The Original How To Raise The Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail

Walter Roderick Copyright 2009

Revised July 2010

Table of Contents
CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction 1. Why Raise The Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail? 2. Before You Get Started (Equipment, etc.) 3. Eggs or Chicks? 4. Feeding (Medicated or Non-medicated?) 5. Incubation/Brooding 6. Breeder Selection/Stock Rotation 7. Meat For Your Table: Raising The Extras 8. Taking Care Of The Injured Birds 9. Hatching Your Own Eggs Storage and Equipment 10. Selling Your Birds and Eggs 11. Recommended Websites

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Introduction

You may be wondering why this book isnt entitled How to make money raising Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail, or something similar. The reason is simple: everyone does not get into this hobby with the intention of making money. In fact, most who get into it will never make money at it but will instead find they have a new hobby; a hobby that provides enjoyment as well as a means of supplementing the meat available for the dinner table. It is to this market that this book has been primarily written.

This book is the result of my time and effort spent in the successful propagation of the Jumbo Brown Coturnix. What I mean by successful is that I have been able to start with nothing but eggs and grow my operation to a couple hundred breeders in a relatively short period of time, all the while developing systems that will allow the average person with average resources to copy what I have done and make it work for them too. Did I mention that I have also been able to derive a small income from these efforts? It can be done, if thats your goal.

This book will present the information in a simple and easy-to-understand format so that anyone can take it and with some effort, duplicate what I have done, and begin to successfully raise the Jumbo Brown Coturnix (JB) for whatever purpose they have decided upon: whether as a profit center or as food for the table. I say, begin because learning to raise the JB is a process and this manual does not pretend to offer everything that a person needs to know to be successful at raising the JB. But it is intended to be a very helpful place to start.

The equipment that I use is a combination of professional and homemade. Sometimes I will recommend that you make some of the equipment yourself and in other cases I will recommend that you invest in the professional equipment if you can afford it. The determining factor in all of your decisions in this endeavor should be your ultimate goal for the project and your available cash. If you are raising quail because you like the birds and want a hobby or you just want to put a little extra meat on the table, then you should keep your investment to a minimum and make as much of the equipment as you can. If, however, your goal is to make a profit with quail, then I recommend that you start off with professional equipment (at least as much as you can afford without going into debt), as it will save you time and money in the long run, both of which need to be optimized if you are to be successful as a business.

I hope you find this book helpful in getting you off the ground properly with the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail and I hope you derive as much enjoyment from the enterprise as I have.

Blessings in Christ Jesus,

Wally Roderick Blue Ridge Quail Farm

Chapter 1 Why Raise the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail?

We need to start off with some history on this bird so you know what you are getting ready to raise. The following information has been obtained from the website http://www.thatquailplace.com/quail/coturn1.htm:

Quail belong, along with chickens, pheasants and partridges to the Family Phasianoidea of Order Galliformes of the Class Aves of the Animal Kingdom. Species or subspecies of the genus Coturnix are native to all continents except the Americas. One of them Coturnix coturnix or common quail are migratory birds of Asia, Africa and Europe. Several interbreeding subspecies are recognized, the more important being the European quail, Coturnix coturnix coturnix, and the Asiatic or Japanese quail, Coturnix coturnix japonica. One subspecies that commonly migrates between Europe and Asia was eventually domesticated in China. These birds were raised as pets and singing birds. The domesticated coturnix were brought at about eleventh century to Japan from China across the Korean bridge (Howes, 1964). In any event, coturnix were first domesticated in the Orient and not in the Middle East as has been claimed by some authors. Although European coturnix migrating south in the fall across the Mediterranean Sea were, in their exhausted condition, easily caught or trapped the available Egyptian and Biblical records do not indicate that these birds were ever bred in captivity. The first written records of domesticated quail in Japan date from the twelfth century. These birds were initially developed for song. It is claimed that a Japanese Emperor obtained relief from tuberculosis after eating quail meat, and this led to selection of domestic quail for meat and egg production in Japan in the latter part of the nineteenth century (Howes, 1964). By 1910, the Japanese quail in Japan were widely cultured for their meat and eggs. Between 1910 and 1941, the population of Japanese quail increased rapidly in Japan especially in the Tokyo, Mishima, Nagoya, Gifu and Toyohashi areas. This period also represented a time of imperial expansion in Japanese history and domesticated Japanese quail were established in Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and later on spread to Southeast Asia.
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The domesticated subspecies, Coturnix coturnix japonica, is called Japanese quail but is also known by other names: Common quail, Eastern quail, Asiatic quail, Stubble quail, Pharaoh's quail, Red-throat quail, Japanese gray quail, Japanese migratory quail, King quail, and Japanese King quail. The correct popular nomenclature for Coturnix coturnix japonica should be Japanese quail or coturnix, but not coturnix quail since in Latin "coturnix" may be translated as quail.

