THE URBAN BIRDS A-Z OF KEEPING AND BREEDING QUAIL

Quail housing isn't hard to get right, they need something to keep them warm and dry, that's easy to clean out and something that allows plenty of air flow and ventilation. Quail are naturally very hardy birds and cope with cold well, BUT they don't like being cold and wet.  We build our own open fronted cages with slide out trays to make then easy and quick to clean and keep them on plenty of clean fresh shavings.

While quail don't eat or drink a lot (an adult quail eats only about 7.5kgs of food a year ) they do require a constant access to fresh clean water and food, food should be of high quality with a minimum of 16-17% protein, this will help with egg production while they are laying and keep to they healthy.  We also like to make sure we feed additional mixed grains and seeds, fresh garden grown veg and salad, and the occasional mealworm to keep thing interesting for them.

Our quail lay eggs and LOTS of them, most of our females start laying one 6-8 weeks after they hatch and lay an average of just over 300 eggs a year each, or they would if they were kept under light all year round.  Quail need 16 hour or day/artificial light to lay eggs and also need a good balanced diet packed full of nutrition to lay there beautiful tiny eggs.

Some keepers and farms will keep lights on the birds all year to keep them laying,  while we do use lights we are sensitive to the birds needs as well.  we rest all our birds for a few months each year to allow them to mould and have a well earned break we do this at different times with different batches so we can still have a constant supply.

While quail are only small and in theory don't need that much space, we like to give them plenty!  We build tiered quail hutches, 8 foot long and 3 feet wide and these usually only hold about 15-20 breeding birds, giving them lots of space to run and play, we add conifer branches and logs to enhance there pens and give them areas to hide and just to generally make things a bit more interesting for them. 

As we've covered already quail start laying at around 6-8 weeks old and will lay around 300 eggs a year, they also need the correct diet and 14 hours of light.  This means if you are keeping them in natural condition the laying season starts around the end of march and continues until mid September or even into October.

In general its safe to say that quail should live for about three year, but productivity will drop off after say a year or so, this however can be prolonged by sticking to a more natural laying season and allowing birds to moult and rest between seasons, I personally have had bird live to the ripe old age of 6years when kept like this.

How many you should keep will depend on a couple of things weather you are just keeping a few birds for some eggs or if your intention is to breed some.  It sounds obvious but for the latter you will need at least one male and for just a few layers you won't.  Be warned the boys do like to have a lot of "girlfriends" we always recommend that for breeding you have at least 3 ladies to every boy, we personally like to keep 5-6 hens to every male quail.

The eggs of laying quail that we keep (collectively known as Coturnix quail) generally take around 18 days to hatch and should be set at a temperature of 37.5C, we set all our eggs in an auto-turn incubator, turning eggs for 16 days, then stopping the turning and leaving them on there side to hatch.

Different species of quail make different sounds but the Japanese or Coturnix quail make a sound like a cricket chirping. The males do “crow” but it it is very soft and fairly quiet.  Our URBAN BIRDS neighbours didn’t even  know we had quail until I told them.