Apparently the big thing down here is pickled quail eggs , heck wife said she already got people asking for some

Pickled quail eggs are good too. Depending on Mississippi's cottage industry laws, your wife may be able to sell pickled quail eggs for a pretty good profit. There's dozens of different pickled quail egg recipes online.

Keith

That sounds tasty

Welp got my first dead on today , wife adjust sent me this. Said all the others where just fine now sign for anything getting in it for look eaten on or anything so ....idk

Yeah get em off the ground. They'll drop like flies unless you do. But I think you've been told that already???

Well was told i should ask and listen to Keith because he's a quail expert and he said this breed should be fine on the ground and in this set up

Ok.

Donovan, I answered your pm, but I'll put it here to because it may help someone else too.

I can't tell from the picture what damage was done to the quail. It looks like the back of the head may have been pecked. Pecking is not normally fatal. Quail that attack other quail will usually have blood on their chins, necks and breasts. I cull birds for aggression and pretty much any other bad behavior, especially egg eating, which can become an epidemic, if you don't catch it early.

With a fairly tall pen, especially when outside like yours, quail often pop up and break their necks. Having a lower top, so they can't build up.speed to have a hard impact and having a softer top can help reduce broken necks. The heads on quail with broken necks will often flop loosely, even when there is rigor mortis.

Some females will prolapse when they first start laying. Most hens will lay smaller pullet eggs first. Those that don't often prolapse. If you catch them early, you can push the prolapsed parts back in with your finger. If you don't catch it, the other quail will usually cannibalize the organs sticking out.

Birds of prey will panic quail to run back and forth and will hook them through the wire with their claws. They will pull them against the wire and eat what they can reach. If the quail gets loose, you can usually find puncture marks, if you pluck some of the feathers.

If a smaller constricting snake gets of a quail, it will kill it, swallow it down until it hits the wide breast and then regurgitate it. Often the head will look wet and may even he slightly dissolved from the snake's stomach acid.

Coturnix have been in captivity longer than chickens and are resistant to most common poultry diseases and parasites. I think I have raised close to 1,600,000 coturnix since 1995 and have had no serious and very few at all disease issues. I have never had a parasite problem. In a good year, I hatch out around 60,000 coturnix chicks.

Please feel free to ask if you have any questions on coturnix. I am actually recognized as an expert on quail and get paid to teach masters classes at Quailcon, though they often have me teach on other topics too.

Keith

That's some pretty good info there Keith. You're quite an asset here on TM.

So, Keith, you raise your quail on soil??

Thanks for the Pm Keith! I'll be responding shortly, sorry I've been in the engine room the last few hours , gears and main engines needed oil and filter changes FUN

had some hens yrs ago that would fly down from roost in coop (not pinned up) and slaughter the bugs under the yard light an when they had their fill head back to the coop. took a couple yrs but the owls got them cleaned up

Those quail will attack each other as they grow.
The eggs are great to eat just like chicken eggs but you need some quail egg scissors to open them easily, 75 cents on Amazon.

8 weeks to maturity too. We have some coming in a couple for weeks for eating.

I raise coturnix quail with the deep litter method on concrete. I use mostly 4' by 8' by 2' high plywood pens with a wire, 2 piece hinged top. I start with a layer of pine shavings and let the manure build up. I top dress any wet areas with more pine shavings. Years ago, I first had dermestid beetles show up in my coturnix quail colonies. The beetles do a great job reducing the manure build up, so the pens only need shoveled out every few years.

I keep 70 coturnix hens with 20 coturnix roosters. Deep litter is the cheapest way to keep coturnix because they have access to any food they spill.and because the deep litter throws considerable heat, which helps greatly in the Winter. Once the ratio of birds is 3.5 hens per rooster I don't add or remove birds, unless I do a great many at once. Stable colonies have much fewer aggression problems.

You get cleaner eggs on wire, but feed conversion rates drop a lot. Birds on wire lay poorly in cold weather, if not given heat.

Coturnix feed conversion rates are poor in outside, ground pens, compared to deep litter. Foraging in the grass burns more calories and they need more feed.

The same chicks will look pretty different depending on how they are fed and raised. High protein at all life stages makes them get close to 2 ounces heavier, for hens, but makes them poor layers. Coturnix mature more quickly on lower protein diets, so they stay light and could migrate, if in the wild, to find a new food source and keep the species going. When fed high protein, coturnix mature slowly and get heavier, so that they could survive in place, when the food supply crashes, like it frequently does in the arid areas they are native to.

Keith