Happy Friday friends! If you have been following along my Instagram you have noticed that we welcomed 8 new members to Hammett Farms, baby quail! We have now had them for over 3 weeks and have learned so much about caring for them. There are definitely similarities between raising quail vs. chickens but overall it’s a different experience.
In todays post I will talk about my experience with raising quail thus far. I will also answer a few questions that have been asked via Instagram stories. I hope you find todays post informative and will help you decide if you want to raise quail.
Why Quail?
The top question I have received is why are we raising quail? We decided to add quail to our little farm for multiple reasons. First and foremost, for their delicious eggs. Quail eggs are packed with flavor and nutrients in a tiny bite size! They are actually a common ingredient in Colombian cuisine.
Another reason we are raising quail is to have them as our pets. Unlike chickens, quail can fly so they have to be enclosed at all times. They are also very quiet so are perfect to have in your backyard! They live their lives happy and safe inside a hutch or aviary.
The Whole Process
When researching how to obtain quail I decided it would be best to hatch them from eggs. You can buy them but its difficult to find a breeder that will sell you a few quail. Also, I have been wanting to incubate eggs for a while now so I figured this would be a great way to try it out!
After doing plenty of research, I decided to go for it. I spoke to some quail breeders and they recommended I start out with a few eggs from eBay. A tip I got was make sure the breeder is NPIP Certified. The next step was figuring out what breed of quail I wanted to raise. I decided on Coturnix quail as they are a very popular breed and lay beautiful blue eggs. I found a breeder on eBay that had excellent reviews and bought 12 eggs from them.
Once the eggs arrived I let them “breathe” for twenty four hours before putting them into the incubator. The incubator I used was recommended by my chicken friends as it is small and easy to use. The only negative part about this incubator is you have no way of knowing the humidity levels. I purchased this wireless humidity and temperature sensor to insure I reached the appropriate humidity for my eggs to hatch.
My eggs started to hatch exactly 12 days after placing them into the incubator. For the next few days more and more eggs began to hatch! It was incredible to watch them hatch and grow into precious baby quail! I was honestly hoping for ONE egg to hatch but ended up with 9 total. Unfortunately one did not thrive so we ended up with 8 quail chicks.
I plan to do an E-Book with step-by-step guidance on how to raise quail so I won’t go into too much detail right now.
What I have Learned
As mentioned above, I have learned quite a lot about raising quail in these past three weeks. Besides learning a tremendous amount about the whole incubating process, I have also learned how different they are to baby chickens. Once they hatched, I transferred them to the same plastic bin I used for my baby chickens. I also used the same set up for their brooder including the same heating plate. The only difference is I added marbles to their water bowl so they wouldn’t drown. I also smashed their food to where it was a fine powder and placed it on a paper towel. After 1 week I put the food into their small food bowl and removed the marbles.
A few differences I have noticed between baby quail vs. chickens is how fast they grow, how much they eat, how quiet and relaxed they are and how much they POOP! My goodness they poop SO much! The smell is awful and I have to change their brooder every other day.
- How Fast they Grow- Quail grow significantly faster than chickens. They are considered fully mature and able to lay eggs at 8 weeks old! Isn’t that insane?
- How Much they Eat- Since they grow so quickly, quail eat a lot. I have to add new food 1-2x per day! I am currently using Manna Pro’s Showbird Starter Feed and will keep them on that until they start laying eggs.
- How Quiet and Relaxed- At least compared to chickens, quail are very quiet. From what I have read, only the males make noise and even that is not very loud. It’s actually quite adorable! I also notice that they literally just chill all day. If they aren’t eating they are laying around being lazy.
- How Bad they Smell- I believe they smell worse than chickens due to the large quantity of poop that is in their brooder. Also, since I currently have 8 baby quail in the brooder there is a TON of poop! I am hoping once I only have 2-3 that the smell will get better.
Answering Your Questions
- Will the quail live with your chickens? No. My quail will be living in a rabbit hutch. Since quail are significantly smaller than chicken, they could easily get hurt or killed by them. Also, there are certain diseases that chickens are immune to that quail aren’t. They could actually catch the diseases from the chickens and die from it. And lastly, quail eat a high protein diet which is different to chicken feed.
- Will you eat your quail? No. Like our chickens we will only eat their eggs and keep them as our pets.
- Will you keep the males? No. Although they aren’t loud like roosters, I plan to only keep 2-3 females. Like chickens, they do not need a male quail to produce daily eggs.
- Are they friendly? Some of mine are more docile than others. I’ve noticed my 2 little white ones are the friendliest but still freak out if I hold them for too long. I will say, they have NEVER even come close to pecking me when I grab them.
- Can you free range quail? No. Since they can fly, you want to make sure to keep them secure at all times. I was reading that having a large butterfly net handy is helpful incase they get away!
I hope you found todays blog post helpful! If you have any specific questions about raising quail, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below!
Xo,
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