Qwazy Quail Farm

Today I'm talking with Aaron at the Qwazy Quail Farm. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Aaron at Qwazy Quail Farm. It's really hard to do two QWs in a row. Good morning, Aaron. How are you? Good morning. Doing good. How about yourself? I'm doing great. You're in Ohio? Yes. We are in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, which is just east of downtown.

00:29
Cleveland by about 12, 13 miles. Okay. Is it super cold there today? It is very cold today. Um, I think it's supposed to be in the teens at the highest today. Well, you've got us beat cause I don't think we're going to see above zero again today in Minnesota. It's been so freaking cold.

00:50
But that's okay, we're gonna get through it and it's gonna warm up next week. And I looked at the long range forecast and we're looking at spring temperatures in about two weeks. I'm very excited about this. Yes, I know all of my birds are very excited about the warmer weather also. Yeah, and I wanna hear all about your birds. So tell me about what you do, Aaron. Okay, so what we do here is we raise Coturnix quail, Bobwhite quail, and we also raise a small flock of chickens. So the...

01:18
Bob white quail we here in Ohio, because they're a native species, you have to have a special permit for those. So we have about a dozen of those right now, just getting into them. Um, as a, I'm not sure exactly what we're going to do with those birds, possibly get into a conservation program with the state of Ohio to repopulate them as due to environmental factors, uh, some farming practices, um,

01:47
predators, things like that. The Bobwhite quail population has dwindled drastically here in Ohio. So I think they're beautiful birds. The sounds that they make are, it sounds like you're almost at a zoo or something like that. It's really cool sounds. The Coturnix quail, we raise several colors of those, which we raise jumbo whites, jumbo Egyptians, jumbo

02:15
And then we have some Celadon and we have some black quail, which the black quail didn't come to the United States until around 2019 and they came from Germany. So there's a lot of people that are starting to get into them. Um, there's some people that have concerns. They have something called a yellow gene, which I don't get too much into the genetics. Um, I've attended a quail con last year, which was in, uh, Miami'sburg, Ohio.

02:45
And they had people, quail enthusiasts and farmers from Canada. And many, many states here in the United States attended that. And they have that every year in the fall. And so there you can meet like-minded quail farmers, people that are doing this as homesteaders, all kinds of different backgrounds in quail, but we specify or specialize in the quail for egg production and for meat.

03:14
We raise many of the jumbos because another thing we do is when you go to a pet store and you're getting some treats for your dogs, you want to make sure that you're offering them the best that they can get. And a lot of times these pet stores will have ingredients that have other stuff in there that's not necessarily the best for our pets. And it was just recently I had run out of our quail treats that we make.

03:42
And both of my dogs ended up getting extremely sick and coughing up and puking up blood and chunks of their innards. That was from a chicken treat that said it was all natural. And when I went and looked up more information on this company, they've got a lot of lawsuits and I almost lost both of my dogs. So what we do here is we raise the quail. The ones that are going to be processed for meat or for dog treats, they go to

04:12
a chicken or poultry processor that's USDA and Department of Agriculture really inspected. They're down in Baltic, Ohio called Pleasant Valley Poultry. And we take them down there and get our birds processed. We bring them back here. We put them in storage. We have our warehouse license so that we can also sell meat to grocery stores, to markets, to chefs and things like that. So.

04:39
But we've got a lot going on here and sometimes I don't know how I find the time to do anything. I was going to say you're pretty deep into the quaildom going on there. A couple things. My dog is actually allergic to chicken so she never gets any kind of poultry. We actually had to switch out her dog food because it turned out that the chicken in the dog food was making her sick to her stomach. So we don't do chicken here for the dog. We do chicken for us. Chicken is great.

05:09
But what I really want to get into is your expertise on quail raising, because I have talked to a lot of people on the podcast who happen to have quail or they're just getting into it, but they're not really expert or deep into it yet. And it sounds like you are. So if somebody wanted to start raising quail, what is the basic beginning and setup to do that? It can be extremely simple to get started.

05:37
You can start off as simple as a plastic tote that you can get at any of your hardware stores like Lowe's, Home Depot's, Walmart, Target. And then you can get, there's two different variations of heat sources. One is a heat lamp. And then the other is like a heat pad. I don't recommend the heat lamps simply because if something were to happen on accident where that heat lamp would fall into the bedding, not only could you kill any of the chicks that are in there.

06:06
but it has a potential for starting a fire very, very easily. Yeah. Um, so I recommend the heat pads and you can get those at stores like tractor supply, you can get them online on Amazon, a lot of other places that sell poultry products. So for, you know, 15, 20 bucks, you can get the, um, the tote for another 20, 30 bucks, you can get the heating pad. Um, and then for bedding for the first.