The JB is basically this same bird except that it has been bred for size instead of flying ability. Now that you have a little background on the species, you need to ask yourself, Why do I want to raise the JB? I cant answer that for you, but I can tell you why I am raising them:

1. It is a large quail that is sexually mature at about 7 weeks (starts laying eggs at about 6 weeks old) and ready for the table at 10 weeks or sooner. Compare that to the Bobwhite which is sexually mature at about 20 weeks and ready for the table at the same time. 2. It is highly disease resistant and does well in small quarters. 3. It is not as cannibalistic as other breeds of quail. 4. It lays a bunch of eggs (on the average 200+ a year, usually more)! 5. It has a high fertility rate when kept in 2/1 ratios (2 females to one male).

The JB is a great bird for the beginner because it is so adaptable. The chicks are strong and energetic and the adults will survive under most conditions as long as they are kept dry and given plenty of feed and fresh water. The adults even do well outside if kept out of cold winds and rain. All in all, the JB is the quail to raise for the first-time grower or anyone who wants a fast-growing quail that lays a lot of eggs and produces a large body for the dinner table.

Chapter 2 Before You Get Started

Before you make your first purchase of eggs or chicks, there are some things that need to be considered. My website is a great companion to this book and will have other photos and information not contained in this book. Check it out: http://www.jumbo-brown-coturnix-quail.com.

Where are you going to raise them? This is really a multi-part question because there are three different time periods in the bird's life: brooding, grow-out and breeder. All of these time

frames are distinct and require different cage arrangements and heating needs. Assuming you will be starting out small (100 chicks or less), I recommend a room in the basement or some other heated area, if possible, to start your new chicks in. You will need this area for about a week and then you will need to move them to a building outside of the house, where the odor wont be offensive. These are birds and their droppings have a strong odor. Also, as they get older, the males get

more vocal. Their sound is pleasing to most people, but you wouldnt want it in your home!

What do I need to get them started? You should have a brooder box with a heat lamp on it prepared 24 hours before the chicks are hatched. I recommend one of the inexpensive plastic tubs that the big-boxes carry (the 54 gallon size is perfect for this quantity of birds, see website for example). You will also need to have a bag of kiln-dried pine shavings available to line the bottom of the box. Have a couple of rolls of paper towels handy because you will use these to cover the shavings in the bottom of the box. You will need to have a source of heat. This can be a simple 100 watt bulb in a socket with a hood generally available for about $8.00. Better yet would be a brooder lamp same section of the hardware store but its about $12.00. It has a porcelain base and will take the heat that a 250 watt infra-red bulb (the bulb I use) will put out (see website). You will also need to be able to feed and water the chicks for the first week. The feeding part is easy. You can get away with paper plates, jar tops, etc., anything with a lip of or so that will hold feed. You should have at least 2 feeder areas in the 54-gallon tub to make sure they all have access to it. For water you will have to go to a feed store (or online) and get a quail chick waterer. It has a special water base on it that prevents the small chicks from drowning. You may be able to buy just the base and use a mason jar as the reservoir. Whichever way is cheaper but you do need to get the correct base. Many people will say that
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you can use a standard poultry base and put marbles or gravel in it to prevent the chicks from drowning, but Im of the opinion that raising these birds is worth 5 dollars for the proper water equipment to make sure they get off on a good foot and dont end up drowning.

