Pros and Cons of Raising Quail (A Comparison)

Now that my remaining quail are maturing, I thought I’d take a moment to jot down some of my thoughts on their upkeep. You know, the good parts, the bad parts, the parts that made me go “What the f—?!?”

The Good

Holy smokes, they grow fast! No, seriously. Every morning since they’ve hatched that faithful day, these words come out of my mouth. They literally double their size every three days. They’re only a month old and they’re pretty much adults already, fully feathered and moved into my unheated garage–another 4 weeks and they should start laying. This is in comparison to chickens who lay at 16 – 20 weeks old, and muscovies that can take up to 5 – 6 months to start.

They drink from a hamster bottle. This is seriously pretty cool. I’m sure chickens drink from chicken nipples and blah blah blah but the fact that I can hang a hamster bottle and they understand how to use it is pretty awesome. It’s way easier than my ducklings who need water they can dip their bills into and subsequently make a mess.

They take so little space. At one point, before I traded the majority of them with a friend (for a dozen chicken eggs, a heated waterer, and a gravity feeder), I had 12 almost full sized quail in a standard finch flight cage and they weren’t even crowded! It’s great if you’re short on space.

Their poop doesn’t smell when they are babies. I really like this aspect about them. While my ducklings and chicks would stink up their brooder within a day, these guys essentially had no smell, their droppings so small and drying so quick. I guess the ammonia content is less because despite being in the same family as chickens. When they grow up though, their feces don’t dry as fast and are quite smelly (sometimes horribly), so that’s not to say they are odorless, but as chicks (for the first few weeks), they don’t smell as bad as other poultry.

They don’t consume much feed. I actually started mixing the high protein gamebird feed into my duck’s food because I don’t know how I’d use it all before it spoils. Their feed to growth conversion is pretty awesome and each quail eats maybe 2-3 tablespoons of it a day.

You can hatch a lot at once. In my tiny incubator, I could have probably fit 30-40 if I choose not to use the auto turner compared with 9 chicken eggs or 6 duck eggs. With hatching eggs at $25 for 50, you can hatch a lot with the same amount of energy consumption. They’re also really easy to hatch which is a bonus after dealing with difficult to hatch muscovies.

They’re always in demand. I didn’t realize how many people wanted them but they’re actually in demand here which means if you can get your own supply of fertile eggs, you can potentially run a small business on the side selling chicks. Since they’re less work than chickens and males, while they “crow,” produce nowhere near the sound levels of roosters, people are more amenable to buying them straight run.

Short lifespan. This is an odd positive but when you’re looking to keep up production, a shorter lifespan (2-3 years average) means they pretty much lay until the day they die and you don’t have to worry about what to do with retired hens.

The Bad

They’re loud. For those who have kept them before, ya’ll knew this was coming. Okay, so you’d think that for such small birds, they would be quiet and you’d barely notice they were there. NOPE. These things are LOUD. Like I can hear them in the bedroom from the laundry room on the other side of the house and prior to moving them into the garage, they were driving me up the walls. I’m probably an anxious person by nature and this amount of noise puts me on edge. Sure, the ducklings are loud too with their peeping, but they grow out of it and the high pitched chirping goes away after a while.

They scratch the heck out of their food. This is more on me than on them as I still haven’t figured out a good system to feed them without them tossing their food everywhere, because SURPRISE, they’re related to chickens who also scratch the their food! This means that a portion of it ends up falling through the screened bottom. I have been able to reduce this issue by cutting holes only big enough for their head to fit through in tupperware, but they still manage to sometimes pull some out.

They’re pretty aggressive. I know they’re not the smartest birds but these things have made trying to change their food a zombie apocalypse nightmare. They converge upon and peck the hell out of my hands because they’ve somehow associated my fingers with food, and you know, it’s not like I can slap them away without accidentally killing them. For such tiny things, it really freakin’ hurts.

They’re dusty. This is a really weird thing I found but when you have such a large amount of quail, not only are they dusty from their natural dander, but once they start shedding their chick down, puffs of these dust bunnies are everywhere. The worst part is trying to chase them down is like trying to catch a ghost, these balls of dust fly away at the slightest breeze. I was so happy when I could finally move them into the garage and keep the house somewhat clean.

They’re…. cannibals. Yep, you read that right. This was my WTF moment with them. Turns out any moderate level of stress, such as selling the majority of their siblings, triggers this not well understood behavior of cannibalism. You wake up the next day and two of the quail you decided to keep have been eaten from the butt up and it’s an absolutely bloodbath that you try your best to shield your kids from because you’re not about to spend money on a therapist for this kind of childhood trauma. You’d think they would have appreciated the extra space they got, but instead they decided to conduct a Purge type ordeal. So now I’m left with two and I can only pray to the Quail Gods that the one whose gender I’m not entirely sure of is a male so I can have a breeding pair. For more reading on the possible causes of Quail cannibalism (for those who don’t believe such tiny birds are capable of doing so much damage to one another): https://poultry.extension.org/articles/poultry-behavior/feather-pecking-and-cannibalism-in-small-and-backyard-poultry-flocks/

You can’t free range them so their diet is limited. I mean, you could free range them… but only once, because they’re not coming back after you let them go. Keeping them outside is also a daunting task because lots of predators want to eat them. Even without those issues, their protein requirement is so high that they’d have to cover a very large area in order to fulfill it, so for someone who is looking for sustainable livestock, unless I had a predator proof aviary covering my entire property, I couldn’t raise the amount it would take to sustain my family. Their inability to free range safely also means they can’t help with controlling pests or naturally fertilizing the land.

They don’t eat leftovers. One of the reasons I like my ducks is because they eat all sorts of leftovers and scraps. Unfortunately, for some reason quail won’t, which is surprising since their cousin, the common chicken, will readily eat leftovers too.

Final Verdict

Quail are a great supplementary poultry for someone who has more time to deal with their upkeep but they wouldn’t replace my muscovy ducks since I need poultry for more than just eggs and meat. Their pros for me are mostly in comparison to chickens since they don’t smell as much or make as much noise and you can hatch raise a lot of them in very little space. Their chick stage is definitely preferable to ducks (faster growth, not as messy, and smells much better as well), but they have less utility for me.

If you don’t need them for anything else than eggs and meat, or if you don’t have the space to keep any of the larger poultry, they’re definitely what I would recommend over ducks given how quickly the reach laying age and butchering size. However, if you keep muscovies for more holistic approaches (like I do), you might find the keeping of quail a little too artificial for your liking.

If you are interested in raising your own, check out my page From Egg to Egg: Guide to Raising Coturnix Quail.