Anyone raising quail? (guess it's official.. I am)

Jayne

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We're having good luck with chickens, but I've got someone who's interested in raising quail (for hunting/meat purposes). I can't do that at the house with the woman around, but he's got property and the man power to keep after them if I can come up with the enclosures.

Reading up it seems they would never survive here, the temperature extremes are all wrong.

I figure someone has got to be doing it.

Read one book, have others on order, but info about doing it here in NC will be the hard part.
 
We got 8 quail from a local breeder near Mebane, and let them go on the Blackberry Farm. I don't know where we got 'em. I saw one or two now and then for a few months after we released them, and now they are nowhere to be seen. I've never seen a covey before or after summer nesting season. Still, I like the idea of repopulating quail.

Seems that if Northern Bobwhite Quail are native to NC, then they can be raised in NC.
 
Shortly after moving into our house 9 years ago, I saw a couple of quail right near our driveway. Haven't seen them since.

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I had them all around in the fields and woods 10 years ago. It seems like they disappeared overnight. I know the fox and yote’s took care of them. Turkeys were here last season now they too are gone.

I know game farms raise quail for their hunters and sell them to the public. DeWitts in Elerbee has a large operation for ducks and game birds.
 
We have looked into it before, both for meat and eggs, releasing some on to our property as well as sell.
The guy who runs The Survival Podcast had a pretty good series on raising them and building their enclosures.
If you are selling them in NC you need a permit.
 
My Dad and my girlfriend Step Dad both raised quail. When I was a kid, my Dad would buy the eggs and hatch them out in one of the little Styrofoam incubators. Neat for me. Girlfriends step Dad had a bigger operation and raised them year round. Believe he just bought mature birds from a breeder and let them do their thing. He kept them in basically a covered chicken coop and tarped it in the summer. Never knew him to have any problem with the heat. He usually had 50 plus for hunting in the fall. Once the wild bird population fell, he started raising. And for you folks releasing pen raised birds, they are going to make it two days max in the wild and it is also illegal in NC since they can spread disease to any remaining wild birds. When I was in High School, I could find 4-5 wild coveys on the old Kepley's Barn land and Willard Dairy after school with one of my Dad's dogs. Sadly those days are gone.
 
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Part of the problem with wild birds is everyone cuts right up the the fence line.
No one leaves a buffer zone of plants along roads or fences.
Birds need this area to live.
 
There's a lady where I work that raises them. As far as I know, she is having very good luck with them.

@Jayne

If you would like to chat with her about it, I'll ask if she's okay with passing along her number.
 
I’ve had three for a few months now. Haven’t had an opportunity for any more but those haven’t had any issues. My coop is just a 2ft x 4ft box 1ft high with tin for a roof and hardware cloth for bottom and sides. One day I will have time to finish it and hatch some eggs. My plan is to get to a point of about 30-40 birds. Help supplement food with a rotation. Some birds laying the next generation, some ready to lay and some for the table. We feed high protein chick starter, clean water and oyster shell for calcium. I don’t currently have an incubator so I could give you some eggs to hatch if you want.
 
Used to have quail in the backyard. Roundup kills their habitat and once they started back farming the field behind the house, they were gone. That and Coyotes. IMO a better bird to raise are guinea fowl if you can stand those noisy things.
They also eat the heck out of bugs.
 
We have a few here. Must be a very small covey. In the 1950s we raised them in above ground pens a couple of hundred feet long. When they reached maturity they were useless as game birds. You had to kick them to make them fly. They walked around the yard with the chickens. We ate Alot of quail for a Long time.
 
Good eatin', but a lot of work for such a tiny thing.

Growin' up, lotsa folks had guinea fowl, geese & even pea fowl runnin' loose in their yard.
 
I don’t currently have an incubator so I could give you some eggs to hatch if you want.

Appreciate the offer, but I can't take you up on it at the moment. I don't have an enclosure built (or even designed) and if I were to block off part of the chicken coop (we have a 3 section run that can have sections isolated with doors) and raise them there the wife would see them and then they would become pets and we couldn't eat them. We've already got a bunch of freeloading chickens that have gone past they're laying age, can't have a bunch of quail I can't eat either.
 
If you would like to chat with her about it, I'll ask if she's okay with passing along her number.

I don't think I'm at the talking to people in real life stage yet. I've read 2 books now, and am getting ideas but I want to have a solid plan for someone to critique before I reach out live to other breeders.

In a couple of months though....
 
Seems that if Northern Bobwhite Quail are native to NC, then they can be raised in NC.

Wild quail don't have little HVAC units? I thought that's why they clustered up, saving energy by using central AC instead of lots of tiny window units.

Yes, I have been drinking.
 
Wild quail don't have little HVAC units? I thought that's why they clustered up, saving energy by using central AC instead of lots of tiny window units.

Yes, I have been drinking.

Drinking? It's Monday!

Unreal.....
 
Took some time off work to knock out the building of the first coop, or hutch as it were. Using the picture in the book as a guide I came up with this:

quail_hutch_7.jpg quail_hutch_8.jpg

The annoying part was the wire on the walls/floor. The book says you slope the floor down from basically the top of the 2x4 to the bottom over the course of the front to back run and then build a 'egg catching tray' in the front by bending the wire up and using hutch clips to keep it together. I could not find the same type of wire he used, and I couldn't figure out what kept critters from just stopping by and pulling eggs out of the open tray in front.

