How to Raise Quail

I gunna engage in some thread necromancy and breathe life into a dead thread rather than start a new one.

Today I entered into a verbal agreement to buy 10 3week old jap quail and 2 dozen fertile eggs.
*sigh*
What can I say?
I once said I would NEVER own birds or animals who couldn't reproduce on their own.
Yeah, never say never in this instance.

You see my council states I can't own a rooster. There's no council by-laws about owning ducks. I can own ducks and I have 12 khaki campbells and the females are LOUD. Seriously, seriously LOUD. The free loading duck-ups (as I call them) eat a lot. In the time it takes 12 chickens to eat 2 kgs of food the ducks have ripped through a 10 ltr buckets worth - 1.5 days.. 12 chickens will drink 10 lts of water every 4 days depending on temp. 12 ducks go through 20 + litres of water every damned day.
After so many months of pouring expensive food and water down their necks I am only now starting to get 1 ONE egg a day.
Excuse me while I try to curb my unbridled excitement.
I wanted Khaki campbell ducks because when it's really hot chickens go off the lay. When it's "winter" the chickens moult and go off the lay.
I wanted something that could cope with the weather and fill the egg gaps.
Also I wanted a good source of fat. Fat is the one thing that is extremely difficult to produce on a small homestead.
I know I am going to have to seriously cull my duck numbers to make them viable.
In a SHTF situation ducks are not an ideal small livestock because of the sheer amount of resources the use unless they are kept in a small breeding group and their eggs are put under a broody hen to hatch out for the purpose of harvesting fat and meat as a secondary by-product.

I live in Queensland and so rabbits aren't an option so I tried the next best thing...guinea pigs.
Female guinea pigs in my area run at $20 each. Males can be picked up for around $10.
Their gestation is LONG. 62 days. Number of young can range from 1 to 4.
But here's the thing, in my climate guinea pigs are very fragile creatures.
They cope with a cooler temps well but we have a lot more hot months than we do cool.
Guinea pigs suffer greatly during the sweltering summer.
They fall over dead from heat stroke and it's too cruel to breed the female in summer because they abort from the stress and then die.

Back to quail.
This, like all other attempts is an experiment to see what works in my climate and in my context.
I have two incubators and the drive at the moment is to buy a 12volt model that can be run off my solar system.

It;s one thing to grandstand and say something is a good idea. It's another to actually field test it and see if it works in reality.

Before retiring to the mountains my husband and I owned a farm in the Midwest US. One of our cash crops was game birds. The Japanese quail that you are talking about I think we call coturnix quail. We raised them strictly pretty well for their eggs. They lay young and we pickled the eggs in a vinegar with jalapeno peppers and other spices and sold them to the local bars and taverns to be served with beer. We found that the best way to hatch and raise them small scale was under banty/bantum chickens. Snakes were an issue and you had to really prepare your pens to snake proof them as much as possible. They loved those little baby quail. The coturnix also don't eat much and require less space.

Here is an excellent article that may help:

www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/coturnix-quail-zmaz81sozraw

We also raised Northern bobwhite quail (native) which we kept in large flight pens and sold to hunters for training bird dogs and we sold to game farm owners who released them for hunters on paid hunts. These require a special license to raise in the US.



If you want a good game bird for meat the best eating there is of the game birds is the chukar partridge. This may be a better fit to your climate as they are native to the Middle East and southern Asia, the Chukar was brought as a game bird to North America, where it has thrived in some arid regions of the west. From late summer to early spring, Chukars travel in coveys, but they may be hard to see as they range through the brush of steep desert canyons. They become more conspicuous in spring, when the harsh cackling chuk chuk chukar of the territorial males echoes from the rocky cliffs.

They are more heat tolerant and more related to a pheasant or grouse.  They have naturalized now in the hotter more arid portions of the western US. For us this was a much easier bird to raise and maintain than the quail. Their meat was  very similar to the cornish game hens raised commercially. 



Good Luck DD

I did a short 4 and a half hour turn and burn to pick up my quail and fertile eggs and the dude was really nice.

He threw in two extra quail and a extra dozen fertile eggs for free.

I'll be separating the quail into two lots. I can see that there are larger ones in the group and I'll put them in their own cage to see if they really are larger and not older than the smaller ones.
With the larger ones removed group the smaller ones won't get bullied and will have better access to food and water.

This dude knows his stuff. Each and every egg was individually wrapped and more importantly it was placed in the carton rounded side up.
Perfect.
I've got the incubator heating up and I'll set the eggs tomorrow.

We raised whatever we could sell that paid the bills. It is hard anymore to make a living off a small holding but I think for most one spouse works while the other works the land. We sold vegetables that went to farmers markets in the city 2 hours away. We raised game birds, chickens, turkeys, guineas, pigs and goats. Had a substantial orchard. As we cleared the land we sold firewood. Lots of hickory that went to restaurants in the city for smoking meat. Occasionally we leased out a deer hunt or two.

Couple stocked ponds for fresh fish. It was remote enough and my Vietnam era husband was coming out of the military. A good place for him to come to grip with his demons and ease back into civilian life. 

Raised and educated 5 kids off that little 72 acre farm. No bear there though. Bobcat, deer, coyote, fox an occasional mountain lion and various game bird populations and rattlesnakes. And lots of snow. 

I split the quail into two groups - smaller and larger and wow the physically larger quail are going great guns.

I didn't realize just how much their behavior is like meat chickens.
They eat, drink, sleep and poop with no noise at all. Most times they prefer to lay down to eat and even nap with their head in the feeder.
When I first saw them sleeping full stretch I thought they were dead! Nope. Just comfy and getting ready for the next gorge.

The 3 dozen eggs I have in the incubator are ok I guess. It's an el'cheapo Chinese knock off from ebay so yeah, I won't count my quail before they hatch.
I have a week and a half to think about organizing housing for any that do hatch.
I won't allow myself to even speculate how many might hatch becuse it's been hotter than the surface of the sun lately.
I picked a really crappy time of the year to set eggs.

Just a warning about the high protein if I remember correctly you have ducks too. You do not want to give your ducks that high of protein as it causes a condition called angelwing and meal worms in moderation also. The condition looks like this :