Raising quail
 

anyone ever raise quail? Thinking about getting into it here soon and just curious of other peoples experience. I'm not doing this as a living or anything just looks cool and thought i may try it out for the eggs and meat. Also curious on the different breeds so if you did raise them what type and pros and cons. Will probably do this in conjuction with 5 or 6 chickens.

idk but dem eggs is some kinda goood

I know a guy that used to raise quail, and a bunch of different birds. He made a few dollars off of it, but then he got out as the Feds became more and more intrusive and the licenses and such got expensive. If I remember correctly, they can enter your property at any time to spot check your operation.

He had done this for 30+ years and quit.

Hate to be a buzz kill, but it's da troof.

wonder if a permit is required to raise them if im not selling them

dats what im talking bout and expensive to buy, would have to have some beer drinkin/pickling saturdays i can see it already

got a buddy of mine that has some and pickles the eggs just for himself and friends, there is a place in new iberia that sells them (same people that own the dirtbike track) fairly cheap, i think he bought 60 to start with for about a hundred bucks, he gets about 10 eggs or so a day, talk about good

i found the eggs for sale and thinking about starting that way so i know how to do the whole process later on, plus gives me time to make my pens

PM me your number and I can help you out on this. We used to raise bobwhites, ringneck pheasant and Rio Grande turkey. We raised about 3000 quail per year.

Pharoah quail produce well and give a fair amount of meat and eggs and you don't need any wildlife permits for them. They're really not that hard to raise, just got to keep a light on them at night when they are small so they don't bunch up and smother.

Man if you can get those things to cross breed that'd be awesome -- I guess they'd look like cornish game hens that could fly! ! !:rotfl:

Quail is one of my favorite meats by far. I always think about getting this thing called a Surragator to stock
them to hunt on one of my properties. Check it out, www.surragator.com

my bad, try this.

http://www.wildlifemanagementtechnol...urrogator.html

While Deer hunting this past fall, I jumped a covey of quail at CC WMA.

That has not happened to me since I was a Teenager. I have heard a few and seen singles, but not a covey.

dad sees some in ragley where i hunt at, would be cool to introduce a couple hundred out there and possibly hunt them in a few years, that surrogator is neat would think you could build something like that for a lot less than 1800 bones:eek:

Yeh I been talkin with a few of my buddies. If 4 or 5 of us got
together and put up few hundred bucks each. We each have diff pieces of property we could use it on. So we could just move it around from different pieces of property and have more places to hunt!

Lets just get some turkeys and restock ragley...oh wait...it's Ragley, they wouldn't make it to the season :shaking:

Not too sure I buy into that surrogator. Predators, disease and natural selection take a lot of birds out. Also, when these birds are released, they no longer have those walls to protect them.

On average, if you buy 5 week old birds that have already been in a flight pen, 2 of 5 will not survive the first night. That's because they've never been exposed to "real" elements. Those that survive the first night have a good chance of making it on the predator aspect anyway.

If you want to get and keep a quail population, more of it has to do with weather and land management than anything. I.E., extremely wet springs are hard on the broods.

Shawn, a con would be the amount of "RATS" birds always draw to your property. Buddy in Laf raised ducks and geese and he had some "RATS" wearing gold chains and sporting Mercedes Medalions around de necks.:eek:

yeah i guess that would be a downfall, have to get a case of millers and a 22 with rat shot for fun on the weekends

Rat shot would not phase my buddies, guess those FUBU's is tough.;)

If you are doing stock to hunt you might make it but if you are stocking to try togrow coveys ,It's tough. You will have a big problem w/ fire ants .

Well what they say is that a bird is most vunerable to predation in the first 5 weeks of its life. so it will be in the surragator all that time. when u open it they fly out. and they say wherever a quail grew up (inside surragator) they usually stay pretty close to that area. but i dont know. i just love eating those little bastids. i might just raise some in my back yard.:grinpimp:

When I was raising birds, we were tied in with Quail Unlimited. They actually donated a 500 egg incubator to us. Go check out their website and see if they have anything to offer in this field. I don't know if they do or not.

They shared a great deal of study material with us. One of the biggest things that was hurting us up there was the way the land was farmed and harvested. They had pointed out that harvesting isn't an issue but leaving a strip of 75 ft or so on the outer edges is tremendous help...Normally along fence or tree lines. They have a lot to offer and may be of great assistance to you.

A good friend of mine is doing just that, as she posted on the below link.

http://www.gulfcoastfishingconnectio...-Pharaoh-Quail

My Grand Dad did this on his "cattle/sheep" farm in Missouri. He always had Quail. One year he had a covey of about 60 birds. It was a really cool site to drive the dirt road and jump up those birds.

Burning the under brush in the woods is also a big help to the Quail population.

The extra stip of "cover" was good for the rabbits too. I could always walk the fence lines and find a few rabbits out in the edge of the pastures. When they ran back for the cover......they usually made the mistake of stopping at the fence.

I think it will work specktator...I use to have bird dogs and hunted quail alot, and I think the surragator is the new way to go to try and establish coveys on your land.....the most important part for the quail after release is food, water, cover.....without those elements it won't work...provide it and your changes are better....

confused...how would burning underbrush help? kill ants?

Burning has nothing to do with killing ants.....that I know of. If burning helped.....my yard would have a bunch of "black" spots to kill the ants.

Burning helps to promote new growth and keeps the land/ground more "open" so the Quail can feed easier on bugs and seeds.

I have heard that when the "Forest companies" stopped burning the woods [~ 20+ years ago], this was the start of decline of the Quail population in Louisiana.

Prescribed burning is the best and cheapest tool in quail management....it doesn't kill ants, but it allows dormant seeds to germinate and produce food for game birds