I will get into the different feed options later in the book, but be aware that you will need to have a bag of game bird starter when your chicks arrive or hatch. You will also need a coffee grinder to turn it into a consistency that the chicks can eat. If you dont grind it, you will experience a lot of waste as the chicks will pick through the large particles to get the dust they can eat.

That should cover your basic equipment needs for the first week or so.

Housing As the birds grow (and they grow fast), you will need to increase the amount of square footage available to them. The 54-gallon tub will carry them (100 birds) about 10 days and then you will have to move them to the next area in a building other than your home. You can handle the next stage of housing requirements in a couple of different ways, depending on your available space. If youre not too cramped, then you should plan to build 1 large brooding pen. Make it approx-

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imately 2 wide by 6 long and about 2 high. Use galvanized mesh on the bottom and make the sides from plywood or OSB with holes cut out for ventilation. Make sure you cover these holes with wire mesh so the birds dont get out and nothing else gets in. You will need to put hinged doors on top and make wire mesh inserts in them for air flow. This should hold your chicks until they are 4-5 weeks old. At that point they can be transferred to your breeder cages, which Ill describe later. Those that wont be used for breeders will be transferred to holding cages, which I will describe in another chapter. The basic schedule for these birds is as follows:

Day old 10 days: 10 days 6 weeks: 6 weeks on: Meat birds:

Brooder Box (on pine shavings and paper towels) Grow Out Cage (1/2 mesh wire on bottom) Breeder Cages (1/2 x 1 mesh wire on bottom) Separate from breeders at 6 weeks and keep on higher protein feed until 8-10 weeks, at which time they should be slaughtered.

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You now have enough information to be prepared to order your eggs or chicks. Always remember when the next housing stage will be needed and have it built before the birds reach the age that they have to be transferred. I can tell you it is no fun to procrastinate and realize too late that the birds have outgrown what you have them in and you need to build new cages NOW!!

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Chapter 3 Eggs or Chicks?

What came first? The chicken or egg? This silly old science question is one that is often asked at the beginning of a bird enterprise; not to determine the beginnings of all creation, but to decide which is the better way to start a quail farm. If you start with eggs you have to lay out a good bit of money and take some pretty big risks right up front. For instance, youll need an incubator that will run almost $100-150 for a new Styrofoam model with an automatic turner. Youll have to order your eggs and pay shipping and hope they arrive in decent shape and arent already too old to hatch when you get them (unless you got them from me!). Then your eggs have to survive your first experiment of learning how to operate your incubator. Believe me, your first few hatches with a Styrofoam

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incubator will be an experiment until you get the hang of it. If this is your first experience with shipped eggs and a new incubator, you will be fortunate to end up with a 40% hatch. Im not trying to talk you out of trying the egg method first; I just want you to be aware of what the risks are.

The alternative is of course, live chicks.

I recommend this method for first

time quail farmers. You may still lose a few birds, but your success rate will be much higher than with eggs for your first experience. Chicks get you right into the fray. No waiting for 17 days while you hope and pray that your eggs will hatch; instead, there is peeping in the brooder room from the start. And the

peeping is what gets the adrenaline flowing! The only thing to be considered with chicks is that you have to have everything ready to go when they arrive. Eggs

give you a 17 day head start to get ready, but live chicks require immediate housing and everything ready to go. Proper planning is always required for any project to go well and raising quail is no different.

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Chapter 4 Feeding

**Let me start out by saying that I am not a scientist. I cannot quote the acceptable levels for medicines in meat birds. The USDA and other

organizations have already made their determination as to what is acceptable and what is dangerous; I can only discuss what I have seen. **

I believe that raising the birds without medication is the preferable method. Medication is a mask that is hiding an underlying problem usually a cleanliness issue. I have hatched thousands of birds and have lost only a tiny percentage during the first 10 days. I do not use medications or antibiotics or added vitamins. While all of those things may help produce a larger bird, my goal is to raise healthy, natural birds; birds that can produce healthy, natural meat and eggs. If you practice sound management techniques, as I have described in this book, you will suffer very few losses due to a lack of medication.