06:36
two weeks, 10 days to two weeks for Quail. I found that putting something as simple as like paper towels or those blue towels that you can get at places like AutoZone for shop towels, putting those down, because if you don't put anything down, what can happen is the chicks can get what's called splay leg and that's where their legs kind of split and you can spend money to buy devices to help them with that.

07:05
It just depends on what's the purpose that you're raising these chicks for, for yourself. Just to have just a few. Did you want to get into it as a business? There's a lot of things that go into first. I guess that's the very first step. Okay. Very first step is why? Why do you want to get into raising an animal? For one. Then two is do you have the time and the resources? Quail can pretty much take care of themselves.

07:33
They're very hardy birds in the winter. So if your long-term goal is to move them outside, you can do that. Um, coturnix quail have been bred over for thousands of years to be domesticated. So they're not great, um, brooders. So you, you want to eat the eggs or do you want to hatch them? Uh, but they're not going to sit on the eggs like a chicken would. Um, and if you wanted to.

08:03
raised down for meat. I would recommend like some of the jumbo breeds and with Coturnix quail, there's really not a different breed of Coturnix quail. There's just different colors and that's almost limitless on the types of colors, but the jumbo breed is going to be good for egg laying and it's going to be good for meat. So a good dual purpose bird and Coturnix quail go from hatching

08:31
to maturity in 10 weeks. So it's extremely fast. They eat about three cents a day in food. So about a dollar 30 somewhere right around there. Um, from the time they hatch till they're ready to be processed. Um, and then, uh, water, water is extremely important to quail. They have a high body temperature and so they will drink water a lot. So I would go with, um,

08:58
Any type of water that you can find on even Amazon or anywhere. Um, so people use mason jars, um, and then feed. I always start off with a 28 to 30% protein crumble mix, like starter feed. That, uh, is really good for helping them to develop their feathers. Feathers are 80% protein. And so you want to make sure that they, um,

09:26
really get as much protein that they're going to need in those early couple weeks. Yep. Okay. So the other thing I really do want some answers on real quick is how how much does a mature quail weigh? A mature quail will average if you're going with just a standard size around eight to ten ounces. Yeah. Once you get over ten. So not even a pound. Correct. Yeah. And then the jumbos

09:54
can get anywhere from 12 to 22 ounces. Okay, so here's the big question I have for you. And I promise you I'm not being a smart ass, I'm just playing devil's advocate a little bit. Sure. Why do people raise quail if there's so little? I mean, do they taste really good? Are the eggs really good? Because the eggs are tiny as well, right? Yeah, so the eggs, for one, to start off with those, the eggs have...

10:23
a higher protein ounce per ounce than chicken eggs. Um, they chicken eggs or quail eggs are less likely to can contract, uh, salmonella. They have a membrane on them that's a little bit different than the bloom of a chicken's egg. So there's been some research, not a lot, but there's been research out there where quail eggs were less likely.

10:51
to get salmonella. So that's a good health thing to do or to take into account. And again, the maturity. So my chickens would take about four to seven months before they start laying eggs. The quail will start laying eggs at eight weeks. Quail eggs are more nutritious than chicken eggs, but they're also a little bit harder to find. And so again, that goes

11:21
you know, why would you want to raise quail and it's what do you want to do with them? If you're looking for the meat, the meat is obviously because it's a smaller bird you don't have to cook it as long and so the taste of it, people have asked me does it taste like chicken and the answer is simple, it's no. It tastes like quail, it's a little bit different. Now anytime you are cooking any kind of food

11:48
The seasonings that you use are obviously going to make a big difference. But when you're just eating just, um, unseasoned quail and unseasoned chicken, to me, the quail seems almost like a little sweeter than chicken meat. And for people who are allergic to chicken eggs or to chicken, quail is a good alternative because the proteins are a little bit different in quail meat than chicken, and I've had people that have told me that they couldn't eat chicken.

12:17
So they tried the quail and they had no problems with it. Of course you would always want to talk with your doctor and healthcare professional first, but that's typically the feedback that I've gotten from people. Okay. And like I said, I really wasn't trying to like poke holes in your, your story. I just, I just don't know. I've never had quail and I've never had quail eggs and I may have to go find somebody who has some and try it.

12:43
We thought about raising quail here at our place and we looked into it. And we had so many irons in the fire at the time we decided not to, but one of the big reasons we decided not to is that I kept reading about the fact that quail are very good at killing themselves. So have you, have you had that experience? Okay. So quail, it really depends on the ratio of males to females. It depends on how much space they have, their environment.

