The first of two sets of groups of the Quail project have arrived here on the farm.

I have a group of females and male young ones coming next week at six weeks old but they are all quite related to each other and so when i got the chance to get older quail at a very good price point, they are all over a year old but under two and as she had 10 females and she gifted me the nine eggs laid that day, they are clearly all still laying.

This older grouping will allow me to mix out my genetics, once the young ones are adult size, we will be doing some swapping of males in the pens, the older male will go to the new hens and the young male is coming to the older hens, this will allow me to breed a nice selection of outcrossing in my coming generations

The first grouping is in the house in quarantine for the first couple days, so i can keep a very keen eye on them, so far i am pleased with how calm, well handled and friendly they are, just need to do a bit of house keeping on them, but thankfully they are doing a lot of that themselves once they figured out they have a dust bath spot in their temp set up.

I did feed some live crickets and meal worms when they got home, this morning they got dried ones but only after i soaked them for half a hour. Please remember to soak your dried mealworms before serving them up to wild birds or the bird flock

The biggest issue with quail is their high protein needs in their feed, thankfully it can be meet in a number of ways and their small size, rapid growth and rapid egg laying age are wonderful indeed.

I am looking forward to having quail eggs for sale at my farmgate stand along with chicken and duck eggs this year