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Protein Levels For Feed If you go online and google quail feed (or see my recommendations at the end of the book) you will find a number of different regimens recommended for the quail. However, most of the recommendations are for Bobwhite Quail, which is not the bird you are raising. The JB grows at a rate almost double that of the Bobwhite and has a higher protein requirement for a longer period than the Bobwhite. Ill give you some general guidelines to go by and you will have to find a local feed supplier to help you get close to these protein requirements.

Chick Starter This is not chicken starter so dont get the two confused. You want a turkey or quail starter or gamebird feed with a protein content of at least 28% but ideally 30%. You will find that most starter feeds are medicated, so if you want to go non-medicated, you may have to look around. Purina carries a Game Bird

Starter (Startena) that is 30% and non-medicated. I highly recommend this if you can get it. It costs a little more than most other feeds but I it is finely ground and contains no bone meal or ruminant parts. Southern States sells a turkey starter that is 28% but it is medicated.

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I live in Georgia and we have a local mill, Tucker Feeds. They have a 28% turkey starter. Many of the mills offer both medicated and non-medicated and you will have to see if you can get them to stock the non-medicated for you. It can be a tough battle, depending upon where you live.

Another important factor in feeding your chicks for the first two weeks is the size of the granule in the feed mix. Most starter feeds (especially turkey) contain granules that are too large for the quail to eat and so they get tossed aside by the chicks and wasted. He r e s a fix for th at: For the first two weeks you

should grind your feed with a coffee grinder to make sure the chicks are able to eat the majority of the feed you place in front of them. After two weeks, you should be able to feed it to them straight out of the bag.

Grow Out Feed This is what you will feed them between 2-6 weeks or longer, depending upon the end use of the bird. Since these birds are still growing rapidly during this

stage, I recommend that you continue using the 28-30% feed. If the intended use of the birds is for breeder stock, you can continue using the turkey starter until 6 weeks, at which time you would switch to a non-medicated breeder ration.

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If you intend to eat them and have started with a medicated feed, after two weeks, you should switch over to a non-medicated 28-30% ration through week 6. For weeks 6-10 (I kill at 8 weeks), you could switch to a finishing ration if available in your area. A quail finishing ration is about 24%, but if you cant find that, you could substitute a chicken broiler feed with 22-24% protein in it. I wouldnt feed less than 22% for the last 4 weeks. Worst case scenario is that you can continue

feeding the 30% non-medicated until the time of slaughter.

Laying Ration For your future breeders, switch them over to a laying ration of 21-22% at 6 weeks of age. Again, this is not an area where you can substitute chicken laying mash because it is only about 16% protein and your egg production will be lower to possibly nothing. Another reason to use a laying ration instead of cheap scratch or whatever is handy is the calcium requirement of your hens. Laying ration is made to specifically address the additional calcium needs of the hen during her laying years. Purina makes an excellent feed for this purpose in their Game bird line.

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Chapter 5 Incubation/Brooding

This section will cover in more detail the first two weeks of the life of the chick. I will briefly cover the basics of incubation in case you have started with eggs instead of chicks.

Incubation **The eggs should be set in an incubator that is equipped with an automatic turner, and fan, if at all possible. This will save you the time of having to

hand turn the eggs 3-4 times a day to ensure you get the highest hatch rate.**

GQF Model 1502 Incubator/Hatcher

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The ideal incubator temperature setting for hatching JB eggs is 95.5 Fahrenheit (I dont do Celsius!) and the humidity should be 50-55% relative. This temperature and humidity is to be maintained for the first 14 days of the hatch. After 14 days, the eggs are taken out of the turner and placed flat on the bottom of the incubator (if you have a hatcher spot) for the last three days of incubation. At this time the temperature should be raised to 100 degrees and the humidity increased to 60-65% relative (not wet bulb). Varying too far from these ideal

settings will have a dramatic affect on your hatching success, so the better the incubator, the better the hatch rate. I use a GQF model 1502 and I love it but it is a little more than the casual hobbyist may want to spend. Check out all of their equipment at: https://www.gqfmfg.com/store/front.asp. I have found their service to be exceptional and their equipment is always high quality (an unpaid testimonial by the way!).

