Once I bought my new home self-sufficiency was high priority on my list. I live in a suburban area so things I can do on my land are limited, plus being my first home, I wanted to keep things nice in back yard : compact and tidy. I researched for awhile and my solution kept coming back around to one thing, quail.
Center of My Micro-Farm
I use quail as the sort of epicenter of my micro-farm. Here’s why:
- Eggs
- Fertilizer
- Meat
Coupled with a garden and compost you have an entire little eco-system going constantly. I have two coveys (same as flocks, but for quail) and though I’m still working to complete the cycle it should be:
- Eggs for consumption
- Eggs for hatching
- Clean hutch
- Feed compost
- Hatch eggs
- Eat extra roosters and older covey
- Grow new covey as younger second covey provides eggs
- Garden grows
- Repeat.
How I started
- Make sure where you buy from is NPIP licensed
- Do egg math (proper rooster to hen ratio including mailed eggs)
- Understand culling and be prepared it is MUST
I ordered live young hens from https://azchickens.com/. Without knowing, I lucked out. When ordering you want to make sure they have NPIP somewhere on their site. Why? I’ve seen too many Craigslist and Facebook posts about chicks or hens they purchased that suddenly went sick. The “cages stunk” when they arrived, the “hen got lethargic” when they drove home. Just avoid it all. Make sure first.
I set them up in a rabbit hutch, reinforced with 1/2 wire (notice the small wire underneath the box above) and lined the tray in parchment paper. As time went on, I realized the parchment paper was stupid. You need something to absorb. Anything you leave that doesn’t absorb – parchment paper, newspaper, whatnot – WILL NOT DO. The ammonia of poop will be quite intense. It almost drove me off from keeping quail!
How My First Try Ended
The covey ended up great! I ordered live from an NPIP farm and things went fantastic, but I wanted to grow! How do I hatch? And this is where the adventure started. If you see other quail owner videos, once you get enamored with quail you want more colors, variety. So, I didn’t want to hatch off of my “wilds/pharoah” colors (which I probably should have done) I wanted new exciting colors.
I ordered new eggs and here is where EGG MATH comes into play. IF YOU ORDER EGGS accounts for 50% hatching at best. It’s safe math. Of those, consider 50% will be roosters. ONLY ONE rooster to FOUR TO SIX hens.
Simply: Order 20 eggs? You get 10 because mailed. Of the 10? you get 5 (hens), because other five are roosters. So, if you order 20 eggs, you’ll *maybe* get a covey of 5 hens, 1 roo. Prepare accordingly, which means you’ll likely have to request many more eggs than you imagine your covey size to be and you’ll need a medium/large incubator to do it, no 12 egg one will likely do.
What’s missing? Oh, you only kept ONE roo because if you keep more, they will fight! So, if you order eggs you must be prepared to cull roosters. People might be nice and say “oh sell them off” etc, but it’s very unrealistic. *Everyone* has extra roos.
This is also considering hatching goes amazing. I’ve gone through a few hatches and luckily it hasn’t happened yet, but sometimes you have a chick who doesn’t do well and you have to cull. The rule of thumb is: if they have trouble getting out of shell *do not help*. There is likely something wrong and you’ll have to cull anyway.
Where I Am Now
I have two coveys now, but lacking a roo. Why? They FIGHT. See above. My current situation is one roo escaped to lower level and beat up the bottom level roo and reaked havoc on bottom covey. I couldn’t keep him as he tended toward aggression and once the bottom roo recovered, the hens REFUSED him back – they beat him up again.
So, I have two coveys of hens and my cycle is incomplete because I cannot hatch. I have another order of eggs coming (I want to maintain the color on bottom, upstairs is up for future decision) and I’ll be on a hatching adventure again in the spring.
