How to get started in Quail W/Jennifer from Bryant's Roost

Transcript

Tony: 0:23

Welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast, where feathers meet fun. Your podcast hosts are Carey Blackmon and Jennifer Bryant. Together, they work hard to bring you the latest news and information from the world of poultry. So get ready for eggciting interviews, foul facts, and more. Now here's Carey and Jennifer.

0:41

Mhm.

Carey: 0:48

All right. So today we're going to talk about quail on this episode. There's Jennifer has gotten a lot of questions and I see a lot of stuff floating around on Facebook about getting started with quail, what to do, what it looks like, what breeding looks like, all that good stuff. So we're going to talk about that a little bit today. Jennifer, how are you? I'm good. Good. I'm inside in the AC, so I'm good. Yeah it's been pretty bad today. I think last week I had heat indexes well over the hundreds. Yeah, same. But it's getting in the sixties at nighttime. That makes no sense to me. So how many times have you seen that question just in the last couple of weeks? How to get started with quail? Yes, ma'am. At least I get messages or emails six times a day, probably right now. Okay, a lot. I'm assuming knowing you that you've gotten back with a lot of those people and giving them a whole lot of detail. So today, let's go over that. And maybe you can say, Hey, we talked about it. Check it out and see what it looks like. That would be great. So the outline from this podcast actually came from messages from somebody who was very detailed in their messages to me last night. Of course I was asleep by the time they sent them and I woke up to this list. And so I had to have a cup of coffee before I could focus enough on, on what she was talking about. But. But probably just since we've been chatting before we started recording, I got another email, one, somebody wanting to get started. So I think the interest in moving towards quail and maybe away from chickens is growing. I can see that I definitely can. So one of the questions that she asked me was which, if she was getting started, which would I suggest that she get chickens or quail? And my answer was both because you want variety in your freezer. Yeah, if you're, if I guess the first, it would depend on intentions. You want to look at something walking around your yard and it'd be cute. Or are you more utility side and you looking for food? And yeah, I mean if you're looking for food, like you said both because quail eggs do taste a lot like chicken eggs But they're also a little richer and they can make stuff more creamy Quail meat tastes different than chicken meat It's a, it's very lean. There's, it's a lot easier to wrap a piece of bacon around a quail and grill it than it is around a chicken unless you have a really big piece of bacon. Good piece of bacon's good. So for the purposes of this conversation, we're going to stick to utility. So we're going to compare and contrast the quail with the Cornish cross. Cost and space and the ease of harvesting the quail versus the Cornish because me and you do both. So we can speak firsthand of both. So let's just start off with the benefits of quail and that would be they take up a very small footprint. in your whole scheme of things. If you're in an HOA, if you're in a subdivision, or if you have a hundred acres, they're going to still take up the same amount of space. The turnover is very fast on them. The incubation period is quick. The brooding period is quick and the grow out to harvest date is eight to 10 weeks tops. They're really cheap to feed. I do see a lot of commentary on the Facebook groups about the expensive feed. But if you really take that into consideration per bird. And make sure you have no waste feeders. They're really, you can get a quail to butcher size for under 2. I've done the math. I've done the experiment. I measured it to the grams. So that information is two years old now. And I want to say it was a buck 32. To get them grown, so slap some inflation on there and some padding. Let's just say 2 and that's still awfully high, if you ask my opinion. 2 to, to feed a quail that long, you're feeding it good feed. Oh yeah, I feed good feed. So you just did Cornish, same time period. You run Cornish seven, eight weeks. How much does it cost to feed a Cornish for that? So with the feed that I used, it was closer to 11. The feed is not inexpensive, but I processed the male birds. More like it's six weeks and got a five pound carcass weight. And then the females at thing, it worked out to be about seven and a half because I had some stuff I do on the weekend, but I had some time off during the week. So they did that and they were about the same, which doing that really worked out good because. Yes, I fed them good non GMO feed. They taste really good. The flavor profile was great, which is what I was expecting. I really liked the fact that, I could do half the birds now and wait a week or so and do the other half. I still processed all of them in less than eight weeks and got a little over between five and six pounds. On average, I did have one that was like seven, but that bird was did not look like a bird at that point when it was processed. Processing a Cornish cross