Once the chicks start hatching you will need to transfer them from the incubator to the brooder. This is the 54 gallon tub I recommended earlier (if you dont own a professional brooder). The picture below illustrates my set up:

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Ive got about 50 chicks in here, so you can see that a hundred will easily fit. I keep them in this set up until the hatch is finished (3-4 days) and then I transfer them to my brooder. I will show you the professional 5 tier brooder that I use, though this is not necessary for the hobbyist who is going to raise a hundred at a time. You could keep them in this tub for 1 week then split them into two tubs for

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another week. By week three you would have to transfer them to grow out cages. For a hundred birds you would need 3-4 24x30 cages.

Here is the brooder that I use now:

GQF Model 0540

This brooder has 5 pens and will allow me to raise 150 quail chicks per pen for the first week, 100 per pen for the second week and about 70 a pen through week 4. By then you should have them in grow out pens for optimum growth.
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Back to my 1st week brooder tub (see picture above). The bottom is lined with about 2 of kiln-dried pine shavings and then covered with paper towels. Starter feed is spread at the opposite end of the water for the first day and then I put a tray in the feed area and heap the feed up about 2 high. They will climb all over it and knock it down, spreading it around where everyone can get at it. As the

droppings accumulate, you will need to add clean, dry paper on top of the soiled and wet paper (about every two days). After the first week, the paper should be completely changed out and all fresh paper put in. Keep an eye on the

amount of droppings that accumulate. If they pile up, the birds will end up getting their droppings stuck to their feet and this will cause some to get sick and die, while it will prohibit the growth of others. Clean feed, fresh water and dry living quarters are the key to fast-growing, healthy birds.

Remember, I recommended a waterer with a quail chick bottom on it. Here is a picture of a mason jar with the recommended water bottom (model 4460 at GQF):

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You can purchase the plastic jar for the waterer or use a quart mason jar that you have around the house. You can see which option I have chosen!

From 3 weeks to 6 weeks I leave the birds mixed (male and female) in grow out cages. I find that I get less fighting when I separate them into breeding groups if they have been together for the first 6 weeks; nothing scientific about this, just a personal observation. You may not enjoy the same success. The grow out cages are 24x30 and 8 high. The sides are 1x2 wire mesh, the bottom and top are X mesh. When I move them to breeder cages the bottom wire goes to x 1 mesh. At about 6 weeks you will start to notice there are eggs in the grow out pens! You are about to enter the next phase of the operation: Breeding.

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Chapter 6 Breeder Selection/Stock Rotation

Once you have raised your first batch to about 6 weeks of age, you will start getting eggs in the grow out cages. It is time to separate your birds into breeding groups. How you do this will be mainly a personal decision based on space available and the results you obtain as time goes on.

Before I get into it any further, let me tell you the main concerns that drove my experimentation with different breeding arrangements. Regardless of how you The

cage them, as long as they have good feed and water, they will lay eggs!

main problem I have noticed with the different caging arrangements (and I have tried a few) is physical damage to the birds mainly to the males. They get their eyes pecked out and their heads pecked to pieces sometimes. Im not there when it happens so I cant tell who is doing it to whom, but Im sure some of it is male in-fighting and some of it is females pecking the eyes of males they dont like. I have found a solution, though I dont like it: debeaking.

Of all the things we are forced to practice in animal husbandry, debeaking is the limit for me. Debeaking is the removal of a portion (generally the tip) of the

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upper beak. This prohibits the birds from causing severe damage to each other. It works. But it is also mutilation and I cant bring myself to continue the practice.

I have experienced this damage to the males regardless of the cage system I have utilized. I have not used the pedigree cage method (1 male and 1 female) because of the large space requirements, but that would probably give excellent results in both fertility and reduced damage. If your operation is going to be

small, then I highly recommend going with the pair or pedigree breeding method. These cages can be as small as 5x9 though I recommend a lot more space than that, especially if this is a hobby for you.

Another advantage to pair mating is that you can mark the eggs and keep track of your fertility in other words, you can tell which pair is fertile and which is not. With colony breeding systems (which I use), there is no way to tell who is fertile or who is laying. Basically, you leave the group together until it is time to change them out.

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Okay. There are three systems that I have tried for caging the breeders: the Trio System (1 female and 2 males), the Small Colony System (12 females to 6 males) and the Large Colony System (60 females to 30 males). All three systems require different cage arrangements and make the task of cleaning (which is a major part of raising birds) more or less labor intensive.

