Quail

We are raising quail for eggs and meat. These are Coturnix quail and are amazingly efficient converters of feed to food. They begin laying eggs at 6 weeks of age, each hen laying 300 eggs a year and are ready to proccess for meat at 8 weeks old.

We raised these Coturnix (aka Japanese Quail) for awhile nearly 30 years ago, and they are delish! Since then, we have discovered through selective breeding these quail mature to nearly a lb. apiece. When we had them back in the eighties, the largest weighed in at maybe 10 oz. Also, they come in more color variations now, including the Texas A & M, developed by that university as a white meat quail. So when a friend gave us an incubator, we decided to grow us some quail. We started this project a mere seven weeks ago.

This is a batch of two day old quail. They are a bit smaller than golf balls.

I bought the first set of eggs from Ebay-50 Jumbo Browns and 50 A & M's. Here are the first hatchlings. I'm using a still air Hovabator and turn the eggs by hand three times a day, which keeps the embryos from sticking to the sides. It's a bit hard to tell from this pic shot through the incubator window, but I've marked the eggs with an X on one side and an O on the other, so I can see that I've turned them. After fourteen days of 101 degree temps and 45-50% humidity, I stopped turning, added more water to the incubator to increase humidity and by the 17th day we had 55 baby quail. This is not a bad percentage for eggs shipped in the heat and incubated in a still air (no fan). We should do much better when we are setting our own eggs, but we are establishing our breeding stock here.

The babies must be kept warm until they feather out. We brooded them for two weeks under a heat lamp while Bill built their grow out pen.

Here they are at three weeks old. They are raised on wire so the poo falls through (fertilizer!) and the pen stays clean.

Rabbit feeders allow us to easily provide feed from the outside of the pen.

My genius husband designed this watering system. We can flush it out by removing the lid. To add new water, we close the valve until the bucket is full and the lid is on, creating a vacuum.

Just after the first babies hatched, I ordered eggs from a different Ebayer to give us more diversity in our breeding stock. Forty-nine of these went into outside pens at a week old, because it is so warm now.

One week old quail chicks. They grow so fast!

I call them quailey-poo, Adam calls them critters, Bill calls them dinner!

Rudy Does the Happy Dance

He has 5 curvy blonde girlfriends. If you were a male entering puberty wouldn't you?

"The Rudester" will crow on command. Just toss out a cock-a-doodle-do, and he will respond in kind....

Here he is letting one rip....

Chickens are very clean creatures. They are constantly grooming and preening. Because of their limberness they are able to reach just about everywhere on their body. Whenever they assume the position above, the phrase, "Close your eyes and kiss your a** goodbye", pops into my head.

Check out the toes ; ) !

Time Flies.....

I can't believe it has been six weeks since I last posted, but the garden, yard and other projects have kept me super busy. To sum it up: We've harvested and enjoyed bush beans, squash, lettuce, carrots, cukes, potatoes, broccoli and cauliflower. Two hundred sweet onions have been cured, cleaned and brought inside. We've eaten corn on the cob almost every day for a month. The tomatoes and peppers are coming in and I've been freezing cooked combos of tomatoes, peppers and onions to add to chili, pasta sauce, and tacos. I also made a batch of salsa last night. The corn and beans and cole crops are done so I've pulled those and planted heat-loving limas and peanuts. Our peaches disappeared (crows?), but we have a bumper crop of blueberries. Weeds are almost nil in my heavily mulched vegetable gardens and established lawn areas, but are popping up like crazy in newer lawn areas. I'm trying to pull these before they go to seed.

I've started a new poultry project, raising quail for meat. We have fifty-six 3 week old Coturnix quail in a grow out pen and seventy more eggs in the incubator due to hatch Sunday. (More on this later).

Life is good. Life is busy...Whew!

Chicken Tales

A few comments on our flock. Okay, the irony is not lost on me (as a few have pointed out) that I got chickens for eggs, but I'm actually buying more eggs now so I can give them their nightly hardboiled egg treat. Hopefully this will turn around in a few months when they start laying eggs of their own. My other reason for raising chickens was for the fertilizer and they are definitely holding up to expectations here. The thing is, they've become pets. Spending an hour watching them explore and interact with us and each other has become a great way to unwind after a day at work. Also, their comedic antics keep us cracking up. The picture above was taken just as they discovered the strawberries planted in the front of the house. After this they played chase the girl with the strawberry.

Also, I've not forgotten this is a garden blog, and will post some garden updates soon. It's just that chicken watching is so much more fasinating than, well....broccolli.

Rudy, giving me the stink eye.

Our young cockrel Rudy is trying to be a bad**s, but at times he's just a chickens**t. A neighbor was over the other evening to check out the coop. The chickens were already on the roost for the night, but became agitated and alarmed, presumably from hearing a strange voice. I opened up their awning window to sooth and reassure them, and caught Rudy trying to hide under the hens.

He's tried to bite me a few times, but this has stopped. Whenever he did the bite thing, I'd just pick him up and hold him while telling him who the alpha chick is.

I've also discovered why he's started crowing at such an early age. Seems Bill has been cockle-a-doodle dooing to him every morning when he heads out to get the paper.

I guess it's a guy thing.