takes time. It's best if you have two or three people total working on it, processing a quail. So let's just talk about that for a minute. So let's assume, let's just do apples to apples here. So I skinned my Cornish, I'm sure you plucked yours, but I skinned my Cornish. So let's just do apples to butcher Cornish. You have to have a table, knives, scissors, bucket for entrails. A place to dispose of that stuff. We use a cone. We don't use a cone. We're old school. We have a chop block. I didn't want to hold them upside down. We have a chop block. Let's see. And then you you have to have vacuum seal bags. And then I, it took me the first ones we were doing that day. I could probably do a chicken in four or five minutes, but by the 30th one, 10 or 12 minutes. Yeah. That's one thing you think that it would get faster as you go. And yeah, you do more of them. You get your rhythm going. But it's also very tiring. It's extremely tiring. Your back hurts. Your hands hurt. My hand hurt for days. So it's wet. You have to have a hose out. You have to have coolers of ice. You have to have if you're doing it outside like we do it, the weather is dependent. Let's see what else. And if you don't harvest them on time, they're gonna start dying on you. They're not going to last forever at that ideal weight. Yeah, no, they won't. Not a Cornish. Sometimes with them, if you're a week off, you're going to have a lot that you can't use. Is that everything for doing a Cornish? I think that's about it. If you're, yeah, if you're not, if you're going to skin them, you don't need a plucker. So to do a quail, You need a pair of scissors, a chair, a fan, and a bucket. Yeah, running water helps ice is cool but that's it's a music, something to listen to yeah, you can, and when you're processing chickens, it's nice to have at least two people. Cause one person is doing one thing while somebody else is doing another. That way, when you get tired, it takes you a little bit more time, but not forever. With quail, for me, I use the breast meat and I don't really use a whole lot of the rest of it. I have a friend of mine that has hogs and, I can drop a bucket off on his driveway and so that I do that and I mean I can a minute is stretching it like it takes you a minute in the first couple for you to get your process down after that you're chopping and using your thumbs going side to side and boom, you got a rhythm. If you're going to do Cornish, you have to have space. I don't think you're going to get away with doing Cornish in an HOA for sure. a tight subdivision. I think you're pushing your limits there. But The good thing with Cornish is they don't really, they don't crow. So you don't have to worry about that. But they do use a bathroom a lot. They have an odor. And if you're in the neighborhood, that's going to get rough quick. They have an odor. And when you're touching them the leftovers, if you will, it's hard to cover up that smell too. And the flies, they're going to draw flies. Lots. Okay, but we're not trying to dissuade anybody from doing Cornish. We went 120 this year. We have a freezer full and what we use them for is baking, barbecuing chicken salad chunks, things like that. We use the heritage breeds, and we're going to digress for just a minute. We use the heritage breeds for soups, bone broths. Dumplings we use them for chicken salad also. Casseroles, fajitas, things, where stuff can be, have a little bit more of a chew to them. Heritage is going to have a little bit more chew to them. Okay. So now that we've talked about chicken, what you how much space you need to either raise them or harvest them. So now let's talk about quail. So if you're in a neighborhood, you can get an old rabbit hutch off the marketplace or Craigslist. Make sure it's the right size. Wire for the bottom, which I use half inch by an inch on the bottom because you have jumbos. If you're going to do standards, just do half inch by half inch. Do make sure it's coated. Because otherwise it'll start resting and it's hard on their feet. So make sure you use coated wire. And then I need a place to get out of the wind. So the rabbit hutches are good for that because they usually one end of it is enclosed where they can go in there. Get out of the weather and protect themselves from that. But they're very cold hardy breed post pictures all the time up there in Wisconsin and Michigan, the, her quail, buried in snow and they're perfectly fine. Just about that. The other day, somebody was talking about cold, how do they need to heat their quail in the winter? I was like, you don't get them out of the wind and be fine. Like I know people that have had snow drifts literally up against one side of their quail hutch outside, don't heat it. They don't need it. And she actually chimed in and she says they're usually good till about negative 40. And I was like, she lives in it. So she does. And she is hard. She does not hate anything. Nope. Get out of the wind and that's it. So if you, Let's see. The only caveat to them is you do need light. You're going to need solar lights. You're going to need electricity out there. You've got to light them for 14 hours if you want those eggs and for them to really grow to their potential. You're going to need to light them. So just keep