The Trio arrangement Like the pedigree mating system, the trio system gives you greater control over who is laying and who is fertile, which is a great advantage when you are trying to optimize the performance of your flock. The down side is the space required. In the same area that a trio cage will house 6 hens, the small colony will house 12 hens twice as many.

The cage for the trio will be a 24x30 cage broken up into 3 compartments, 10x 24. I put doors in the front panel of the cage and then use a home-made vinyl gutter feeder in the front and the same thing on the back of the cage for water.

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The Small Colony

A 4-stack small colony arrangement

This method uses the same cage size as the trio, but without the compartments. You have a single 24x30 cage into which you will put 12 hens and 6 cocks. Water and feed is handled in the same manner.

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The Large Colony

A Large Colony Arrangement (30 x 96)(60 females 30+ males)

I just started using this method and I really like it. I built a cage that is 30 x 8 (all wire) and attached it to a 2x4 frame. I have 60 hens and about 35 cocks in this pen. There are no compartments so the birds can run around and do not feel as cooped up as they are in the smaller cages.

Now that you have an idea of the caging requirements, we can talk a little about breeder stock selection.

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I am not a veterinarian, or a scientist, so my advice here is just that, advice. I start my breeder selection from week 1 by culling out the smallest and weakest birds in the hatch. That leaves the largest and usually the strongest of each hatch to make my final selection from. At 6-7 weeks of age I select the largest and most active birds to go into the breeder program. This has worked well for me so far.

As far as adding new blood to your stock, many people recommend adding new males from an outside line every two years to make sure you keep the line healthy and fertile. Make sure you are getting your stock from a serious breeder so you wont set your program back by adding an inferior blood line to what you are building.

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Chapter 7 Meat For Your Table: Raising The Extras

Many people cant imagine eating the little birds they have been raising as a hobby. I have a radically different philosophy: I wont raise anything I cant eat! Feed costs are too high to have a pet unless it is a cat or dog (at least to my thinking); so my quail are always potential meals. These little birds are eating size in as little as 6 weeks and if you want them full-size you only have to wait 4 more weeks. Holding the birds longer than 10 weeks is not cost effective as the increase in weight after that point is mainly from fat and is very slow.

In a typical hobby operation you probably are just messing around with the birds, eating a few eggs and hatching a few to increase your stock; but once you start a program to increase the size of your flock, you will raise a lot of birds that you wont need mainly males. Since you only need 1 male for every two

females and the average male to female ratio in a hatch is 60/40, you will have extra males. When do you cull them to eat them? Heres my program:

I let them all grow together, male and female until 6 weeks. At 6 weeks I take the largest birds from the flock and set them in breeder cages because they will

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start laying very soon. Whats left is the smaller males. I would thin them out to only 15 birds per cage (if you can) and put them on the highest protein feed you can get that is non medicated (probably Purina 30%) for the next two weeks. At 8 weeks, put them in the freezer and enjoy the fruits of your labor.

I am planning to shoot a YouTube video of processing a quail and I will let all those who have purchased this ebook know when it is posted.

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Chapter 8 Taking Care of the Injured Birds

You will have injured birds! Get over it; nothing you can do will absolutely prevent it. 90% of the injuries in my operation are to the head and it is probably split 50/50 between head scalps from flying into the top of the cage and pecking injuries to the eyes and ear area. Both will be obvious to you, because the bird will be bleeding. Unfortunately for the bird, this flowing red stuff will catch the attention of the other birds and cause some of them to pick at it, making a bad situation worse. Coturnix are not particularly cannibalistic, but you cant leave an injured bird in the cage with other healthy birds. It will never heal.

I always have a hospital cage set up.

It is nothing more than a 24x30 As I find the

holding cage with a pop bottle waterer and a small feeding box.

wounded birds I transfer them to the hospital cage until they are healed or until I determine that the damage was too severe and the bird must be culled.

While they are in the hospital cage I have noticed that the injured birds tend to leave each other alone in their misery. They dont seem to peck at each others

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wounds and that means you can put multiple injured birds in one cage. Keep an eye on them however, to make sure they are not hurting each other.

