₦airaland Forum

The Good
Holy smokes, they grow fast! No, seriously. Every morning since they’ve hatched that faithful day, these words come out of my mouth. They literally double their size every three days. They’re only a month old and they’re pretty much adults already, fully feathered and moved into my unheated garage–another 4 weeks and they should start laying. This is in comparison to chickens who lay at 16 – 20 weeks old, and muscovies that can take up to 5 – 6 months to start.

They drink from a hamster bottle. This is seriously pretty cool. I’m sure chickens drink from chicken nipples and blah blah blah but the fact that I can hang a hamster bottle and they understand how to use it is pretty awesome. It’s way easier than my ducklings who need water they can dip their bills into and subsequently make a mess.

They take so little space. At one point, before I traded the majority of them with a friend (for a dozen chicken eggs, a heated waterer, and a gravity feeder), I had 12 almost full sized quail in a standard finch flight cage and they weren’t even crowded! It’s great if you’re short on space.

Their poop doesn’t smell when they are babies. I really like this aspect about them. While my ducklings and chicks would stink up their brooder within a day, these guys essentially had no smell, their droppings so small and drying so quick. I guess the ammonia content is less because despite being in the same family as chickens. When they grow up though, their feces don’t dry as fast and are quite smelly (sometimes horribly), so that’s not to say they are odorless, but as chicks (for the first few weeks), they don’t smell as bad as other poultry.

They don’t consume much feed. I actually started mixing the high protein gamebird feed into my duck’s food because I don’t know how I’d use it all before it spoils. Their feed to growth conversion is pretty awesome and each quail eats maybe 2-3 tablespoons of it a day.

You can hatch a lot at once. In my tiny incubator, I could have probably fit 30-40 if I choose not to use the auto turner compared with 9 chicken eggs or 6 duck eggs. With hatching eggs at $25 for 50, you can hatch a lot with the same amount of energy consumption. They’re also really easy to hatch which is a bonus after dealing with difficult to hatch muscovies.

They’re always in demand. I didn’t realize how many people wanted them but they’re actually in demand here which means if you can get your own supply of fertile eggs, you can potentially run a small business on the side selling chicks. Since they’re less work than chickens and males, while they “crow,” produce nowhere near the sound levels of roosters, people are more amenable to buying them straight run.

Short lifespan. This is an odd positive but when you’re looking to keep up production, a shorter lifespan (2-3 years average) means they pretty much lay until the day they die and you don’t have to worry about what to do with retired hens.

The Bad
They’re loud. For those who have kept them before, ya’ll knew this was coming. Okay, so you’d think that for such small birds, they would be quiet and you’d barely notice they were there. NOPE. These things are LOUD. Like I can hear them in the bedroom from the laundry room on the other side of the house and prior to moving them into the garage, they were driving me up the walls. I’m probably an anxious person by nature and this amount of noise puts me on edge. Sure, the ducklings are loud too with their peeping, but they grow out of it and the high pitched chirping goes away after a while.

They scratch the heck out of their food. This is more on me than on them as I still haven’t figured out a good system to feed them without them tossing their food everywhere, because SURPRISE, they’re related to chickens who also scratch the their food! This means that a portion of it ends up falling through the screened bottom. I have been able to reduce this issue by cutting holes only big enough for their head to fit through in tupperware, but they still manage to sometimes pull some out.

They’re pretty aggressive. I know they’re not the smartest birds but these things have made trying to change their food a zombie apocalypse nightmare. They converge upon and peck the hell out of my hands because they’ve somehow associated my fingers with food, and you know, it’s not like I can slap them away without accidentally killing them. For such tiny things, it really freakin’ hurts.

They’re dusty. This is a really weird thing I found but when you have such a large amount of quail, not only are they dusty from their natural dander, but once they start shedding their chick down, puffs of these dust bunnies are everywhere. The worst part is trying to chase them down is like trying to catch a ghost, these balls of dust fly away at the slightest breeze. I was so happy when I could finally move them into the garage and keep the house somewhat clean.

The Bad
They’re…. cannibals. Yep, you read that right. This was my WTF moment with them. Turns out any moderate level of stress, such as selling the majority of their siblings, triggers this not well understood behavior of cannibalism. You wake up the next day and two of the quail you decided to keep have been eaten from the butt up and it’s an absolutely bloodbath that you try your best to shield your kids from because you’re not about to spend money on a therapist for this kind of childhood trauma. You’d think they would have appreciated the extra space they got, but instead they decided to conduct a Purge type ordeal. So now I’m left with two and I can only pray to the Quail Gods that the one whose gender I’m not entirely sure of is a male so I can have a breeding pair. For more reading on the possible causes of Quail cannibalism (for those who don’t believe such tiny birds are capable of doing so much damage to one another): https://poultry.extension.org/articles/poultry-behavior/feather-pecking-and-cannibalism-in-small-and-backyard-poultry-flocks/

You can’t free range them so their diet is limited. I mean, you could free range them… but only once, because they’re not coming back after you let them go. Keeping them outside is also a daunting task because lots of predators want to eat them. Even without those issues, their protein requirement is so high that they’d have to cover a very large area in order to fulfill it, so for someone who is looking for sustainable livestock, unless I had a predator proof aviary covering my entire property, I couldn’t raise the amount it would take to sustain my family. Their inability to free range safely also means they can’t help with controlling pests or naturally fertilizing the land.