that in mind when you place that hutch out there. So I always, when people message me or email me. suggest that they just find a rabbit hutch off of Facebook. For some I started with rabbit hutches rabbit cages just to kinda get a feel for it. For some reason, rabbit stuff turns over really easily. I sold all those rabbit cages when I figured out quail was for me for what I paid for them. So it's minimal investment, honestly, because you can buy and sell them pretty readily. Or you may decide to do rabbits at the same time, which I know nothing about rabbits. So we're not even going to go there. I just know they're not for me. I tried it one time and I, nope, this isn't for me. Nope. Try the rabbit hutches and then go from there. Tweak it. If you decide you want to have a setup like mine then go for it and buy the appropriate cages. And if you decide that, hey, they're perfectly fine outside in these rabbit hutches, then just leave what works for you. There's really not a right and wrong way I can think of. One thing that I will suggest for people that are going to raise quail is to make sure their cage isn't more than like a foot and a half tall. Because they will get excited and break their necks. Yeah. Aside from that, I mean anything that will hold them. And I don't suggest aviary style if you're raising them for utility purposes myself. No, you agree. Yeah, I would not do an aviary or a tractor even if you were raising them for that because you're gonna give yourself a lot of other issues. Yeah, so don't do that. And if you have any questions about my reasons why you can just email me because we need to move on through this outline a little bit. So the other benefits, you've got a rabbit hutch, You got for next to nothing off a marketplace. You've got your breeders in there with their wind break. Okay. Then you've lighted them. So you've got eggs. So now you have everything that you need to be regenerative. You need an incubator. But you've got everything you need to be regenerative. If you do Cornish, you have to buy chicks every time. You can't buy Cornish eggs. So you're still at the mercy of a hatchery or somebody else providing those for you. But once you get those first breeders with your quail, you're on your own at that point. You feel free to come back and buy more eggs if you want to, but you really don't have to. So I actually have some math here that I worked out, because she was asking me the one who inspired this outline how many quail does she need? Because people, I think, tend to see these bigger farms, like mine, and they think that they need, large setups and you really don't. So I did some calculations and let's just say that you have a family of four and you want five pounds of meat per week to feed your family. Now I'm working off of the assumption that it takes three jumbo quail to yield one pound of meat. So that's 15 birds a week, which in my world is nothing, but I hope that doesn't seem like a lot to somebody else. So that's 60 birds a month. Okay. Now I can harvest about 40 per hour. And that is sitting on a stool, yapping on the phone, listening to a podcast, talking to the birds one at a time. I'm not in any particular hurry and I can do about 40 an hour. So I would say it'd be very doable if you set your mind to getting it done to do 60 birds in less than an hour. Oh yeah, you're looking at me like I'm crazy, I'm just like, oh, I need to go get a drink. Oh, I gotta stretch Lemme rinse this skin off. I'm not doing all that. Yes, you could easily do'em because they're, it is really quick to do a quail. You could with your math and I do feel like your math is extremely accurate. You could do. Three to four weeks worth of meat in an hour. And if you add up all the other time you have, hopefully you didn't spend more than an hour feeding that same amount of birds over the course of eight weeks. So you've got two hours in a month's worth of meat. Whereas with a Cornish. It's going to be a lot longer and I'm sure that out. Yeah, it's a chore. Okay, so let's go back to this. So if you wanted to do 60 birds a month, which is going to yield you approximately five pounds of meat a week, you're going to need an incubator that will handle 60 75 ish eggs. Now, you really don't want to skimp on this because we're talking about feeding your family. So don't buy the behind the shed yard sale incubator. Go ahead and invest a couple hundred dollars in this thing. Okay, and the reason why you want to do 75 ish is not, they're not all gonna hatch. There's gonna be some that don't get fertilized, some that decide to drown themselves in the water, So if you do 75, you should end up with at least 60 at the end. You're going to need three of these hatches. One of these hutches is going to hold your breeders, and I would suggest two males to eight to ten females. That way if one of your males, something happens to him, you've got to back up while you're waiting on somebody else to grow up to take his place. It's just a good all around number. You're going to need a brooder tub with your heat, starter feed. layer feed, and the reason why I said three hutches is one's going to have your breeder set, one is going to be your grow outs from this month, and one is going to be your grow outs for next month, because