13:14
If you have too many males in with your hens, it's, they will become aggressive and they will start pecking them. When they're breeding, they will grab them by the back of their neck and they'll, they'll mount them. And sometimes people will think, Oh, well, my quail are harming them. And that's just their breeding, but you can also reduce that. That you're going to get into overbreeding. So what you want to do is anywhere from one.

13:42
What the way I do it, I do one male to six hens. And so I don't have a problem with that. When I very first got started and I didn't know how to sex the birds, I was just putting birds in the cage and didn't know that much. So once I learned how to be able to sex the different, um, the men, male from the female one to six is a good ratio for me. The hens don't seem to get overbred. And then the next thing to deal with as far as.

14:11
how much space do they have. I use hatching time cages and I believe it's like 12 inches high. I'd have to look up at the dimensions. But you don't want to have too much space in there. If you have too much space, they can become a little territorial. You also don't want to mix different species of quail, such as Bobwhite quail with Coturnix quail.

14:41
Because there has been a lot of people that will talk about violence between the two species of quail. But in general, they're not going to attack each other. They're not going to kill each other unless it has something to do with environment or a bad ratio of hens to roosters. Okay. I actually have read about them, like startling and hitting their heads on the top of the

15:11
the enclosure and breaking their necks. Does that happen? Absolutely. Again, environment is key. So if you're going to have an aviary that's outside, um, one thing that I've, I've seen people do to help prevent that or to reduce that is they'll hang like palm leaves or things from the top of their aviary because they do get spooked very easily and, um, that has happened where they'll fly up and break their necks.

15:38
So the cages that I use are 12 inches high. And so they don't really have that opportunity to jump up and really snap their neck or anything like that. Um, it is possible. You just got to check your environment and make sure that you're preparing it for them. So it's the same as, as, um, taking on any livestock. You need to do your research and figure out number one, why you want to do it. Number two, if you can afford the outlay to get set up to buy the livestock and

16:07
the time and the constant expense of feeding the livestock. Those are the things you need to consider. Yes? Yes. Okay, cool. All right. So, um, you also have chickens like, like laying hen chickens. Yes. Yes. So we raise black Jersey giant chickens. Um, the reason why we bought those is, um, I had done some research and found that crows or they resemble crows when predator birds like hawks and things like that are flying by.

16:36
And before I had black jersey giants, I did have a problem with the hawks and there's one eagle that's not too far from our property and they would swoop down in particularly the quail because the quail were much smaller. So black jersey giants became our choice for the fact that they're a larger bird. They can get up to 15 pounds right around there and 12 to 15 is pretty

17:06
They're great birds, except I might not say that about my rooster. He can be a jerk sometimes. All roosters can be jerks sometimes. Um, but no, they're very cold hearty. The adults, I haven't lost any adults. I did have some juveniles that we lost this year when the weather dropped to negative numbers, but all of the adult hens have done very well. And, uh, they're, they're just a fun breed. We have names for some of them.

17:35
based on their behaviors and things like that. So we raise them mainly for egg production, but also once they get to some of their older years where their egg production will slow down, then they're a good dual purpose bird for me. Nice, I have never heard of this bird before. Are their feathers black? Yes. Okay. They do have white Jersey giants, but the black Jersey giants tend to get a little bit bigger.

18:05
And so having dual purpose, that's why I chose those as well. I'm going to have to look these birds up because now I'm curious. I want to see what they look like. Um, we just got 12 of the ISA brown chickens playing hens this past weekend. We've had them before. They're very calm. They're not aggressive. They're actually kind of friendly for anyone that doesn't know.

18:28
And we're very excited because we had gotten rid of our chickens last fall because we didn't want to feed them through the winter and we weren't going to get any more chickens until like April or May. And then we realized that the eggs at the grocery store are incredibly expensive right now and that's if we can find them. So we decided to get chickens early this year. Yeah. The same thing's going on here in Ohio. Egg prices, somebody just posted they were at the store and they were 8.99.

18:58
Um, here in my area, um, what I asked for is $4 a dozen and ours are pasture raised. Um, a lot of times people will go to the store and there's so many selections. Well, this says cage free. This says farm fresh. This says, um, pasture. This says free range. A lot of times people are just not familiar with what all of the labeling actually means. And for ours, ours are pasture raised. Wait, what that means is they have free reign to wander the property.

