# How Many Quail?



## Aozora (Jan 13, 2014)

Hi all,

Question for people who raise coturnix quail. I want to raise them both for meat and eggs but with a heavier focus on the meat. How many breeder quail would 2 people need to provide a decent amount of meat? I'm assuming 4 quail = 1 meal for two people.

Based on the space we have, I'm thinking of setting up 6 cages, each capable of holding 5-6 quail. Will this be enough? Should I make half of the cages breeders and half grow-out?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!


----------



## Ed Mashburn (Jun 24, 2013)

Good afternoon- Yes, for most people, 2 coturnix will make a meal, With my boys, it's closer to 3 per. Our favorite way to prepare coturnix is to bake the birds on a bed of rice with a good stock. However, they do just fine fried and on the grill.
Depending on the size of your pens, you can put coturnix in pretty closely- they don't mind being just a little bit crowded. Do not try to introduce new birds to an established pen. They are very mean toward new birds and they will fight themselves bloody.
If your pens can be on the ground, the birds will like it better- they love dustbaths and scratching up bugs and stuff.
I've got about 75 eggs in the incubator right now, and I'll have a couple of hundred ready to go in-maybe in a week or so.
Ed Mashburn


----------



## Aozora (Jan 13, 2014)

Hi Ed,

Thanks for the advice. I recalculated - I should be able to fit 9 quail cages that are each 2'x3'. Would each cage hold 5-6 birds?

I was really wanting to know, how many active breeding adults do I need in order to produce enough quail for us to eat? 

It won't be a sole meat source, but I'd like quail to be a decent proportion of our meat. About 2 meals a week, I'd think. I think it takes 6 weeks to raise a quail to adulthood, so the maximum I would need for each incubator batch would be 48 quail. So how many quail would I need as breeders to support this kind of production?


----------



## Ed Mashburn (Jun 24, 2013)

Good evening to all- One of the very nice things about coturnix is that their eggs appear to me to have a very long "hold time". that is, the time between when the eggs are picked up out of the pen and when actual incubation starts. This means you can collect a lot of eggs from a relatively few birds to make up an incubator load.
Let me see- I think we had...maybe 12 or fifteen hens that we wintered over from last year, and those birds are really laying lots of eggs now. So we don't have a whole lot of birds, but we get lots of eggs over a two week or so pick up period. I expect three weeks would be OK, too.
I just keep the picked up eggs at room temp- turn them every day- and when I've got an incubator load- and that takes a LOT of coturnix eggs- then I start a hatch.
I guess the thing I like best about coturnix is that they are very forgiving- they'll take a lot of "wrong" actions by the keeper and still turn out pretty well.
Let us know how you do- Ed Mashburn


----------



## rags57078 (Jun 11, 2011)

each hen will lay an egg a day or 30 a month , figure 25 to hatch . I would go with 4 hens and 2 roos


----------



## Guest (Mar 31, 2014)

Aozora said:


> Hi all,
> 
> Question for people who raise coturnix quail. I want to raise them both for meat and eggs but with a heavier focus on the meat. How many breeder quail would 2 people need to provide a decent amount of meat? I'm assuming 4 quail = 1 meal for two people.
> 
> ...


 If you want 4 quail twice a week, that's 8 quail a week. That means you want to hatch 8.

You could count on about a dozen eggs a week from 2 hens, and that should give you your 8 babies to raise.

2 hens and 1 rooster should supply you at least the 8 babies a week you want, and probably a few more.


----------



## aart (Oct 20, 2012)

How often are you going to incubate, grow out and butcher?

I would think you'd have to look at the time frame and number of eggs for those activities, then figure your breeding stock needs.


----------



## Ed Mashburn (Jun 24, 2013)

Good morning to all- When we butcher quail, we butcher quail. We get our fully fed-out young ones and we'll process 50 to 100 birds in one day. That sounds daunting, but coturnix are so easy to process. They dry pick totally, and they are easy to split up the back with kitchen shears and clean.
then we'll freeze four or six in a zip-lock, and pitch all of the completed birds in the freezer. Get it all done at once. I can't see hatching and processing four or six birds each week for eating- just me, though.
keep in mind, your quail will NOT lay through the winter as chickens usually do. they will shut down when the days start to get short, and then that's it until next spring.
Again, let us know how you do- Ed Mashburn


----------



## K Epp (Jan 7, 2013)

Lots of great info. I have 3 hens out of 12 quail. So I plan on keeping 4. Processing the other 9.


----------



## Aozora (Jan 13, 2014)

I got 31 quail chicks and lost one to what appeared to be a heart attack. The rest are doing great, even though they're bringing in every snake within ten miles. They've been on gamebird starter, unwilling to switch to starter/grower as it has less protein and the vitamin comparisons are very similar. I also put vitamins in their water until they went into the outside hutch at 3 weeks old, and they have had ACV in their water since day 1.

Just got my first eggs today, at a bit under 6 weeks. Gonna grind up some oyster shell and provide it free-choice for calcium supplements. (With any luck they won't try to dustbathe in the ground oyster shells!) Tomorrow morning I'll be sexing everyone and setting up three breeder cages with a 4:1 ratio of hens and roosters.

Planning on processing the extra roosters on July 4th weekend, so I got a good pair of game shears. I have a question about how you process, Ed. How do you cut up the back and avoid the intestines and such? Do you start from the neck and work down, or cut from around the vent?


----------



## K Epp (Jan 7, 2013)

I'm planing to process mine for the 4th too. I'm thinking about hatching a few rounds of eggs to see if I can raise my hen ratio. Incubator holds 10. Will I be able to add hens to the existing quad or do I need to set up a new cage?


----------



## Guest (Jun 23, 2014)

Aozora said:


> I have a question about how you process, Ed. How do you cut up the back and avoid the intestines and such? Do you start from the neck and work down, or cut from around the vent?


I don't know how Ed does it, but here's a YouTube video that demonstrates how to butcher a quail. It's a lot easier than doing a chicken.

[YOUTUBE]PkDc4vbBrnY[/YOUTUBE]


----------



## krenee (May 26, 2014)

Wow that was literally 4 minutes. I think I might raise quail now. Lol


----------



## K Epp (Jan 7, 2013)

Okay... I can to this.


----------



## Aozora (Jan 13, 2014)

So it turns out I had a lot more hens than I anticipated. Is 5:1 hens:roosters a good ratio, or will some of the eggs go unfertilized because the rooster has too much to do?


----------



## Guest (Jun 24, 2014)

Aozora said:


> So it turns out I had a lot more hens than I anticipated. Is 5:1 hens:roosters a good ratio, or will some of the eggs go unfertilized because the rooster has too much to do?


 I've read numerous times that you need 2 to 3 hens per male.


----------



## K Epp (Jan 7, 2013)

If you only lived closer we could swap. I'm going to start collecting eggs to hatch I would like to go into winter with 10 or 12 hens and 3 roos.


----------



## 65284 (Sep 17, 2003)

I just bought 12 @ a buck per at a sale Saturday. I don't know much about quail, will the hens incubate, in not what temp in bator, etc? How long does it take them to mature, how old to start laying, will they winter outside in mid MO? How do you sex them?


----------



## KSALguy (Feb 14, 2006)

young males can cover up to 4 hens I think for the first few weeks or so of breeding, but all the information I have read says keep the numbers down to 2-3 per male especially as he ages, they are not as potent as chickens in regards to breeding I suppose, but I would go ahead and see what happens with 5-1 for a while and see if he can keep up, you will get some fertile eggs for sure anyway


----------

