About 3 or 4 years ago I was looking around for the best types of birds to produce tasty home-grown eggs, and also the best types of animals to grow for meat. My restrictions are pretty simple: the animals must be mostly quiet (no ear-piercing, neighbor-disturbing, homeowners-association-angering crowing), very productive, be easy to feed and take very little space. It looks like my best bet is Japanese quail. It appears they are now quite popular with small homesteaders, so it should be a lot easier to find some now!
Rabbits are another alternative, and my grandpa raised them for meat while he had a growing family, but I am more interested in eggs than meat at this point.
Here's some stats I've drawn together:
- Lifespan... 2-2.5 years.
- Eggs laid per female in the first year: 200
- 4-5 eggs equal one chicken egg, by weight.
- 2 pounds of feed will give 1 pound of eggs, whereas chickens are 3 pounds of feed for 1 pound of eggs.
- Incubation time: a mere 17 days!
- Time to maturity: 6 weeks (at which point they can be culled/eaten)
- Space needed: 50 square inches per bird (but that seems hella tiny... most people give a square foot).
- Best ratio to prevent males from fighting but to keep fertility up: 1 male to 3-5 females (6 females at most).
- Best lighting for egg-laying: 14 hours a day.
- Other benefits: composted quail manure is great for the garden, entrails and leftovers make high-quality dog treats, feathers available for crafting or stuffing pillows.
- Theoretically sell for $0.50 per egg, and are often not regulated because they are game birds and not "fowl."
- Legal to raise in California if they aren't released for hunting.
Here's a video of a lady's quail enclosure, and it is very similar to what I'd pictured making: a semi-shaded outdoor pen connected to a protected hen house.
I was wanting to get about the equivalent of 2 chicken eggs a day for personal use, so I'm guessing that'd be a bare minimum of 18 females and 3 males. Here's what I'd need to do:
- Build an outdoor 3-story, 6'x2' house (could grow to 30 females and 6 males with that), preferably attached to a "free range" area topped with bird netting. If it's in the shade, they can handle all the weather here in the mild bay area.
- Purchase 2 dozen fertile eggs to get started (extra males would get culled at adulthood).
- Get an incubator with egg turner, 'cause no way am I waking every 2 hours during the night to turn eggs. We use ancient hovabators at work for chick eggs, and they seem to work reliably.
- Make brooders out of my extra aquariums and reptile supplies.
- Commit to daily animal care (I don't know what 2 dozen birds' daily poops will look like!).
- I'd also get a tub going for raising and gut-loading* mealworms for treats again, especially since the quail have high protein needs... I used to do this for the geckos!
Now, the question is... could I handle killing and butchering tiny adorable quail? Well, not right now. The youtube videos for cleaning quail carcasses are excellent, but make me well aware that I am squeamish. But hey, whole animal bodies used to really gross me out, yet I have cooked 4 whole chickens so far, and after 2 I stopped being squeamish about that.
I actually find cooking and using an entire chicken to be somewhat spiritual... there is no waste, as the meat gets eaten, the bones make a delicious mineral-rich broth, the skin makes a cooking oil, and the organs make dog training treats.
But anyway, if I ever want to be growing some of my own meat and eggs, I honestly think quail are the best option for my limited space. Right now it is just a fantasy! A morbid, getting-back-to-my-roots sort of fantasy. Maybe someday, but I gotta get that veggie garden under control first.
*Gut-loading: you "load the gut" of the insect with something highly nutritious and moisture-rich by feeding it high-quality food, then feed it to your pet. It turns mealworms into tasty wriggling vitamin pills. If you notice the photo from the right, the mealworms are gut-loading on an orange slice.
What are your homesteading fantasies?
No comments:
Post a Comment