Quail - a great homestead bird

Coturnix japonica, the Japanese quail, also known as coturnix quail, are tiny eating machines.  A full grown bird is small, weighing in around 3.5 - 5 ounces.  Thanks to selective breeding the jumbo strain can get up much bugger!  These little birds start laying eggs at only 6-8 weeks of age, unlike chickens which usually begin to lay around 24 weeks of age.  

We've attempted to rear quail on several attempts, for the purpose of meat, and eggs.  The early attempts were twarted by several unfortunate events; a pet rat that got loose and killed off the quail, a hole in the quail pen resulting in loose quail and a hungry hawk.  A box of quail that didn't survive the ride home from the auction.  Attempt number four consisted for us hatching quail, ending up with five, that were all males and our fifth attempt has been much better!  We hatched out 18 quail a little over six weeks ago.  We lost two early on and now have 16, healthy, presumably happy little birds.

The eggs were purchased from e-bay (a great source for hatching eggs!  I'll have more on purchasing eggs in a later post.) and incubated in my Little Giant styrofoam incubator.  I believe we have three or four color types running together.

The intent is to select the biggest and best quail, retain them and hatch the resulting eggs.  With the occasional addition of new blood we are hoping to have a nice little convey that will keep us in meat and eggs.  Admittedly I'm already planning Christmas dinner, this year it'll feature fresh, roasted quail.