So... I'm trying this. The eggs can roll to the front and sit behind the cover board, and then when you want to get them you just unhook the latches and it lowers to an angle that lets them drop slightly but not roll all over the place. In theory.

quail_hutch_9.jpg quail_hutch_10.jpg

With an angled floor and angled roof and not wanting to use any trim pieces to cover the wire it took way longer that it should have. Since these hutches will be sitting inside of a horse stall they don't need weather resistant roofs, so the next one will be flat. Also, putting a 90 degree bend on the edge of the wire to attach it inside the frame instead of on the outside? Meh, just slap it on the outside and trim it out. One 2x4 and a table saw can be turn out a lot of 1" trim. Also also, the next one won't have the egg tray. We'll start with this one but the next (simpler) hutch can hold the immature birds and then the layers can go in this one, and then eventually they'll get put into the outdoor habitat when I get that done.

@dman24 if my partner (who picked up the incubator) hasn't lined up any eggs yet I'll hit you up to see if you've got spare eggs still.
 
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@Jayne something got my birds this past weekend. Pulled the wire off the side of the coop and pulled them out. Left little pieces of feather where it pulled them through. Sorry I can’t be of help with the eggs.
 
I’m going to finish my coop and start again but probably won’t be until next year. I also have to finish my chicken coop. I’m not sure of your location but the feed store in Sanford has a good supplier of quail for $4 a piece I believe. That’s where mine came from. Town and country I think is the store name, it’s near the old Kmart.
 
So you raise them to release and hunt? Or for kept meat/eggs?

Planning on both. Well, not so much the eggs, those seem to be more of a pain that they're worth to deal with for eating but if we get too many any there is a market for them, I'm not against it.

The goal is to get a few generations going and introduce some genetic diversity (so we're still on the lookout for another source of birds/eggs). While that's going on I'll be working on the outdoor habitat. We want it big enough they can fly around, hide in ground structures, etc, basically act like real quail as much as possible. Should make them a "premium" product over totally hutch raised birds. Or that's the theory anyway.

@Sneakymedic has gallantly stepped forward to let us try to establish them on his farm as our first "seed the wild" expernment.

Game birds are one of the few things I can hunt that the wife will actually eat. I asked her how she would feel about these birds, but apparently just "killing them" is not giving them a "chance to escape". So I guess she's expecting me to release them in the front yard and shoot them out of the air and then cook them up? She's weird.
 
Seems like a lot of work and extra steps to the meat... but I applaud your efforts. I'd love to see more game replenished. If I could hunt elk for example in NC that would be awesome. I know birds are disappearing across the country. Coyotes and cats and the overprotection of raptors seems to be a big issue.

Can you actually create wild populations that will stay or do you just shoot as many as you can and the rest are gone? I imagine predation is next to impossible to manage in a situation like that.
 
alot of the "natural" food they used to survive is gone. We dont farm grains like we used too. That makes it difficult for global survival.

I would also agree with the overpopulation of the hawks. They have eaten damn near everything fuzzy on two or four legs on the farm. Pain in the ass to be as beautiful as they are.
 
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Seems like a lot of work and extra steps to the meat... but I applaud your efforts.

what, raising them, or releasing them in the front yard so the wife thinks they have a chance?

Can you actually create wild populations that will stay or do you just shoot as many as you can and the rest are gone?

no idea, but we're going to try it and find out. worst case we're out some birds, best case we've done some good. ok well I suppose worst case is some .gov dillhole tells us it's illegal and fines us, but they have to catch us first. :)
 
alot of the "natural" food they used to survive is gone. We dont farm grains like we used too. That makes it difficult for global survival.

You're the farmer, go farm stuff!

That or we load up one of those auto-feeders with some bird chow.
 
what, raising them, or releasing them in the front yard so the wife thinks they have a chance?



no idea, but we're going to try it and find out. worst case we're out some birds, best case we've done some good. ok well I suppose worst case is some .gov dillhole tells us it's illegal and fines us, but they have to catch us first. :)


Raising then setting them loose to try a shoot them... Maybe just pretend. She don't gots ta know...
 
Part of the problem with wild birds is everyone cuts right up the the fence line.
No one leaves a buffer zone of plants along roads or fences.
Birds need this area to live.

There is a lot of truth to this. In some areas it's due to GPS farming where they use every bit of land for their crops.
 
Lost one chick last night, another looks kinda weak. That's sad. Guess it's part of the game and why they're such prolific layers.
 
You want to be very careful releasing them into the wild, it requires licensing, permits and oversight from NCWRC. The fines are pretty stiff and as I understand it the permits aren't that difficult to get or very costly....
 
The Ames Plantation, longtime home of the National Championship for Bird Dogs, has probably conducted more research on Quail and Quail habitat than any other place or entity that I know of. The University of Tennessee is a major research resource for not only quail, but many species of wildlife. Forestry and Cattle. They have carefully studied quail in coveys, their movement, etc. using gps units. They have also used cameras to film nesting birds and the prey animals that raid the nests, including snakes. I am not sure if they still have the camera material on their website, but they were incredible. The gps units were also used to record the covey reaction to field trial activity. They found that many times the birds used sounds of doghandlers and the ground vibrations from the many horses used in following the dogs. The coveys sometimes moved in advance of the dogs in a circular movement that went t behind the group and came back to the same general area.

I do know that the Robert Gordon field trial area in Hoffman, NC also conducts a lot of research through NCSU. I don't know the current number of pen raised birds they release every year but it used to be in the thousands. They released them in coveys of around 20 birds and use a tractor with a spreader to feed them on a regular basis. There is a major field trial almost every week from around end of Sept through end of Feb early March.

Anyway, this is longwinded. You may possibly find more info from contacting the Ames Plantation or the University of Tenn than from any place else.
 
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