are several things about this that appeals to me. They still grow out fairly quickly, they can be harvested “as you go”, quickly and cooked right away without being tough and with minimal mess. They are small and dainty, cleaner and just take very little effort to clean. They don’t crow, they can be bread in my back yard… no more relying on mail order for the chicks. The smaller amount of meat actually seems to fit our current need better… no need for an extra freezer and a big production over a week to get them prepped, rested and frozen.
I will update this thread as I gain more experience but I just wanted to pass on this development in case others like me had not come to the realization that quail could actually be a viable source of meat and eggs, one that can be self sustained in a breeding colony due to the fact that the males don’t create a noise ordinance issue that leads to complaints.
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Birding and-do keep posting about them, I am interested.
I'll be watching but I do have one question on rigor mortis. If you cook chicken before rigor mortis sets up you do not have to age it. Mom would cook a chicken immediately after it was killed, rigor was never a problem. If you don't cook it immediately but let rigor set up, it needs to be aged.
The quail you processed was immediately cooked. I wonder what would have happened if you had frozen it instead and eventually cooked it without it being aged? I know you don't have that experience yet but I'll be watching this thread.
I don't do quail but that sounds like a great option.
- Thread starter
- #215
Ridgrunner, I’ve cooked CX without resting and the meat was not as tender as a 3-5 day rest close to freezing. With quail, maybe it’s that it’s smaller and more of a game bird, maybe I expect it to be more chewy, not sure but with the ease of prep, how much cleaner they are, dispatching as a part of overall meal prep just seemed way more doable than with a large chicken. Then again, the novelty may have a lot to do with my excitement, we’ll see if it wears off 
.
.
@Birdinhand Yes! Quail are easy to process and delicious. I raised them for several years and elected to stop. I want you to try and succeed because quail are very tasty.
Look at how @Nabiki raises her quail on her garden beds. She has several articles up on quail.
What cages are you building? I have my cages from recycled wood in my photo book.
Pros:
-smaller footprint in the cages.
-self sustaining colony that will provide a lot of eggs and meat.
-easy to process. They come in meal sized portions.
-no spill feeders easy to make from plastic containers. By no spill, I mean the quail don't throw as much out of the cage.
Cons:
-Messy. Neighbor lady started a colony of stray cats and the free food caused a rat boom. The spilled quailed food contributed. I have my quail cages in the chicken coop and the chickens cleaned up some of the quail food. I rat and mouse proofed the quail cages since the mice were leaving poop in the no spill feeders.
-Buffalo gnats surrounded the quail and left their eyes swollen. The gnats would bite me and the chickens in a nice cloud around the quail. I live near a swamp, so this may not be an issue for you. Watch the flies.
-I didn't get the quail on the ground, so they only ate bought food and generally didn't touch greens. I liked the chickens free ranging the backyard and getting forage. Easier on the food bill.
Look at how @Nabiki raises her quail on her garden beds. She has several articles up on quail.
What cages are you building? I have my cages from recycled wood in my photo book.
Pros:
-smaller footprint in the cages.
-self sustaining colony that will provide a lot of eggs and meat.
-easy to process. They come in meal sized portions.
-no spill feeders easy to make from plastic containers. By no spill, I mean the quail don't throw as much out of the cage.
Cons:
-Messy. Neighbor lady started a colony of stray cats and the free food caused a rat boom. The spilled quailed food contributed. I have my quail cages in the chicken coop and the chickens cleaned up some of the quail food. I rat and mouse proofed the quail cages since the mice were leaving poop in the no spill feeders.
-Buffalo gnats surrounded the quail and left their eyes swollen. The gnats would bite me and the chickens in a nice cloud around the quail. I live near a swamp, so this may not be an issue for you. Watch the flies.
-I didn't get the quail on the ground, so they only ate bought food and generally didn't touch greens. I liked the chickens free ranging the backyard and getting forage. Easier on the food bill.