19:28
any grass, bugs, berries, anything out there that's more natural for them to eat. Sometimes I'll even catch my chickens up in the trees. I always try to snap pictures of that. But pasture raised is a much healthier feed for the birds. It's easier on your wallet because you don't have to supplement with feed as much. And then, um,

19:51
That is, those are the ones that I see the eggs going for nine, $10 a dozen. I charge $4 a dozen here in my area. And then what I do is I also offer an incentive for my customers that if they return the egg cartons to me and they're undamaged to where I can reuse them, then their next dozen will be $2. And the reason why I do that is because it cuts out the cost of me having, having to repurchase additional cartons.

20:20
But yeah, eggs are a hot commodity right now. And it's also been in the news here recently that they are now limiting the number of dozens of eggs that you can purchase. So two dozen per customer. And it's hard for me to even keep up with the chicken egg orders. Oh yeah, I'm sure you're swamped in people. Have you got any eggs? Can I get eggs from you? Yeah. All the time. Yep.

20:49
Our chickens that we just got are 20 weeks old right now, 19 weeks right now. So they should be laying in the next week to three weeks because they usually start at 22 weeks this three. And, uh, I'm very excited about this because I have not been baking at all because, you know, baking usually requires eggs and I'm really looking forward to making a chocolate cake in March. Well, I would definitely recommend trying quail eggs in your next baking then.

21:17
The reason why, another benefit to quail eggs, they have a higher yoke to white ratio, which that helps with binding of all of the stuff that you use in baking. Um, I have some people that will not use chicken eggs ever again after they tried using our quail eggs for baking. And because of that yoke, being a larger, um, size in ratio to the whites, um, is.

21:44
That's why I have so many people that want to buy the quail eggs is for their baking. That's so funny. Cause I have a friend, hi Tracy. She listens to the podcast all the time. She likes it when I call her out. She has ducks and she's told me that ducks are really duck eggs are really good for baking as well. So with ducks, they have a higher, uh, yoke to white ratio.

22:07
Well, I'm going to have to trade her some chicken eggs for some duck eggs and try making a cake with duck eggs and see if it makes any difference in how it comes out. So back to Quail for a second because I feel like we're bouncing between chickens and Quail. Does Tractor supply or I don't know what stores you have where you are, but we have a place called Baumgards and they sell chicks in the string time.

22:31
Would Tractor Supply sell quail or is there not a place where you can actually go during chick days to get quail babies? I had checked with Tractor Supply a few times and even offered to sell quail chicks there. That is a corporate decision and I have not seen quail offered at any Tractor Supplies here in Ohio. Okay. Generally you have to go to breeders and the thing with quail, you really want to make sure that you're finding a good quality breeder.

23:01
Yeah. I got started simply by going to the fair and I found some, that's how I got started, which was an interesting story because I went to get a rabbit and come home with no rabbit and six quail. And finding a reputable dealer for quail is, is key.

23:24
I don't think I know of any stores there. McMurray Hatchery might be one place where you can buy them. That people might be more familiar with. But there is a huge Quail community out there. There's even a Quail University that offers a course for people that are wanting to get into Quail. Okay. And then there's a here in Ohio.

23:50
down in the Miami's Berg area where I was talking about that quail con is a farm called my Shire farm and they have a lot of different breeds there. If anybody's ever interested, they could send me an email through our website and I can offer a lot of breeders. I myself have not sold eggs to where or chicks where I've shipped. I do have a lot of customers that will come here to the farm and

24:20
or young chicks. But I don't like to ship simply because quail can be, they're not as hardy in shipping live chicks as you would chickens. So buying hatching eggs, which then you have to have an incubator. So, again, knowing what you want to begin with. If you do want to find quail chicks, if anybody wants to email me also,

24:49
They can contact me and I can get them in contact with a breeder that's a trusted breeder Who has the time and experience and the knowledge of raising quail? That's going to be closer to them or as close as possible I'm connected with a group of farmers in almost every single state in Canada We really are a really cool knit group of people. I believe you I think you're very cool

25:17
So the one thing I do, I do want to say, because I don't want people to think that it's just as simple as going out and buying a bin and throwing some birds in it and feeding them because it's not, you have to take care of them. Right now, I feel like there's a lot of people in the United States who are like, we should just get like four chickens and have our own eggs and that would be cheaper. And what I want to say is if you don't, if you're not already set up to get chickens,

25:46
You know, if you already have a coop and the watering apparatus and the feed and everything, and all you have to do is go get the chickens and put them in the coop, you're not going to save yourself any money right away on getting chickens. You might save yourself some money on eggs if you started quail because it sounds like it's a lot less expensive to get started. It is. I would say your first.

26:14
egg, even as a, if you get into quail, your first egg is probably going to be about a two or $300 egg. Right. Because the birds are going to cost money. You do need a coop that's appropriate and that can cost anywhere. The tote and the heating lamps, that's just the basics just to get started with quail. One thing that you have to keep in mind is quail grow very, very fast. Within two weeks, they can start flying around your house.

