How to Raise Quail for Meat and Eggs
You'll need to plan out these 9 steps before getting your first quails.
Choosing a breed
How many should you raise
Quails aren't chickens
Feeding your quail at different ages
Your quail's water needs
Quail cages
Breeding your quail
Processing your birds
Final checklist
Japanese Coturnix (Italian coloring)
Introduction (from one quail raising homesteader)
Quail a great alternative to chickens when you are limited on space, trying to get around your city bylaws, or if you rather have a smaller bird with faster results as far as egg production. Quail can start laying after only 6 weeks (usually 6-8 weeks) from birth, compared to chickens which can take 20 weeks before you get your first egg. That just blows my mind. Did I mention one quail can produce up to 300 eggs per year which is as good or better than any chicken breed?
Having raised quail myself for a number of years, I feel qualified to share my knowledge knowing you'll finish this article and be ready and confident to get started with this great little producer.
Little rooster
What breed should I choose?
The quick answer is Coturnix or Jumbo Coturnix. They are the standard for those raising quail for eggs and meat. They are the most common and therefore the easiest to find. There are some fancier smaller ones (Button, Harlequin), and trust me you don't want to go any smaller. There isn't much meat to begin with and the eggs are about the size of a large olive.
The difference between regular coturnix and jumbo coturnix is that the jumbo have been selectively bread over several generations to be larger regular coturnix. We're talking a whopping 7 ounces instead of 5 ounces. Granted that isn't a huge difference but a little bit bigger is better when it comes to something that's already small. If you happen to be able to get your hands on the Texas A&M variety, I'd do it. They are a little larger and will stay that way as long as you keep a good breeding program.
There are 2 drawbacks to raising jumbo coturnix. First, you'll have to be the one to selectively breed the larger ones and separate the smaller ones to keep your large bloodline intact. Secondly, these birds have a more difficult time breading given their unusual size and your hatch rate will drop.
There are a couple larger breeds (Bobwhite, Mountain) but they also have their drawbacks. They take a longer time to mature and only lay eggs seasonally. To get the most bang for your buck, they aren't the best choice. Compared to chickens or ducks, the choice here is rather easy. Do you want a Japanese Coturnix or a Japanese Coturnix?
How many quails should you get?
That depends on your goal. If it's egg production then you need to figure 5 quail eggs to equal one large chicken egg. In other words, you'll need a lot of eggs to make an omelet...
It's also a good idea to get a pair of quail scissors. These little eggs are harder to crack “clean” and having a pair of quail scissors makes everything a lot easier considering how many eggs you'll need to crack for breakfast.
So if were talking about eggs for just one person, 10 birds should do it. You'll probably average 7 eggs a day which, depending on your eating habits, may be enough. If you're trying to keep a family of 4 well stocked in eggs, then 25 to 35 birds should do the trick. But to be honest, if you can handle that many birds to get enough eggs, you should probably just get chickens.
If you are raising quail for meat then the answer will change. An adult can easily eat 2 to 3 birds per meal so let's do a little math. If you are supplying 2 adults (for example) who have a poultry meal once a week then you'll need to have 5 birds per week * 52 weeks which ads up to 260 birds per year.
Now that may sound like a lot, but if you consider that you can hatch a new batch of birds every 20 days with an incubator capable of handling 36 eggs, it becomes very doable. You can achieve that goal with just 8-9 hatches per year accounting for hatch rate and breeding cycles.
Quail egg scissors. Get a pair at Amazon.
My quail get lots of space
Quails aren't chickens
Yes, thank you captain obvious. But, if you've had chickens before there will be a learning curve for you. First of all, and this is very important, QUAILS CANNOT FREE RANGE. If you let them out of their cage, you're likely never to see them again. If you want to catch an escapee don't bother looking up. Look down in the tall grass or in small holes deep in the middle of the brush because quails are a ground bird.
Secondly, you need more males than what you can usually get by with (compared to chickens) if your goal is to have them reproduce. The correct female to male ratio is 5 to 1. One male for every five females. Personally I keep 10 females together with 3 males and eventually get rid of one of the males which isn't getting the job done like the others. (Because there's always a chance of ending up with that one useless male...)