I started raising quail because I lived in a suburban area that regulated chickens pretty strictly. Quail do crow, but happy males don't crow much and it's easy to not know what the sound is if you're not familiar with it.
It takes a bit longer to process quail if you like the skin (which I do), but even plucking doesn't take all that long. This article shows a few ways to process quail.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-process-your-quail-including-gory-pictures.75834/
Rigor sets in fast with quail, so if they're not going straight into the pan or pot for cooking, I let them rest for 24 hours before putting them into the freezer.
It takes a bit longer to process quail if you like the skin (which I do), but even plucking doesn't take all that long. This article shows a few ways to process quail.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/how-to-process-your-quail-including-gory-pictures.75834/
Rigor sets in fast with quail, so if they're not going straight into the pan or pot for cooking, I let them rest for 24 hours before putting them into the freezer.
but with a big chicken I only have to take a life and cook once a week. A half of a jake will feed me for a week
- Thread starter
- #219
In this case, a chicken is maybe a better match for your needs… as they say with car choices, choose the right tool for the right job
- Thread starter
- #220
Ok, as promised I’m reporting back. I have gone further down the rabbit hole of quail since my last big post and have some new insights to share. The popularity of quail seems to be on the rise, in particular, the development of jumbo quail or even what some folks are calling super jumbo, which are technically just the biggest of the jumbo. I grew out my original cortunix for meat and did not hatch their eggs. I started looking right away for the CX of quail, figuring I was not the only one who had the lightbulb go off in the brain that this could be the gateway to self sustaining suburban meat, allowing me to get away from mail order chicks, as the quail rooster is so quiet that it’s sound blends in with the nature around the home. It’s also worthy of note that the Cornish Cross can not be bread at home even if you can have a rooster, as they are a proprietary cross, closely guarded for their genes and they simply don’t breed true. Meat quail are not a cross technically, they are dominant gene based and do breed true… this is a big deal!
So I went on the search for “super” jumbo quail eggs. I could find nothing local for sourcing these so I was stuck with the dreaded mail order option. It was hard to tell who was legit, some claims seemed outlandish, with quail topping out at 1 lb! so I decided to just give a try with a seller on e-bay. I ordered two dozen eggs thinking less than half would hatch. Good thing I did, out of the 29 eggs that arrived, 4 hatched, and one of those was clearly a regular cortunix… it took exactly one hour of me not watching for it to drown itself in the waterer. Which brings me to one obvious reality, if you are used to chickens and have all the chicken accoutrements, don’t kid yourself, you’ll have to do modifications and some new purchases to accommodate quail. As I discovered, they will drown in a shallow chick waterer. An actual quail waterer is about 1/4” deep and with a very narrow trough, about 1/2” wide.
The eggs arrived some months back. Of the three that hatched, miraculously one was a male and two were female, and at about 6 weeks like clockwork, they started laying fertile eggs! One thing I learned from the first round, you need very high protein, like 25-30% game bird formula. This took some searching around to source.
My first meat quail are white, with a sexlink head marking. From looking online they appear to be “Texas A&M” quail. One black dot on the head for femal, two for male. The jury I still out, the parents aren’t huge but I have my first round of home raised eggs/chicks in the brooder now at one week. On 30% they are growing super fast, oddly similar in look to a CX chick, but the parents show now of the signs of leg problems or cardiac issues that CX have, which is a relief since pushing any breed to be super big can easily come with drawbacks. I’m very curious to see if I get any that top out near the coveted max of 1 lb… time and selective breeding will tell me if this is the line I want to invest in for the long term.
I suspect that I will give another breeder a try on search of “super” jumbo cortunix if these don’t get big.
In any case, I’m learning tons about how to make adjustments from the needs of Cornish cross to meat quails, it’s quite a “huge”transition, LOL.
