Quail

[artemis]

This year I'll be getting quail (saving the more expensive housing I'll need for guineas for a further year).  


They'd be Coturnix quail, which along with button quail are legal here in MA (game breeds of quail are not).  I found a hatchery that will ship 50 of them, which is at least twice as many as I'd want, so I'm looking locally to see if anyone around is interested in taking the excess off my hands.   


If anyone knows of any source that will ship fewer than 50 birds, I'd be happy to learn about it.   


Quail eggs are lovely pickled!   

[maryellen]

A friend of mine has the corturnix and some texas ones. She sells the eggs and chicks. She gets 500 eggs a week.. yep 500.. she has such a high demand out here its amazing. I get 200 eggs from her every couple of months and ive bought processed quail from her too. DELICIOUS!! Button quail are so tiny they arent good for eating. The eggs are super small too and they are super wild. I had some as pets a few years ago

[artemis]

Thanks, Maryellen. Sorry I haven't been by for awhile.

I have decided to buy the eggs (I can get a dozen at a pop) and since I plan to have an incubator anyway for chickens, I'll just be buying this sooner.

My plan is to purchase 2 dozen fertile quail eggs; they have a hatching rate of something like 75% - 85%.

Right now I am researching quail housing. I want to build something I can put right behind my house, and that should not blow over if we get those 65 mph plus wind gusts we got earlier this past week.

You need a special permit in my state if you get anything other than Corturnix or button quail. So, since as you say, buttons are way too small and too wild to be useful... I'm only getting the former.

That's crazy how much demand your friend has for quail eggs! Awesome and good to know! I'll breed and hatch more, and build up the quail pens as need arises! (I just don't want to start with 50! There may or may not be that sort of demand here...)

[artemis]

Oh, an interesting aside, I saw something online about someone who bought a pack of quail eggs in the store, and incubated them... 3 or 4 actually went on to hatch!

[maryellen]

Quail pens need to be long and high. They can jump really high and bang their heads on the cage top so make it high. My friend says they are the size of bumblebees when they hatch so she puts them in a tupperware container once they hatch till they get bigger. They start laying eggs sooner then chickens too.

Button quail are used in avaries, they eat the fallen seed in the avaries like cleanup crews. Mine laid eggs every day but were super wild. They lived in a long hamster cage i had. They made cool trilling noises too.

My friend has the texas a & m quail and the coturnix type ones(total missspelled).

She had 3 to a cage and had her cages stacked 6 feet high. They can not live outside once the temps go below 65, so she would bring hers in once fall hit. Her cages are on wheeels so she coukd move them outside and back in

[duckrunner]

i had quail. i got them off a market in iran. i had 2 super cuties who were half docile called little e and aero (because i thought her head looked quite aerodynamic don't ask lol) but i had this completely white one and this cream female who used to LITERALLY FRICKING FLY like seriously, they made this purring noise then flew and they bashed their heads and body on the floor. her legs were bleeding so i took her inside. i was like 9 then so I just did the normal routine if I had a cut myself. i went inside and dabbed betadine on her legs and then made thin tissue plasters haha (i realised i changed from them to her but i mean the little cream female) i let my quails outside under supervision for 4 hours then did some garden work then went back to let them out again. all of them died somehow. aero was the first I found dead even though i kept my eyes on them all the time. i think a cat or crow killed her. i got so sad and I went to bury her (i realise how stupid i was then) and I came back to them all dead. moral of story: don't buy things if you cant look after them properly. i cried so much that day...