And don't bother setting up any kind of roosting area because they won't use it. They are perfectly happy taking a nap where they feel safe and that's not in the air.
Quail won't hatch their own young in captivity. More on that later in the Breeding your quail section of the article... But for now let's just say, don't bother building nesting boxes.
Finally, they also need a special diet so don't give them chicken feed. More on that right now.
Feeding your quail at different ages
If and I mean if you can find quail feed that's great. It has a higher protein mix compared to chicken feed. Another thing about quail food is that it isn't medicated which some would argue make quail a healthier choice. MAKE SURE YOUR QUAIL FEED IS NEVER MEDICATED.
If you can't find actual quail feed don't worry. Chicks require roughly a 30% protein mix which can be found in turkey starter. Turkey starter feed is much easier to find and usually readily available at any feed store. I put mine through a small food processor to turn it into a powder the little chicks can consume for the first couple weeks. Later they can handle the full sized crumbles for another couple weeks before switching to their next food.
Once your little birds are just about 4 weeks old, it's time to switch them to duck starter which has the right protein percentage (23%) for growers and adults. Duck feed has the additional advantage of not being medicated as far as I've seen. Your quail can have duck feed for the rest of their lives.
Special narrow quail drinker on left. Regular drinker with rocks on right.
Your quail's water needs
Baby quail are fragile little things. They also need constant access to water 48 hours after they hatch. But if they get wet, it could be game over. So how do you go about solving this issue? Rocks. You'll need to put some rocks in the water supply so that those tiny little fluff balls can walk over the rocks without getting wet but still fit their beaks between the stones to get a drink.
For the adults there's really nothing special or complicated. I should repeat that these birds can be messy and wasteful, so here are a couple workarounds for their water needs.
Always elevate the water dispenser. The goal is to make it impossible for the birds to get their feet in the drinking water. Because they will absolutely step in their poop in inevitably transfer that poop to the drinking water for all the birds to get a taste. Not exactly sanitary.
Make sure that the water dispenser cannot be knocked over even if it's empty. Quail can get quite agitated especially if the male is getting frisky. If the water gets knocked over early in the day, then the rest of your birds can go a long time without a drink if you don't notice the problem. It's best if you can tie the dispenser in a corner or hang it from above.
What I built for my quail home after the brooder stage but before the adult pen.
Quail cages
I've been told what I should build and I've managed to make a few changes over the years to better suit the birds in my opinion. Here's what I've been told and also what I've learned to be true.
They say if you build an enclosure tall enough to walk into, these birds (when spooked) will fly straight up and break their necks. After many years, I've yet to see it happen nor has a quail ever come close to being killed in that manner. But I suppose it's not entirely impossible. Maybe... But my pen has been 8 feet tall for years and I've never seen a bird reach the top.
However I don't have my pen set up that way anymore. Mainly because it's a great waste of space and lumber. Instead, I built a frame out of 2*2 lumber. Here are the dimensions. (I have 2 of these.)
16 inches tall (tall enough for the birds to strut their stuff, mate, play, etc.
20 inches deep (as deep as my arm can comfortably reach to grab a bird or clean the pen)
8 feet long (16 square feet of space being large enough for 12 birds)
Built on legs 3 feet tall so that the cages are at a comfortable height to access
There's 4 feet covered in hardware cloth and the last 4 feet is a closed box where they can hide from any bad weather or just to feel safer at night all covered with a tin roof. Yes, my birds are quite spoiled.
But this cage is actually their fourth home. The first one is a brooding box with a heat lamp. The second pen is 2 by 8 foot cage that I keep out of the elements until they can get a little stronger. The third pen is an old shed where they can mature. From the third pen, they will either be butchered after 8 weeks or they become breeders and layers. Just a few males make the cut, but most of them get processed. But that's another topic.
My adult quail pen next to the green rabbit hutch.
Here's the one I wish I had built. Notice the "poop trays" for easy clean up.
Quail eggs in the incubator
Breeding your quails
Quail will not hatch their own young in captivity. They don't get broody. They don't sit on their eggs. They don't make very good mothers. Mind you there are some rare exceptions to that rule but I wouldn't count on it. In their native habitat, they will of course do all the usual bird things so unless you can reproduce a giant enclosure, nesting boxes are going to be useless.