I dont use medications or salves on the birds. I am not a vet and I dont want to practice medicine on the birds, hoping to get it right. I have found that rest and plenty of food and water usually are all that is needed to bring them back to health. If a bird is too sick and appears to be in pain, I will usually cull the bird to end its misery.

Do not return the birds to the breeder pens until they are completely healed and then do it at night when the other birds in the cage are resting and groggy. Even if this bird is being returned to his original cage, dont do it in the daytime when the birds are active because they will try to assert their authority on the newcomer, or reestablish the correct pecking order. You may find he is quickly re-injured and back in the hospital cage before you can get any use out of him. By the way, its always a male that is injured. I have had very few hens injured.

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As a last note, it may be easier to replace injured birds than to put them through the hospital treatment. It only takes about 7 weeks to raise up a new breeder and once you get started raising these birds, youll find that you usually have some around at various ages, some probably close to breeder age. So, if you dont have the time or desire to heal them, it is better to cull them and stop their pain.

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Chapter 9 Hatching Your Own Eggs (Storage and Equipment)

Though I talked about this briefly in the beginning of this book, I just want to cover it in a little more detail in this chapter. Storage Before you can get the eggs in the incubator you will have to store them long enough to save up enough to fill up your incubator (if you are hatching your own eggs). There is a proper way to store eggs that are to be hatched whether quail or chicken or any other. Quail and chicken storage requirements are similar so that is what I will discuss here.

Eggs should be collected every day, in fact, multiple times a day. Don't allow them sit around the cage for days on end until you get enough to hatch because you will probably have a bad hatch using that method. As you collect your eggs they should be stored in egg trays that are made just for holding them. should be stored pointed side down always. They

They should be kept in a room

as close to 65 degrees as possible. For me that means the eggs are stored in a basement area in the summer and in the winter, upstairs.

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Thats as close as I can get to these temperature requirements without buying a special cooler to keep them. If you are going to buy a special cooler, then dont

use a refrigerator. It takes too much humidity out of the air. A wine cooler is actually the ideal egg storage unit because you can control both temperature and humidity with it. Youre probably looking at around $300 or more for a wine cooler, so youve got to be pretty serious about egg storage before investing in one of these. Normally, you will do well by moving your eggs to a room with a temperature range close to what Ive described. before setting them. Also, dont wash your eggs

There is a protective coating called a bloom that is

deposited on the egg as it is hatched and it protects the eggs from bacterial infection. Washing the egg removes that protection and opens the egg up to If the egg is so dirty that you cant clean it

possible contamination.

without water, you should probably just discard it. It could infect the rest of the eggs in the incubator.

The egg trays that I use are cardboard chukar egg trays. Bobwhite quail egg trays will be too small. Here is a link for a source: Chukar Egg Trays Eggs should not be stored longer than 7 days before setting. There are studies that show that you can still get an acceptable hatch rate after storing them for 2
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weeks, but I have found that 7 days, max, works well. If you were storing them in the optimum temperature and humidity range, 2 weeks may not make a big difference, but most of us will not be storing eggs under the ideal conditions, so 7 days is the longest time I would wait.

Incubation If you are using a Styrofoam incubator with a turner, you wont need any additional trays. If, on the other hand, you are using a larger incubator such as the GQF model I mentioned in the beginning, you will need to have plastic quail egg trays to set them in the incubator. Here is a link for a source: Incubator Egg Trays for Quail

Make sure your incubator, regardless of the model, has been operating for at least 24 hours and is maintaining 99.5 degrees +- .5 degrees before setting your eggs in the trays. The Styrofoam incubators are the hardest to regulate, but once you get used to them youll know their fluctuation range.

Make sure your incubator has water in it to maintain the humidity. If you do not have a digital method of determining temperature and humidity, I highly recommend that you purchase a portable model. I have seen them on eBay for a

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reasonable price. I recommend this because both temperature and humidity are very important to a high-percentage hatch. All incubators will have a

method of determining temperature, but most wont have a good method for determining humidity and if they do have one it is usually a wet thermometer reading, which I dont like. This requires that you be able to interpret graphs and I think most people would like to look at the readout and know what the relative humidity is. The relative humidity during the first 14 days should be about 55%. For days 15-17, when you take the eggs out of the turner and leave them lying flat for hatching, the relative humidity should be about 65%.

