Raising Quail Question

Well, with the good things you guys have been saying about Quail and the benefits of their eggs and meat, I've decided to start raising quail. Now, where I'm at I have to be careful what kind of Quail I get since my state can get picky (example: I can't have more than 25 native game birds like bobwhites), and it's SUPER hard to find people with quail to sell ether hatching eggs or chicks. So, thank the lucky stars above for Ebay and I've bought myself 48 Jumbo Pharaoh Coturnix Quail Eggs that I plan on hatching out myself. I've never done this before but from what I've been reading and youtube-ing they are not different than chicken eggs only with a shorter hatch date and are much easier to hatch out than chickens.

Now I know people always say not to raise them with chickens since quail are so fragile to everything and anything the chickens can carry. I do have a 6ft x 3ft pen that we had built for chicks once a pun a time ago; we have since cleaned it out and whatnot but the problem is that it's inside the chicken coop and we can't get it out. The chickens can't get in it and nether can their droppings. I have raised a pair of Ring Necked Pheasants with chickens with no issues and they both lived a very long and happy life.

Since I've never done this before and you guys have more experience with quail do you guys think it would still work for the quail? if not I do have a spare rabbit hutch I can shove them in until further notice. (sorry, not sorry! )

On a side note I am also going to get a pair of juvenile Blue Scale Quail but because they are a native bird I have to be careful how many I have but I don't mind since they are more for eye-candy anyway. Though I maybe able to hatch out some of those eggs too.

A seperate cage in the chicken barn should be fine as long as there is excellent air circulation

Because of their higher protein diet, quail poop is significantly more "pungent" than chicken and being ground dwellers, and only a few inches tall, they are more sensitive to ammonia fumes

Being in contact with bedding and their wastes also means they will dust bathe, which is a morning ritual for them in their wastes and will stir up poop particles which they can then inhale so personally I like to keep my adult quail on wire flooring (it's hard to find wire flooring small enough for baby or juvi quail feet )

okay! that's good news!

is there and thing I can feed quail that is organic? seeds, plants, or do that have to be on a crumble diet?

They can eat seeds but will need grit, and insects or some other meat needs to be a big part of their diet to meet their 30% protein needs

I supplement mine with scrambled eggs, compost worms, meal worms, and they like cooked rice and quinoa, the latter of which is relatively high in protein for a plant

When I bake or boil a bone-in rabbit or other small animal, I reserve the bones and any attached meat, dry it all out and put it through a hand powered meat grinder. My quail love it, and I know it's high in protein and calcium.

A calcium supplement is always recommended when they are of laying age. I simply grind up eggs shells which they like quite a bit. Some folks use oyster shells ground up as well.

For standard feed I use Purina Game Bird & Turkey Startena. This is a 30% protein feed, which they need like 24%+ when their growing. For the first week put the crumbles in a food processor to make smaller so it's more easily eaten. After the first week then it's served regular. Put small stones or marble in the water so that they can get a drink but can't get into it and drown.

If you're going to mix hens and rooster I've usually seen a ratio of 3:1 or 4:1. You can do more hens but all the eggs 'might' not be fertilized. Generally speaking you don't want to keep more than one 'of age' rooster in the same pen unless it's quite large and there are a lot of hens.

And don't forget they need some grit in/with their grub.

And quail LOVE dirt baths!

88 square feet (entire rabbitry floor), and 7 hens were not enough to prevent my senior coturnix roo from horribly maiming a junior male, who had not yet even begun to crow. I might have an unusually assertive roo.
I like him enough to not replace him. He is nice to humans and hens. Cute to watch him hop up onto my husband's foot, puff his little chest up and crow.
He also scratches worms out of the dirt, and make the cutest little purring noises while preventing the worm from escaping until one of his hens comes over to eat it. He's very patient, and will keep that worm exposed for quite a while, waiting for one of the girls. Despite having only two hens, he is pretty gentle with breeding, and rarely creates defeathered patches.

I still think it's no coincidence that he and his two favorite hens were the only birds to survive last years hawk attack. (I suspect a little coopers hawk.) Three of my juniors and one senior hen were all grabbed and pulled against the wire and completely eaten through it.

We had the trio inside this spring to make egg collection easy. My daughter has an alarm clock that plays bird noises on the hour. I think it was the Great Horned Owl sound that set him off...The little roo went nuts, running back and forth, pecking the hens heads.
It was something he's never done in front of us before.
To us, it looked like he was telling them to "get down and stay down."

If he did that before, anywhere away from the wire, it would have been enough to keep his girls safe.

Basically, I'm saying that I find them to be charming little creatures. Very interesting to watch. My rabbitry floor had chickens on it before, and my original trio has spent at least two winters in there without any visible disease or illness. It's possible my hens just didn't carry anything the would be persistent in the soil.

Oh, yeah, and a dustbath makes them incredibly happy.

Here's a link to my blog when I made a post about incubating quail eggs.

https://hansenhomesteadandrabbitryblog. ... ncubation/

The chickens I've had must not have had anything harmful to coturnix, or maybe, coturnix are a bit hardier than native species?

Coturnix are hardier, less flighty (for a quail), and overall easier to raise and keep than the other species of quail. It's a reason they are the most popular for meat and easy to get and most suggest them before getting bobwhite and then other quail. The eggs also ship far better than chickens. With chickens a 50% loss is often normal but if you order 200 quail eggs be ready to raise 200 quail because it does happen. I even had to drill an extra hole in my hovabator because so many hatching quail had the thing dripping with moisture but they all made it. They need more protein than a chicken to do as well and more calcium because while small their eggs are bigger compared to body size. It will reduce laying complications that can kill the hen. There's also that same gender aggression to watch for. Males will kill each other even in large cages and some pens and sometimes females get scalped by males and other females. Otherwise aside from protecting them from stupidity they aren't horribly difficult. Often it's a good idea to provide 2 heat lamps over a longer area to lessen crowding around one or into corners away from one. Also fill your chick waterer with grit or similar until they can stand on it and peck through the rocks for water because they will tromp right through water and drown or chill no matter how many times they experience it. Unlike chicken chicks who will only fall in the water once most of the time and then learn to peck from outside the water. Just little stuff like that will reduce deaths and wanting to bang your head against the wall. Also not starting the first time with 200 plus bonus eggs filling 2 incubators will help keep you from banging your head against the wall from the start :lol: Probably 50 would have been a good number instead.

I find aluminum foil to be GREAT in waterers, just crumple it up so the water can get through and the chicks dont fall through into deep spots. Its nice adn shiny too so it draws chicks to it.

Quail chicks are soooooo cute!

My Coturnix never ever got sick, even when a nasty chicken thing broke out (I was NOT the one who brought the sick chicken home :evil: ) none of the quail got sick.

The dust bath thing, wow, they sure do love to get in the dirt. :lol: When I had my quail on the ground each one made a bowl shape in the dirt and spent most of their time in it. All you could see were little eyes peering at you when walking up to the pen.