So if you're planning to raise quail and have them reproduce, you're going to need an incubator. If that's your intention, get yourself something with an air circulation fan, an automatic egg turner and quail rails.
If you're new to hatching poultry, I'll explain a few things about the recommended incubator upgrades.
An air circulation fan allows the air temperature to remain even from top to bottom within the incubator. An egg turner is necessary as a mother hen will do this daily so this little device takes care of that for you. You'll be needing special rails to accommodate for the smaller size eggs in the egg turner.
If you want to save a little money, you can always turn the eggs yourself twice a day with a basic no frills incubator. The advantage with this cheaper incubator is that you can likely fit more eggs and have larger hatches.
A reasonably priced fully automated incubator. See it on Amazon.
Processed 30 birds in one day
Processing your quail
This is what most people don't like but it's part of the process nonetheless. For all us meat eaters, we can let someone else do the processing or we can do it ourselves. As far as processing is concerned, by comparison, quail are pretty easy. I do most of my processing using a pair of scissors.
In this paragraph, I'll describe how I do it so if you're squeamish, you may want to skip to the next section.
First, I grab the bird firmly so it can't flap it's wings. Then I cut off the head using the scissors. At this point the bird is dead but it will continue to flap around for a minute or two. I just hold on to it until it stops moving entirely or I put it down on the grass until it becomes immobile. The next step is to cut off the legs at the joint and the wings also at the joint. Personally, I don't bother trying to keep the thin delicate skin on these birds, so I simply pull it all off firstly by using my thumbs to split it along the middle of the breast. Next I make a small incision below the breast bone so I can insert my fingers and pull out all of the organs. I need to use a small spoon to remove the lungs which tend to stick to the rib cage. At this point, I simply rinse off the bird and I move on to the next one. The whole process takes less than 5 minutes.
Required equipment for raising quail
As discussed, you'll need a quail cage to fit all of your adult birds. Two by two lumber, some half inch hardware cloth, screws, a staple gun and some hinges for the doors.
You'll also need a brooder with a heat lamp for the young chicks. Myself, I just use the largest plastic tote i could find and a 60 w bulb on a shop light to keep the chicks warm until they feather out.
You'll need feeders and a water dispenser. Quail are extremely messy and wasteful so it's best to get the right ones for your new flock.
You should have some wood chips or straw to put in your brooder but not so small that the chicks will try to eat it.
Finally, you'll probably end up needing an incubator to breed your little birds.
A weeks worth of eggs at my place
Final checklist
You've chosen your breed. Let me guess: Japanese Coturnix?
You've decided how many quail you'll want to start.
You understand that quail aren't chickens. ;)
You know what to feed them
You know how to set up their water
You've decided what to build for their shelter
You know how you'll need to breed them
I'd say you're ready to take the plunge.
Want to have a look at what you could order online right now?
I recommend this hatchery since they allow for smaller order compared to the larger ones that have a minimum order of 100 quail.
Hoovers will let you order just 30 instead.
In any case, if you can't get your local feed store to sell you some, there's a good chance you'll find someone local on Facebook that's raising quail not so far from where your live. Check to see if there's a FB poultry group in your county.
Why do I personally keep quail on my homestead?
I have three words for you.
Pickled quail eggs.
If regular pickled eggs aren't your thing, here me out first!
They are a wonder to behold. I have always found that a full sized pickled chicken egg to be too big. The flavor only gets in on the surface and you just end up eating a cold hard boiled egg. Hard pass (pun intended).
But when I started making pickled quail eggs, I would eat them all the time. I have made them sweet, spicy, extra spicy, plain, colored and just about every flavor you can think of.
You know what else? I've found out I'm not the only one. These little suckers sell great at the farmers market.
They make wonderful salad toppers, they're a healthy snack, they go great with beer, slice up a handful and stick them in a sandwich, the list goes on. I've even made deviled quail eggs for Christmas a couple times.
Sure, it's a bit of a pain to hand peel so many eggs, but I've gotten into the habit of sitting down in front of the TV with “the Netflix” and get to work.
And if any happen to not peel very well and break/fall apart, the dog is right there to help me take care of those...
Oh she knows that egg peeling equals doggy treats!
Sliced hard-boiled quail eggs on toast