So You Want Baby Quail

So you want to add baby quail to your homestead. But have you really thought about it? Because I’d thought about it, but definitely not long enough. I was like they are just tiny chickens, right? Well wrong. The group I bought from eBay had an impressive 80+% hatching rate.

I was so excited when I had all those little fluff balls running around — make sure you watch the videos, it’s a very busy time! But don’t prepare for them like you would chicks. These guys are delicate, so keep reading to find out everything I learned and be prepared, because they’re a ton of fun but vastly different from the chickens and peafowl I’m used to raising.

Quail are a crazy animal — I absolutely love them, but they behave a little differently than chickens and require higher-protein game bird food.

Incubation: 18 days (ha, sure)

When it comes to incubation, you need to realize that each species has a slightly different incubation time, ranging from 16 to 23 days — but when I researched, all I found was the 18-day average that most quick searches give. I also didn’t factor in temperature and shipping. I ordered my eggs in the middle of May and set them around the 21^st. I was expecting that 18-day mark, but because it was so warm in the shipping package, I think they started incubating before I even received them, since mine started hatching at the 14-day mark. That was totally my fault — we were gone because I thought I had four more days. But we made it home just in time, as they started hatching on Sunday instead of the Thursday I’d planned for. So much for plans — nature has her own timeline.

You can hatch these tiny quail eggs in a standard incubator, just keep in mind they’re too small for standard chicken egg turners. I set the temp at 99° and the humidity at 55%, and we had an 80% hatch rate from shipped quail eggs.

Our incubator is a Hatching Time CT60H, which holds between 108 and 156 quail eggs depending on species. I ordered the Hatching Time quail egg insert for the standard chicken egg trays it comes with — super easy to snap in, but some of my quail eggs were a little too large for it to be safe. Next time I set eggs, I’ll look into altering the tray for oversized eggs, but that’s a project for another day — and one more reason to join our Hearth so you don’t miss any of my wild adventures.

Popcorn Chaos

Once those fun little popcorn chicks start hatching is where we struggled. I bought the quail brooder from Hatching Time, thinking it would be good for baby quail — boy, was it not. Those popcorn babies hopped right through the openings, and we ended up using cardboard to contain them. For the next hatch, I’m going to DIY a brooder, because the Hatching Time quail brooder didn’t work — the chicks kept squishing into the corners, which made that huddling tendency (and the mortality that comes with it) even worse. So when they’re tiny, make sure your pen is round for the first few weeks to help eliminate some of that huddling. Follow along so you don’t miss the DIY build — more on that later.

One thing I wasn’t expecting that affected our survival rate is their tendency to huddle. And by huddle, I mean huddling so tightly that the tiny popcorn nuggets on the bottom of the pile get squished and killed. This is the single biggest reason our survival rate was so much lower than our hatch rate. So be mindful — you’ll need a lot of brooder space when hatching one of these eBay mystery packs.

Feeding these birds requires a higher-protein game bird feed as well — which honestly still came in a little too big. The first week, we actually ground up the feed with a mortar and pestle to make it small enough for them to eat, because these little chicks aren’t much bigger than a quarter.

Water: make sure they have plenty of fresh, clean water, but fill your standard chicken waterers with rocks or marbles — they can and will step on each other, which can cause an unintentional drowning.

Life After the Peep

Our first hatch is now right at the two-month mark. They’re definitely big enough to eat, if that’s why you’re raising quail, but they aren’t laying eggs yet. I think the misconception about how soon a bird starts laying is just a standard line repeated throughout the poultry world — I’ve had chickens that didn’t start laying until they were 8 to 9 months old, even though everyone claims chickens start laying at 4 months. But we’ll see — it’s still early in my quail-raising career.

As for where we’re keeping our quail, we’re using my older Harbor Freight greenhouse. It’s solid and has an evaporative cooler and shade cloth. Raising animals of any kind in Arizona requires a different level of care — it’s dry and hot! We frequently hit 110 to 116 from June through August, and some years September isn’t much better.

The greenhouse has a dirt floor with some random grass that has come up over time. We added some logs, sticks, and a water container with rocks and an autofill system so they don’t get dehydrated. They love hiding in the tall grass in the corner of the greenhouse and searching for bugs and other treats.

Lessons Learned the Hard Way

Spacing was our biggest mistake — as I mentioned earlier, they huddle together and squish the weaker chicks. Common advice is 0.5 square feet per chick, but honestly, I’d increase that to at least 1 square foot. They also need more space as they grow. We tried using a chicken coop we bought on sale at Tractor Supply while we figured out a permanent setup, but because quail are ground birds, they rarely went up into the coop area the way chickens do.

Feeding was our second mistake. These guys need a high-protein wild game feed, plus room to forage — they’ll destroy the dirt scratching and searching for bugs and other treats. So make sure that wherever you put them, you’re okay with the ground becoming a complete mess. And they love dirt bathing just as much, if not more, than chickens. So don’t put them in your favorite flower bed or patch of lawn.

Worth the Chaos

Would I do it again? Absolutely, don’t give up the homesteading dream, just make sure you research and prepare for quail much more than I did. The fact that you found and are reading this guide means you are doing more research than I did.

Make sure and join us at the hearth because the brooder setup will be coming in a couple of months. Right now it’s July in Arizona and we are in the summer sun rest phase, because nothing competes with temps of 110+ and extreme heat warnings.