A couple things worthy of note: my incu view incubator with standard turner is not made for quail. The first thing I picked up on is that with quail eggs, their small size means you have narrower margins for temperature variation, they literally sit lower, are not as tall as a regular chicken egg. This means that the temperature sensor needs to be positioned at their level and calibrated with a solidly accurate thermometer… I used a couple thermometers but I’m fairly sure my 10% hatch rate originally with the shipped eggs and my 50% hatch rate this last time with my own eggs were caused at least in part from poor temperature regulation. I have since ordered a calibrated digital thermometer made specifically for the purpose. I hope to get more like 75% from the clutch I’m about to start. I’m hoping that within a few generations I have some worthy breeding stock of “super” jumbo quail. A one pound bird that I can breed myself that is very grain to meat efficient, that also lays larger than normal quails eggs will be a compelling game changer!
Also, as you can see in the picture, I decided to modify the egg turner to accommodate quail eggs, as incuview doesn’t make a quail turner… I added a large metal straw to each row to take up some room so the eggs would turn more consistently, it seems to work well. the standard tuner was so large it did not assure the eggs get turned. People now seem to swear by the value of a pointy end down turner tray for quail, particularly shipped quail eggs, because even if there is membrane damage/separation, due to shipping, the turners that hold the egg pointy end down help keep the air sack properly positioned at the other end for proper embryo formation even if the air sack has separated and become uneven due to shipping. The only pointy end down turner that incubator warehouse sells would have required me buying a new incubator as well, as it would not fit the one I have. If my fascination with meat quails grows, and I get successful finding a good line, I will probably eventually buy a new incubator designed specifically with quail eggs in mind, and with the pointy end down, as it just seems like it gives a better outcome when having to resort to shipped eggs. If you have confirmation that such an investment is worthile, specifically for quail, I’m all ears if you have recommendations on brand or or other helpful tips!
One last thing about mods for quail. I fall back on old sayings and the one that goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” definitely applies to coop build! I made my coop tall enough to walk into, and build a whole extra upper deck inside with multiple separate enclosures, with everything wrapped, wall to wall, ceiling and floor with hardware cloth. This has allowed me to have lots of flexibility to separate out any trouble birds, raise new ones and introduce them gradually, it’s allowed me to have incompatible birds and now, with a few modifications, even quail. The main modifications for the quail was to partition the pen to be smaller, as they need each others heat at night and generally don’t seem to need as much space. Once grown up, a standard chick feeder worked great. For water, they adjusted to the nipple waterers I had for the meat birds just fine once I moved them from the brooder to coop at two weeks, though I had to lower the waterers a lot so they could reach. I do not provide much for bedding, they huddle in a corner that is free of drafts for night time. I may give them more of a box shelter for winter, depending on how they seem to adjust as the nights get cold.
Just in case you’ve been following this thread over the last 9 years, I threw in an updated pic with my two kids who are mostly all grown up and in highschool now… I might get an updated pic with “bird in hand”… they’ve grown up to be decent humans so far, in part due to the richness of having a suburban homestead, me hopes
So I went on the search for “super” jumbo quail eggs. I could find nothing local for sourcing these so I was stuck with the dreaded mail order option. It was hard to tell who was legit, some claims seemed outlandish, with quail topping out at 1 lb! so I decided to just give a try with a seller on e-bay. I ordered two dozen eggs thinking less than half would hatch. Good thing I did, out of the 29 eggs that arrived, 4 hatched, and one of those was clearly a regular cortunix… it took exactly one hour of me not watching for it to drown itself in the waterer. Which brings me to one obvious reality, if you are used to chickens and have all the chicken accoutrements, don’t kid yourself, you’ll have to do modifications and some new purchases to accommodate quail. As I discovered, they will drown in a shallow chick waterer. An actual quail waterer is about 1/4” deep and with a very narrow trough, about 1/2” wide.
The eggs arrived some months back. Of the three that hatched, miraculously one was a male and two were female, and at about 6 weeks like clockwork, they started laying fertile eggs! One thing I learned from the first round, you need very high protein, like 25-30% game bird formula. This took some searching around to source.