space is important. They'll pick they'll do things to each other, so it would just be better if you had three. Now you could do a tiered system, but then you're going to have poop trays. Nothing wrong with the tiered system. We both have tiered systems. But just know that you're going to do poop trays at least once a week. But if you did three separate rabbit hutches, you could just let it go down on the ground, rake it up when you find it necessary to put in your compost at your leisure. Poop trays are really not at your leisure. They really need to be done. Depending on how many birds you got in there, three to five days you can go. And you got to have a plan for the poop. Don't forget to plan for the poop. Yes, because you get a lot of it. Yeah. All right. And so you're going, what you're going to do is you're going to incubate once a month and those will be in a brooder. And when those are ready to come out of the brooder, you have to harvest one set that's in one of your grow up cages and empty that back out, spray it off, get it all spiffy again, and put those grow outs in there. And then you're going to clean your incubator and you're going to set some more eggs. So it's just going to be cyclical. Basically once a month, you're going to set eggs once a month, you're going to put them in the freezer and you're just going to keep going. And then your breeder sets, you're going to just choose new breeders from your grow outs. If you get this hen that's 16 ounces, you might want to put her up in the breeder set for her genetics instead of putting her in the freezer. And that's how you just slowly increase your bird size and work what works for you that way. And then the other three weeks you're just eating the eggs, collecting them. So you have eggs, You have meat in the amount of time it probably takes you to take a shower, drive to the store, grocery shop, and come home and put it away. Yeah. Our grocery store is 45 minutes, but like I said before, a couple hours and you're done. Yep, they just need feed and water, and if you're letting the poop go on the ground, you don't have any maintenance there. Quail are pretty easy. And it's really easy to get started with them too. And if they're not for you, Put them on the freezer, sell the rabbit hedges. Yep. They're really easy to get out of too. That is true. Or to scale up to upsurge that amount of birds like I've got. Let's see. I'm looking at my thing. Okay, let's talk about feed for just a minute. Because I just got an email through while we were talking about feed. Now I've heard this twice. In probably the last four days and I was going to text you and ask you but you're here now So I'll just ask you both of these people have told me that they're feeding 40 percent protein feed I have never heard of a 40 percent protein feed I mean there are some supplements out there that are 40 percent That you would mix with Your feed like a breeder supplement that we're, we both use, but if they're feeding that directly to their coil. I hope they harvest them soon because you are going to wear their kidneys out. I went to Google and look for it because neither person could tell me a manufacturer. Okay, so see, there's another problem that I have. You're feeding your birds something with very high protein and you don't even know who makes it. You don't know all the other ingredients that are in there. And from a nutritional standpoint, that's horrible. With quail, yes, they do need the game bird starter. Their starter feed should be somewhere 26, 28, maybe even 30 percent for those first couple of weeks. But once a quail starts laying, they don't need over 20%. You get them the same stuff you give your chickens. That's how you keep them laying for a long time because If you feed them that high protein You're gonna ruin their kidneys, right? All right. Let's talk about let's talk about the chicks for right now. So I feed I use the turkey kombach non medicated Non GMO starter. It's 28%. Mine do really well on it. Now, of course you mix your own to your recipe, right? I do. Then the males that I'm going out to cull, I leave them on the starter until scissor day. Because when you're doing that, you want them to bulk up with starter, you typically have higher fat content, which, quail need five plus percent to, to really get big, quick, and you do need more protein, but for the longevity side, your, their organs aren't going to last, but if, when we're growing birds to eat, they're We don't need them to last more than 10 weeks because they may not see eight. All right. And then the layers, your breeding set. Now that's different. Now I suggest something that a lot of people don't. I'm just going to tell you what works for me. I leave my birds on the starter until they have been laying for roughly two weeks. I don't write it on a calendar. I just know. But what, when a bird starts laying, that doesn't necessarily mean that they're done growing. So I leave them on the starter until about two weeks. And I feel like that's a good point where their body is mature As it's probably going to get and see for me, I don't time it like that. Although it probably is about 2 weeks after the 1st, now that I think about it, but for me, like, when coil 1st start laying their eggs will be