26:44
Does this set up in your house? Yeah, and So you do want to get a cage and there's so many different designs and everything out there on YouTube I Started out with a rabbit hutch But you definitely are gonna want to have a cage and that's why I always say any animal that you're gonna raise It's always best to do your research online first. There's a lot of good YouTube videos out there

27:14
It's less space. You can keep, um, about a thousand birds in, um, a small garage if you wanted to. Um, because a lot of the cages, uh, can hold anywhere from 20 to 30 birds each. And if you have tiered, um, it's very easy to have a hundred birds and in a, a two foot by.

27:44
even four foot space or six foot space. So that's one thing to consider is that quail do not take up as much space as chickens. And then you do wanna make sure that you're prepared ahead of time. You can't just go out and buy some chickens or quail and come home and think, oh, well, this is gonna be really simple. He said just to get a tote. Well, that's only gonna last you a couple of weeks. Now you need the cage. Yeah.

28:10
And you can build them yourself. It's very simple and it can be fun. Something you do with the family and the kids is to build a little coop for them. Another thing with quail, um, they do poop a lot, way, way, way more than chickens. So what you can do with that is we put it in a compost, um, pile, and then we'll throw it in our garden the following year. Um, one other thing I'm getting into.

28:39
I just bought these about two weeks ago, is mealworms. Because I'm always trying to find ways to save money. And you can buy some mealworms for 15 bucks or a kit for 50 bucks. And they will lay hundreds and thousands of eggs and just keep this cycle going. And the quail, they love the mealworms. So do chickens. Yeah. And it's high in protein. And so I'm starting off small. I've got about.

29:08
10,000 mealworms and I'm gonna see how that goes. If it saves me money, I'm all for it. Yes and the other thing is that I'm assuming you can't let the quail free range like you can chickens because they'll just take off. Yes. Yeah. And they can't survive on their own because they're the Coturnix quail, like I said, they've been domesticated. They can't hatch eggs on, they'll lay the eggs but they can't hatch them on their own.

29:37
and they cannot fly as far away as like the Bobwhite quail. Their wing structure is different than Bobwhites and it's not meant for them to be flyers. So they can just get away from a short distance but the coyotes, cats, things like that will just, they won't last long and that's kind of cool. Yep, exactly. And I was gonna ask you back 20 minutes ago when we were talking about this and I forgot.

30:05
Do quail have to have a rooster to lay eggs or are they like chickens and they'll just lay eggs without the rooster? They're just like chickens. They will lay eggs without a rooster. My quail will lay one egg every single day pretty consistently. The big thing with them is if you're going to be raising them inside either a barn or something like that is in the winter months, they need about 15 hours of light in order to be efficient egg layers.

30:34
And so in the winter times when the sun goes down sooner, I will use LED lights to help with the production. But they'll lay an egg a day and they're really good at producing eggs. And how long do quail live? About six years. And do they lay that entire six years? Yes, as they get a little bit older, it can slow down. My quail, none of my quail

31:05
are really older than six months because I do use them as a dual purpose. Yep. Um, so about six to eight months is the longest any of my quail live. Um, I don't raise them as pets and I have nothing against people who do. Again, they can be great pets. Some people will breed specifically for, um, their, can't think of the word right now, but their behaviors, so you can't breed them per or for their behaviors. There's a.

31:34
a farm in Tennessee, I think, Kentucky or Tennessee, called Thieving Otter Farms. And the lady there, she will breed them for their temperament and they can be very docile. But no matter how you breed them, they can still be very, very flighty and very scared. But you can breed for more docile birds. If I was that tiny a bird, I would be afraid of everything too. Oh yes.

32:04
They're so fragile. They're so small. Okay. I had a thought while you were talking and now I have to remember it because I got sidetracked by seeing this little bitty bird in my head. Yeah. I don't remember what I was going to ask you. It's gone. I do this all the time. Usually it's 20 minutes in today. It's 32 minutes in. And on that note, I try to keep this half an hour. So I'm going to let you go, Aaron, but thank you for all the information today. That was fantastic. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, if anybody wanted to contact me, you can.

32:34
throw the website in there. It's just Quazy Quail Farm. And Quazy is Q-W-A-Z-Y QuailFarm.com. And that's our website and people can reach out and leave me messages on there. And I usually get back to people within 24 hours. And I apologize. The website is not the fanciest. I'm not a big web designer or anything like that, but they can contact me there with any questions.

33:02
Awesome. And I will put that in the show notes when this comes up. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Aaron. Have a great day. You too. Bye.