Write down the number of eggs you set and the number that hatch so that you can keep up with your percentages. I average about 70% with the Jumbo Browns and about 80% with the Texas A&M Whites. Perhaps you will do better! I hope so.

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Chapter 10 Selling Your Birds and Eggs

I just want to offer a little advice in this section to help you get started should you desire to try and sell some of your birds and eggs. First and foremost check with your local and state authorities on regulations concerning the sale of birds and eggs. Generally speaking, the Coturnix quail will not be considered a game bird such as the Bobwhite quail, which has its own set of rules and regulations. But that being said, there are still requirements that each state has in order to process and sell meat and eggs and you must be aware of them or you could find yourself in trouble. Here is a link to get you started: USDA

Selling live birds and hatching eggs will be far less restrictive in most states. I live in Georgia, and I am required to have a poultry license to sell the live birds and hatching eggs. It was relatively easy and inexpensive ($25) to obtain and allows me to legally sell my birds live. I recommend that whatever you do, do it legally!

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Live bird sales can be made through local newspapers and internet ads. If you advertise outside of your living area, people may want you to ship the birds to them. This can be done through the US Post Office. I have had great success thus far using the USPS for all of my egg and live bird shipping. Make sure you check with your local Post Office to ensure that they will ship live birds and eggs. If they will, you will want to know what time they normally leave the Post Office, so you can get them to the Post Office at the last minute to avoid leaving the birds sitting there any longer than necessary.

Another source of advertising is through local Trader type magazines. Often this type of advertising is free, and I have had pretty good success with these. Of course, word of mouth works well, so talk it up at your local feed store where you buy your quail feed. They will hear of people that want birds and they may even be able to sell some for you.

The local Farmers' Market is a good place to sell both live birds and hatching eggs. You may need to have small cages made to sell the birds, so price the birds with a cage accordingly. If you are selling your eggs and birds in the summer or hot months, be sure that they have a shaded area to sit in or you may end up with a bunch of dead birds on your hands. Birds do not deal well with excessive heat, as

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they dont sweat.

Youll know that they are hot because they will have their

mouth wide open and looked very stressed; that is because they are. Avoid this situation because no one is going to want to buy stressed birds either. As far as the eggs go, youll need to have them in a cooler, but not frozen remember, they shouldnt get any cooler than about 50 degrees.

eBay is a good source for selling eggs only.

eBay does not allow live bird

sales. You wont get as good a price for your eggs on eBay as you would through a private sale, but you will sell a lot more eggs on eBay than you will anywhere else, at least until you can establish yourself as a reliable source. Be sure to look into what will be required for packaging your eggs to get them there safely before you set your shipping price. I sell foam shipping packages that will fit right into a number 7 USPS box (the box is free from the Post Office). Check out my website for purchase information .

You could also pack them in special plastic shipping trays and then cover them in peanuts. Here is a link: Plastic Egg Trays There is a good market for the birds already processed, but you need to be near a licensed processor it is very expensive to get set up as one yourself.

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Chapter 11 Recommended Websites

This is the conclusion of my story on how Ive been raising the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail and I hope that the information has proven to be helpful to you. The price of this book is small in comparison to the hours/weeks/months that it took to acquire this information. The last thing Id like to leave you with is a list of helpful websites where you can continue your quest to master the art of growing the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail. Happy Growing!

Wally Roderick

P.S. For those who have purchased my ebook, I am available by email to help you in any way that I might be able to. Please write with your questions to: waltersingingr@gmail.com. Again, thanks for your business.

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Sources for hatching eggs/supplies: Blue Ridge Quail Farm Topisaw Creek Farm Lake Cumberland Game Bird Farm

Sources for equipment/supplies: GQF Manufacturing Company Randall Burkey

General Information: USPS SHipping Rates and Supplies Professional Cage Systems More Cage Systems Ideal Poultry Game Bird Feeding Programs More Game Bird Feeding Programs Quail Nutrition More Supplies

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