Cost Effective Quail Production

[GaryD]

Hi,

I often find that people who start to breed and reary quail quickly find themselves in a weekly production cycle......where they are setting eggs and hatching weekly.

This is not something that I'd generally recommend unless you have a consistent market for birds......largely because of the amount of equipment you will require and the cost of the feed that many birds will consume.

We generally only produce quail to eat so, as our freezer stocks get down, we'll set more eggs.

The optimum backyard regime is probably to have 10 - 12 hens (with 3 or 4 cockerels). These can be housed in a very compact area.

This breeder set up will provide you with about 60 eggs per week.....which will probably produce around 40 viable day old chicks. The chicks are reared through to about six or seven weeks and processed. When you are down to the last 12 - 18 quail in the freezer, it's probably time to set more eggs.

This arrangement requires very little space. In fact, you'll only need one brooder lamp and one brooding/growing pen.

The aim is to feed growing quail for exactly the amount of time that it takes to get them to the optimum processing weight - not a day more.

Shared ownership of small incubators is also something that I recommend. Unless you are involved in continuous production, your incubator will spend most of its time idle.....so it makes sense to have these relatively expensive devices owned by two or more people.....or to have some arrangement where one producer provides day old chicks to a number of other small growers.

Quail are perfect micro-livestock for those who wish to grow their own food but the market for quail is notoriously fickle and I don't bother with it for that reason.

I've recently seen some quite high prices but they won't last......largely because there will always be people (like me) who can put a relatively large number of birds onto a bouyant market quite quickly.

My advice is confine your production to your own kitchen needs. Having said that, if you can sell a few birds to aviculturists or pet shops that will help to offset the cost of your feed and that's a smart thing to do.

Gary

[kellenw]

To avoid the weekly hatch trap, we store and stockpile eggs so that we're hatching a large batch about once every three weeks. Hatch rates remain high, and it makes for a much easier system to manage. I can't imagine having to set, hatch and dress birds every week. The three week cycle works really well for us.

[GaryD]

Hi,

I can't imagine having to set, hatch and dress birds every week.

I agree. We did it many years ago but that was a small commercial operation where our markets would only take fresh stock on a weekly basis. We also had a small drum plucker which removed the feathers from about a dozen birds at a time.

These days, it's much more practical to incubate eggs according to our freezer stocks.

Gary

[kellenw]

GaryD -
How many birds to you process these days?

[GaryD]

Hi KW,

Right at the moment.....none. We're overhauling our entire food production operation so we've de-stocked until we get things sorted.

In normal times, we'd probably grow out about 40 or 50 every 6 to 8 weeks.......just enough for our own table usually. Since we do all of our birds by hand, these days, we generally processes them at the rate of 20 - 25 at a time.

Gary

[kellenw]

Trying to become more efficient overall, or just looking for a change?

[GaryD]

Hi KW,

We bought this place, several years ago, with the idea that we'd turn it into a showcase of backyard food production strategies.

While we did that to some extent, I felt that, with what we knew, we could do better.....so we wiped the slate and started again.

It was always our intention to host small group seminars here so we've set up an airconditioned room at the back of our house and created a vine-covered pergola space for those things (like poultry processing) that need to be done outside.

Our place is on a steep slope, so we got Bobcats and mini-excavators in to create some tiers in the space between the house and shed. We've constructed some rough stone retaining walls and some flat space for our new aquaponics unit.

During the coming weeks, we'll put everything together.

You can see where we came from here......and where we're going here. You can see the details of our new aquapoics system on my blog here.


Gary

[kellenw]

Gary,

All I can say is "wow". I'm amazed at the work you've done.

Also, I really like your approach to solids with the Queenslander. Solids are a major problem with aquaponics systems, and I like how you are dealing with them rather than pouring them into the growbeds. I would probably add a vortex settling tank in front of the clarifier for my own system, just to reduce the amount of solids ending up in the clarifier (which I'm assuming is some sort of manual filtration media). This would give you the ability to "flush" the settling tank from time to time and recycle the solids in "offline" duckweed trays. It should help further improve water quality and reduce ongoing maintenance/cleaning required for the clarifier while providing extra duckweed production as a secondary benefit (assuming you feed duckweed to your fish). Also it should allow you to have further control over the nutrient load you wish to maintain in the system.

Any reason why you chose not to include a settling tank? I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on this.

(Thinking about this... I should have probably started a new thread rather than completely change the subject of this one... sorry about that Gary!)

[kellenw]

Jeesh. If I would have been more patient and read the follow ups to your original post on your design, I would have noticed you've actually addressed the things I mentioned in my previous post. Once again, sorry Gary.

[GaryD]

Hi Kellen,

Don't be concerned. There's a lot of material in the thousands of posts on this forum.....and it takes time to get through it.

I'm delighted to have someone happen along who has similar views on matters like solids removal.

Feel free to continue the discussion on other threads that you deem to be more appropriate if you wish.

Gary