Can you free range quail like you would a chicken?
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Can you free range quail like you would a chicken?
Free ranging quail is not recommended for a few reasons. The joke is "You can free range quail....once".
Japanese or coturnix quail are ground dwellers. They do not perch like some other types of quail and they are small. They would be easy pickings for all types of predators. Quail aren't smart enough to "go home to roost" every night like chickens or ducks do when it gets dark either. They'll just stay out in the dark. Even easier pickings for predators. Plus, if you're raising the birds for eggs, you'll have a really tough time finding them.
You could build a "quail tractor" just like a chicken tractor. Many people do this. Or you can build a large aviary. I may go the tractor route if the property we buy in Idaho is suitable for it. The eggs are harder to find in a tractor too, but at least they are somewhat contained.
Not gonna lie....I just googled chicken tractor
USAF - 1989-2011
Pretty cool way to do it. The great thing about quail though is that you can have them in such a small space. If you live in an urban or suburban area, this makes it practical. Here's an excerpt from the book:
Are quail good egg producers?
You can’t do much better than coturnix quail for producing eggs. Each bird lays about an egg per day but you won’t get every single bird to lay an egg every day. I have found that about 80% of my quail will lay an egg each day.
Let’s crunch some numbers here. Say you have 10 laying hens. That’s 8 eggs per day on average, which is 2920 eggs per year, or 243 dozen eggs.
8 eggs per day X 365 days per year = 2920 eggs
2920 eggs / 12 = 243.3 dozen eggs
If 4 quail eggs equals one chicken egg, that’s the equivalent of about 60 dozen chicken eggs. Most families probably go through about a dozen eggs a week, so just 10 quail hens will provide more than enough eggs for the whole year – and they are the freshest eggs you can get.
Another thing to consider is that quail start laying eggs when they are about 6 to 8 weeks old. It takes chickens 5 or 6 MONTHS to start laying. You get 3 or 4 months of eggs being laid with quail over chickens. With the 10 hens, you would have almost a thousand eggs before a chicken laid one! Add up the feed cost for the chickens for those months and you can see why you just get more value from raising quail for eggs over chickens.
And all of this can be done in the corner of a garage.
Last edited by GilpinGuy; 10-09-2016 at 23:41.
Uh, this is a super cool conversation. I have been raising quail in my back yard for the past three years. Just finishing eating the last of them though as I am switching over to rabbits now just to try something new. Quail sure were great though and we loved the eggs. I would do it again.
Cool - welcome to the forum! If you have any info that I've missed or got wrong, please contribute to the discussion.Originally Posted by Jonsey
It looks like you are doing great with it. I wonder what you ended up feeding them. I found it a little more challenging to make my own food for them since they require so much protein. But they fit into the neighborhood better than my chickens did.
Here is how we did ours, though I like how compact your set-up is. We chased them all into their little barn at night which was kind of high maintenance, but it worked out alright. I made my kids do it when I didn't have time.
So even in that run, they won't go inside at night on their own?
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