Quail are fairly easy poultry. I’ve had decent hatches out of the incubator even with a temperature spike (it got up to 107 and I still had 7 out of 9 eggs hatch), but they do best at about 100F and 50% humidity, 18 days though they can take as long as 21 so I usually wait until day 22 to toss unhatched eggs. I brood them in a glass aquarium that is about 1′ x 2′, with a 1′ x 1′ heating pad as the heat source and an old cloth baby diaper as the bedding for at least the first week. After the first week, I use pine shavings and the bottom to a flower pot filled with sand as bedding. They do best on a high protein (30%) feed during their formative years, but since I usually can only get 24% I tend to hard boil them an egg and break it up for them. They love it. I start them on a few greens usually around week 3, otherwise they are hesitant about greens as adult birds. I lower the temperature of the brooder by 5 degrees a week and they are usually fine without any supplemental heat starting in week 6. Week 6 the boys start crowing and the girls start laying. My girls have been more or less like clockwork. Boys will have rusty colored bellies. Quail do get aggressive with each other if overcrowding is an issue, and a good rule of thumb is 1 square foot of space per bird. Their pens only need to be 1′ high, and really shouldn’t be higher. Quail will fly straight up when startled and a high ceiling can make them break their necks.
They should have a little sandbox in their pen, it makes them healthier and happier, and it’s pretty entertaining to watch them roll around in the sand. My A&Ms get pecky at my hands but the Pharaohs are pretty placid about me reaching in and getting eggs, and on the rare occasions they get out of their cages just let me pick them back up and put them in. They’ve even tolerated my son climbing into their cage without making a fuss (though I wish they had, he broke three eggs before I realized what he was doing). I do add some supplemental calcium to their diets by putting some of the oyster shell into the sandbox, but they almost do just fine without it.
The ideal way to keep them is 1 rooster to 3-5 hens. Every now and then you’ll get two birds in the same pen that hate and attack each other, it is usually best to just cull one (or both) of them. Never introduce new quail by putting one bird into an establish pen. If at all possible, put both sets of birds into an entirely new pen and never introduce one at a time. I usually have a pine bough or two in each pen just to give them hiding places when one of the birds is feeling crotchety.
If they aren’t getting enough protein, they can get vicious with each other, even as newly hatched chicks. For this reason, I try to have multiple food dishes in the brooders to keep the ones on the bottom of the pecking order from going hungry. I don’t often incubate more than a dozen eggs at a time, this time just happens to be special because I got a ton of eggs shipped to me.
Quail are ground birds, so they don’t need perches or roosts. They do well on wire floors as long as they have a way to get off the wire floor on occasion, such as by putting some straw in the pen or having the pen be half plywood floor and half wire floor. They will be fine outside as long as they have a place to escape drafts, though I usually move my pens to the garage for the winter just for an extra layer of protection and so I don’t have to stand outside while doing doing the feeding and watering.
Just like chickens, if one does get a wound, get it dressed as fast as possible or they will keep pecking at it until they kill the wounded one.
Newly hatched quail can eat an impressive amount of food. I’ll show you how to make a waste-reducing feeder. For their first couple meals I make a mash so they don’t have to worry about large crumbles. I’ve been told of choking deaths but I haven’t actually had it happen even without making the mash, so I can’t verify the reports. I just figure better safe than sorry.
When getting sand for their boxes, make sure it’s not the special play sand that is designed to stick together really well. Just basic, regular, cheap sand. For treats, mine love mealworms, baby spinach, dandelion greens, hard-boiled or scrambled eggs, and leftover chicken.
To butcher, I use a pair of scissors to remove their heads quickly, let them bleed out for a couple minutes, then dunk them in boiling water for 10 seconds. I then cut the wings off and skin them rather than try to pluck. It’s rarely worth the effort to pluck them and never worth the effort to try to pluck or skin the wings. Otherwise, it’s just like with chickens, only a smaller scale. My husband likes to butterfly them and toss them in a pan with a little bit of butter and fresh ground black pepper.
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