They don’t eat leftovers. One of the reasons I like my ducks is because they eat all sorts of leftovers and scraps. Unfortunately, for some reason quail won’t, which is surprising since their cousin, the common chicken, will readily eat leftovers too.

Pro #1 – Fresh Eggs Daily. Quail are great layers. A quail in its first year will lay almost every day. And you won’t have to wait long. Unlike chickens, which take about 5 months to start laying, quail only take 6 weeks. Sure, it takes 5 quail eggs to equal one chicken egg, but if you want fresh eggs and can’t have chickens, quail eggs are a great alternative.

The taste is similar to chicken eggs, but with different nutrition. Ounce for ounce, quail eggs have less choline, but significantly more riboflavin, vitamin B12, and iron. Some people with egg allergies say they can eat quail eggs.

We love to eat hard boiled eggs. Place eggs in boiling water for just 3 minutes! Transfer them to an ice water bath to cool. Then peel and eat…and eat…and eat! They can also be cooked any way you would eat chicken eggs.

Some people say their quail slow down or stop laying in the winter. Quail egg production is highly affected by light; much more than chickens. We added LED lights normally used under kitchen counters. You can buy a kit with 6 light strips for under $50. Then plug it into a timer to give them 12-15 hours of light each day.

Pro #2 – Fresh Meat. Quail grow quickly. In just 7 to 8 weeks, they’re ready for processing. The final product is small (just ¼ pound), so you’ll probably want a couple for dinner. The meat is delicious. It’s all dark meat, and the taste is somewhere between chicken and duck. Quail is a game bird, but it doesn’t taste too gamey. And it’s not greasy like duck. It can be roasted, braised, or grilled. We like ours cooked on a grill press. Because they’re small, they cook quickly (15 minutes in the oven, 5 minutes on the grill press).

Pro #3 – Raise Quail Where Chickens Are Banned. Many towns and neighborhoods specifically ban owning chickens. Check your local ordinances. Many don’t mention quail. I’m not telling you to ignore the law, but since quail are raised in cages and don’t make much noise, if you keep them out of sight, who will know? The females rarely make any noise, and the males make a sound like a songbird.

Pro #4 –Quail Don’t Take Much Space. Because quail are small and raised in cages, you won’t need much room. Cages are often stacked, so several groups can be raised with the same floor space. You’ll read that quail should have 1 square foot of space per bird, but you could easily push that to 3 birds per 2 square feet, especially for grow outs that you intend to eat.

We first built two 2’ x 6’ cages that stack, and later bought a Chick Tower from Tractor Supply. The Chick Tower has 5 levels, each with about 9 square feet. Each level comes with a waterer, feeder, radiant heater, and slide-out poop tray. We made some modifications to the doors to allow more airflow and the floor to allow poop to easily fall. You can see the video about replacing the floor at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdk1UpKlIz8.

The tower retails for $1300, but is sometimes on sale for $900. Quail cages shouldn’t be higher than 12-15 inches, since quail tend to jump straight up when startled. If they have too much room to jump, they’ll jump and break their neck. The Chick Tower levels are short, so they’re perfect for quail.

We also built a small quail cage for tabletop use. It’s 2’ x 3’, and could hold 6-10 quail. It took a couple of days to build and the final cost was around $60. You can find the video and list of materials at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKZCSQWAV9U.

Pro #5 – Easy to Process Emotionally. If you eat meat, something had to die. If you have trouble with death, you’re not alone. However, quail are about the easiest to dispatch from an emotional perspective. It’s not friendly, it doesn’t sit on your shoulder, it doesn’t look at you with longing eyes. It’s a bird. And the older they get, the bigger jerks they become, sometimes scalping and pecking out the eyes of the weaker ones. Compared to dispatching a rabbit, quail are about as emotionally easy as it gets.

Pro #6 – Easy to Process Physically. When we process chickens, it takes about 45 minutes to set us the cones, scalder, plucker, table, and buckets. For quail, you probably already have the equipment: a pair of scissors, 3 buckets, and a garden hose. The entire process takes about 4 minutes. And cleanup is just as easy.

You’ll find several YouTube videos about how to process quail. Watch them to find a technique you are comfortable with. Or visit someone who will let you observe in person. Here is a video we made about processing quail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDH6ay4f3sE.

Pro #7 – No Extra Freezer Required. Large animals like a cow or pig might require an extra freezer to store the meat you’ll get once each year. But quail are small and you’re processing them throughout the summer, so there’s little impact on the freezer you already have.