My first meat quail are white, with a sexlink head marking. From looking online they appear to be “Texas A&M” quail. One black dot on the head for femal, two for male. The jury I still out, the parents aren’t huge but I have my first round of home raised eggs/chicks in the brooder now at one week. On 30% they are growing super fast, oddly similar in look to a CX chick, but the parents show now of the signs of leg problems or cardiac issues that CX have, which is a relief since pushing any breed to be super big can easily come with drawbacks. I’m very curious to see if I get any that top out near the coveted max of 1 lb… time and selective breeding will tell me if this is the line I want to invest in for the long term.
I suspect that I will give another breeder a try on search of “super” jumbo cortunix if these don’t get big.
In any case, I’m learning tons about how to make adjustments from the needs of Cornish cross to meat quails, it’s quite a “huge”transition, LOL.
A couple things worthy of note: my incu view incubator with standard turner is not made for quail. The first thing I picked up on is that with quail eggs, their small size means you have narrower margins for temperature variation, they literally sit lower, are not as tall as a regular chicken egg. This means that the temperature sensor needs to be positioned at their level and calibrated with a solidly accurate thermometer… I used a couple thermometers but I’m fairly sure my 10% hatch rate originally with the shipped eggs and my 50% hatch rate this last time with my own eggs were caused at least in part from poor temperature regulation. I have since ordered a calibrated digital thermometer made specifically for the purpose. I hope to get more like 75% from the clutch I’m about to start. I’m hoping that within a few generations I have some worthy breeding stock of “super” jumbo quail. A one pound bird that I can breed myself that is very grain to meat efficient, that also lays larger than normal quails eggs will be a compelling game changer!
Also, as you can see in the picture, I decided to modify the egg turner to accommodate quail eggs, as incuview doesn’t make a quail turner… I added a large metal straw to each row to take up some room so the eggs would turn more consistently, it seems to work well. the standard tuner was so large it did not assure the eggs get turned. People now seem to swear by the value of a pointy end down turner tray for quail, particularly shipped quail eggs, because even if there is membrane damage/separation, due to shipping, the turners that hold the egg pointy end down help keep the air sack properly positioned at the other end for proper embryo formation even if the air sack has separated and become uneven due to shipping. The only pointy end down turner that incubator warehouse sells would have required me buying a new incubator as well, as it would not fit the one I have. If my fascination with meat quails grows, and I get successful finding a good line, I will probably eventually buy a new incubator designed specifically with quail eggs in mind, and with the pointy end down, as it just seems like it gives a better outcome when having to resort to shipped eggs. If you have confirmation that such an investment is worthile, specifically for quail, I’m all ears if you have recommendations on brand or or other helpful tips!
One last thing about mods for quail. I fall back on old sayings and the one that goes “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” definitely applies to coop build! I made my coop tall enough to walk into, and build a whole extra upper deck inside with multiple separate enclosures, with everything wrapped, wall to wall, ceiling and floor with hardware cloth. This has allowed me to have lots of flexibility to separate out any trouble birds, raise new ones and introduce them gradually, it’s allowed me to have incompatible birds and now, with a few modifications, even quail. The main modifications for the quail was to partition the pen to be smaller, as they need each others heat at night and generally don’t seem to need as much space. Once grown up, a standard chick feeder worked great. For water, they adjusted to the nipple waterers I had for the meat birds just fine once I moved them from the brooder to coop at two weeks, though I had to lower the waterers a lot so they could reach. I do not provide much for bedding, they huddle in a corner that is free of drafts for night time. I may give them more of a box shelter for winter, depending on how they seem to adjust as the nights get cold.
Just in case you’ve been following this thread over the last 9 years, I threw in an updated pic with my two kids who are mostly all grown up and in highschool now… I might get an updated pic with “bird in hand”… they’ve grown up to be decent humans so far, in part due to the richness of having a suburban homestead, me hopes
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