Getting back into quail....slowly

[Jotham79]

Years ago I had over 1,000 birds and have just started building a new flock. I'll update as things develop and eventually it will be a commercial endeavor. I'm mainly developing them for meat (these birds are at 300+grams) but this blood line can go higher. They are good layers, but because of their size there is not much profit in eggs. I'll sell '(what I don't eat) them as a byproduct.

[sweetironny]

where can i buy good blood lines i am in Sisaket ?

greets

ronny

[Jotham79]

where can i buy good blood lines i am in Sisaket ?

greets

ronny

Find someone locally who is selling eggs and work your way back to find out who is hatching. You may find a little resistance in getting people to help you compete with them. There is supposed to be a large quail farm in Khon Kean that runs a facebook page and you could go there. There is not a lot of difference anywhere it Thailand, the birds are small (150 grams or so) and relatively good layers. Mine are a meat breed that go over 300 grams so they take more feed, but their eggs are only a little bigger. I do make money on the eggs, but not as much as I would with a local strain. I am getting almost 90% laying rate and sell eggs for 1.2 baht per egg. It costs me about 0.8 baht to produce an egg, but you have to figure I am feeding some males to maintain a flock so am not really making much profit. When I get up and running I will bring my feed costs down and start selling males for meat. I will make a profit, but also I need a good source of low cholesterol meat and eggs. Quail eggs don't have the bad cholesterol that chicken and duck eggs do and quail meat has less cholesterol than chicken.

[sweetironny]

thanks a lot for the info

gr

ronny

where can i buy good blood lines i am in Sisaket ?

greets

ronny

Find someone locally who is selling eggs and work your way back to find out who is hatching. You may find a little resistance in getting people to help you compete with them. There is supposed to be a large quail farm in Khon Kean that runs a facebook page and you could go there. There is not a lot of difference anywhere it Thailand, the birds are small (150 grams or so) and relatively good layers. Mine are a meat breed that go over 300 grams so they take more feed, but their eggs are only a little bigger. I do make money on the eggs, but not as much as I would with a local strain. I am getting almost 90% laying rate and sell eggs for 1.2 baht per egg. It costs me about 0.8 baht to produce an egg, but you have to figure I am feeding some males to maintain a flock so am not really making much profit. When I get up and running I will bring my feed costs down and start selling males for meat. I will make a profit, but also I need a good source of low cholesterol meat and eggs. Quail eggs don't have the bad cholesterol that chicken and duck eggs do and quail meat has less cholesterol than chicken.

[Jotham79]

My birds are only a little over 300 grams and should be bigger. The local feed store couldn't get the hi-protein feed. Later on after I get more cages built and the feed sorted I will do a test batch. I'll hatch a small batch of the larger eggs ( on average our eggs are slightly larger than normal) and try to get some accurate numbers on FCR and then check out the laying numbers and size. I'll cull to get the fastest growers as I am mainly looking for meat. Health has been very good, but I need to see if any don't make it in the heat.

[Jotham79]

I thought I would update my progress. In the spring, before we got our quail house built I lost most of my stock to a predator. 2 hens, a few males, and about 30 fertile eggs survived. I now have 16 hens, 8 roosters, and 60 young quail and 100 eggs to hatch in about 4 days. I have to rethink the profit of eggs as they lay much better than I expected. So far this month I am averaging 15 eggs per day and get as high as 17 about once a week. If I wholesale at 1 baht, I make a profit on eggs even with the males eating too so eggs are going to be a lot more profitable than I thought. I weighed a few of my breeders and they are averaging 300 grams (which is about double the local Thai birds). I measure the feed intake for 2 weeks and they averaged .025 grams. They were not laying as well then (3 hens were still young) and I expect hens to eat more than males so I am assuming .03 kg of feed a day. If I can average a 90% lay rate that would be 30 eggs per kg of feed and my feed runs 18 baht a kg. All of this is with no selective breeding. I am setting about 12 out of 16 eggs for 7 days on and 7 days off so I have room. When I get most of my cages filled with layers, I will start serious selection for some new breeders. When I hatch the 100 eggs, I will do a very accurate FCR so will know how profitable the males will be. I can't get the feed I need so I am mixing my own to 29% protein. As I am focused on quail and have all the layers I need, I am holding off on hatching out chickens unless I get an order.

We have the quail house finished and I am running power out there so will start moving everything out there next week. As soon as most of my cages are built I will put in automatic waterers so the work load will be really light. If anyone else is involved with quail, I would like to swap stories.

[pigeonjake]

ive sent you a pm mate about feed,

jake

[turnpike]

Never ate quail or quail egg, but just want to comment on an interesting thread.

I'm assuming your predator was a dog?

Good luck with your enterprise, look forward to reading more.

Edit: do you find it difficult to find a market, particularly for the meat? Just that in my little corner of Thailand (khon kaen area), I've never seen it nor heard of it for sale.

Edited September 12, 2014 by turnpike

[Jotham79]

Never ate quail or quail egg, but just want to comment on an interesting thread.

I'm assuming your predator was a dog?

Good luck with your enterprise, look forward to reading more.

Edit: do you find it difficult to find a market, particularly for the meat? Just that in my little corner of Thailand (khon kaen area), I've never seen it nor heard of it for sale.

There are a couple of people that sell eggs in the market (bags of 50 or 100 speckled eggs) and occasionally you will see someone selling little fried eggs. We sell some boiled (8 for 10) baht but we never had a problem selling eggs before. There is no bad cholesterol in quail eggs and the meat is very low in cholesterol. My wife will go to the market with 15 or so dressed quail and can usually sell those. I eat several every week. Eventually, we will start getting people to stop by and purchase some. If you saw Thai quail in the market, you might not recognize them as they are very small. You might also see them at a food stall in a night market where they have frogs, quail, fish....to cook.