Pro #8 – Efficient to Grow. Animal growth efficiency is measured in something called the Feed Conversion Ratio, or FCR. FCR is a ratio of how many pounds of feed it takes to make a pound of the animal you’re growing. The FCR for quail is similar to layer chickens at around 3.5 pounds of feed to produce a pound of animal. To produce a ¾ pound live quail, you’ll need about 2.6 pounds of feed.

Pro #9 – Quail are Sustainable. As a homesteader, you want to be able to make more out of what you have. Remember those 66 quail eggs the Happy Wife came home with? We had a terrible hatch rate with only 11 babies. But they grew up and we incubated more. By the end of that year, we hatched over 340 quail. We don’t incubate in the winter, but in spring we started incubating again, and after those eggs hatched and matured, we processed all the old quail to maximize egg production and keep the flock young. The point is that all the quail we have today came from those original 11.

There are a few Cons. I think they’re all minor, but you should be aware.

Con #1 – Cost of Housing. This is true no matter what you raise. Even with chickens, your first egg will cost you about $800. You could have just a few quail for eggs, and raise them in an inexpensive rabbit cage, but if you plan on raising quail as a regular meat source, count on at least 3 cages and a brooder plus an incubator.

Con #2 – They Poop a LOT! Because quail grow so fast, they eat and poop a lot. You’ll notice it because they stay in a cage and don’t roam. Just get used to it!

Con #3 – Variety is Limited. Different breeds of chickens can happily live together, but not quail. Quail that look different often attack each other. If you want a variety of breeds, count on more cages. But if you just want eggs and meat, who cares?

Here are few tips to help you get started.

Feed. Because quail grow so quickly, they benefit from high protein feed initially. You can use regular chicken layer feed, but we recommend a higher protein. Layer feed is 16-18% protein. We use a turkey starter feed with 28% protein. Once the birds reach maturity, you can switch them to a lower protein feed.

Incubate Regularly. Whatever you decide for housing, you’ll want quail in 3 groups: babies (up to 2 weeks old), layers, and grow outs. Quail hatch in only 18 days. Our newborns spend the first two weeks indoors under a heat lamp in a brooder. We’ve used a plastic tub, a premade rabbit cage, and a homemade chick cage. After 2 weeks, transfer them outdoors. You could keep them in the house, but quail poop is a special kind of stinky, and they make so much of it! Your nose will tell you when it’s time for them to go out. Your first quail will become layers. However, about ½ of them will be males. Keep a couple for future fertilized eggs, and eat the rest. Once you start getting eggs, incubate on a regular basis. Those will become your grow outs.

Want to kickstart your quail program? Buy fertilized eggs from someone who raises quail, and refill the incubator as soon as hatching is over. You’ll have 3 hatches before your first ones begin to lay!

With one incubator, you could incubate a group every 3 weeks. In a steady state, you would have 1 brooder, 1 cage for layers, and 2 cages for grow outs. The grow outs spend 2 weeks indoors, and 5 weeks outdoors. By the time the third group is ready to go outside, the first group is ready for processing, so you’ll have an open cage. And you’ll have more fresh meat every 3 weeks.

Incubation doesn’t have to be expensive. If you don’t have one, there are small incubators that hold about 35 quail eggs for around $55. Here is a review we made of one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Ve5uAmzQE.

Get Started Inexpensively. If you search out hatching eggs, you’ll probably pay a lot. But if you can find a source of quail eggs from a local homesteader, chances are they keep males with the females so they can incubate frequently. Ask them. If you buy eggs for eating, they’re probably fertilized and ready for the incubator! They might not be purebred show quality quail, but you want eggs and meat.

Quail Need Special Attention. Baby quail are tiny, but grow fast. For the first couple of weeks, you’ll want to help them survive. Baby quail often fall in and drown in a regular chicken waterer. You can either put marbles or rocks in the waterer, or buy a waterer for quail. The drinking area is very small. You can also buy just the base, which fits quart size plastic bottles or mason jars. Also, since quail have difficulty walking on wood chip bedding, use blue shop towels in the brooder for the first 2 weeks, or paper towels in a pinch. After 2 weeks, the chicks will be fully feathered, won’t need a heat lamp or special waterer, and can be transferred to a grow out cage.

How Many Quail Will You Need?

Eggs. Five quail eggs equals one chicken egg. If you eat a dozen eggs per week, then count on needing 5 dozen quail eggs. Plus you probably want more to incubate. Quail lay nearly every day, so a dozen layers will give you about 7 dozen per week.

Meat. Let’s assume you will eat quail once per week. An adult serving is 2 quail. And let’s assume you will incubate eggs every 3 weeks. Once the quail are ready for processing, you would eat 6 quail every 3 weeks. You can expect a 70% hatch rate, so to get 6 quail, you’ll need to incubate 9 eggs. For a family of four, you’ll want to incubate 36 eggs every 3 weeks. You’ll probably want extra so you can entertain and stock the freezer for winter.