real soft, real palatable. They won't look right that kind of stuff, which is all normal, especially if you've got a 6 week old coil laying eggs. I wait till I see good solid. hard shells, everything's supposed to be like it is. That's when I put them on layer feed. They're probably done growing or at least 95 percent done growing at that point. And then at that point, I shift them all the way down to a 17% Non GMO, COMBOC layer. Now, I've had people ask me specifically this question. Do I take the food trough and wait till it's completely empty and then fill it with layer? Like it's hot and cold in one shot? No. I just start topping it off with the layer and eventually they finish off the starter that's at the bottom. And so they transition themselves. From a transition period. So I use the hatching time cages. They have a food trough on the outside. So I just start topping them off with the layer feed. It's meant for chickens. It's not a specific feed for quail. So there's that. Now, occasionally I try to do it once a week. Doesn't always happen, but I will top them off with a 20 percent developer, just something different. It's made by Tucker. So different ingredients, different company. I just top them off with that kind of gives them a little boost, so it's if you ate chicken every day, sometimes you're just going to want a burger, just give them something else. Hey. I'll feed them starter for about three weeks, and then I'll feed them grower until I'm ready to change them to layer. It's just formulated for that period of their life or whatever, because I do have the option of custom making whatever I want. I do that. Commercial time. Champion's Blend. Carey can help you with all your needs. So I do that. I say that because if you go to a feed store and you see a game bird starter, a game bird grower or developer, and again, in a layer, it's You can transition from that starter to that grower or that developer and still hit most of the nutritional needs. Now, when you start studying nutrition and also see the price of those vitamins and amino acids, you can just about look at a feed tag and tell what the price is without asking because you know what they cost. But the grower developer formulas are typically a little cheaper than the starters. So to make it more economical for you, you can do that and they will still get most of what they need. And then you can switch them over to the chicken layer after they've been laying for a couple weeks and that's going to make it even more affordable, especially for your breeders because you're going to feed them suckers for a year. Maybe a little longer, but usually about a year until they stop laying the really good jumbo eggs that we talk about. So out of curiosity, how much protein is in the grower? It's in the mid 20s. Yeah. So it's it doesn't drop the protein a whole lot, but some like the, some of the stuff you can drop a little bit, which is why it's a dollar or two cheaper per bag. If you're doing. If you're trying to do it on a budget, that could come in real handy. Also, if you're doing it on a huge scale, it could come in handy, but, also you have the, do I have more, another type of feed sitting over here, or do I have another cage or two full of birds because I have the demand for it over here? Space gets into play with that as well. And not everybody has 6,000 square feet of warehouse space. And, even with mine, but I have a multitude of different kinds of animals. I do have to consider, how much space do I have for all the different kinds of feed and so that developer feed works for me for the other animals to But the turkey and game bird starter is pretty much just for the quail. When I do my turkeys in the spring, I use it on them too. But that's all I use it for. Did I do the whole outline? Did I miss anything? I think we covered everything that was on the outline. I do want to encourage people, if they have any questions, they can either reach out to poultrynerds at gmail. com or reach out to Jennifer directly at jennifer@bryantsroost.Com. And she can show you about that rabbit hole. She'll gladly send you pictures. I will, I do want to warn people. I am going to put a disclaimer here. If you have heard of chicken math, quail math is exponentially worse. Very much but, they, you can have them in a smaller space. They make less noise. They're easier to take care of because they're all right there. There's a lot of benefits. Ooh, we didn't mention that. Only quail roosters make noise. That is correct. The hens, I think sometimes they might chatter at me, but for the most part, they don't make any noise. Yeah. They're just saying, feed me. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Argue too slow. Get to me faster. All right, everybody. Have a good day. Bye. Thank you for joining us this week. Before you go, be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you can receive new episodes right when they are released. And they're released every week. Feel free to email us at poultrynerds at gmail. com to share your thoughts about the show. Until next time, poultry pals, keep clucking, keep learning, and keep it egg citing. This is Carey signing off from Poultry Nerds. Feathers up, everyone.

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