Why not 2 chickens for you, and 10 quail for her? That seems about about right. :lol:Honey":3p477kz7 said:My girlfriend is trying to talk me into quail instead of chickens. I just like my eggs to big enough to get a few bites out of rather than the whole thing a bite.
Mine are supposed to be jumbo coturnix, and three of them are of the golden color variety.
They aren't laying yet but the roosters are already crowing so I know for one they're QUIETER
I also like the sounds they do make, so far. They stand tall just like a chicken roo when they crow, too. It's pretty cute.I hear they can begin laying at 6-8 weeks, and eat less feed per pound of eggs (drawback - the feed costs more). The eggs are supposedly healthier as well. You can fit, like, a billion quail eggs in an incubator, and sex at about 3-4 weeks so you can cull males without wasting too much feed on them. They aren't a broody bird, but neither are most egglayer chickens. A small flock can be stealthily kept in your house.
They also can't be free-ranged or let outside of a cage in general because they'll run/fly away. Probably just me, but I don't feel so bad caging them like I would if I caged a chicken. Seems they typically have to be kept in short cages so they don't hit their heads and give themselves concussions. I already had a bird give himself a concussion in a 12" high cage. :? It wasn't too bad, but took about a week to get over it.
I've just gotten my birds into an old rabbit hutch the other day. We'll see whether or not I'll need to put a layer of wire above them to keep them from bonking their heads on the ceiling... :hmm:
<br /><br /> __________ Fri May 29, 2015 5:30 pm __________ <br /><br /> At 8 weeks old, give or take a couple days, they began laying. It took about a week for them to really get going, and now I'm getting 8-10 eggs a day from the 11 hens. And sometimes they give me real big ones - double yolkers! 
And this is my favorite little hen, the golden. I can't get over how pretty she is.
