What you Need to Raise Quail

If you are making the choice to add quail to your farm- congrats! Quail is an excellent addition to any farm. There are a few things that you want to make sure that you have, however, before you begin welcoming this beautiful bird to your homestead.

1. Quail housing

Quail are wonderful birds, but they are not free range by any stretch of the imagination. They need a cage or a coop to keep predators away and, unlike other birds, if they fly away quail will not return.

Interestingly enough, the biggest threat to quail is rats, so I recommend keeping a few rat traps around the perimeter.

It is also important to note that quail droppings contain high amounts of ammonia in them, so a proper ventilation system is essential.

2. Quail Feed

It is important to note that quail are messier than other birds, so their feeders must be smaller in order to prevent food waste.

Quail will eat almost anything (another benefit to farming them) that you throw at them. Specifically, they love food scraps, worms, seeds, grains, and bugs.

There is only one thing that you should avoid feeding quail, which is chicken feed. It doesn’t have the protein that these birds need to thrive. Instead, you can look for a wild game bird feed like this one on Amazon– just make sure you look for crumbles because pellets tend to be too big.

3. Quail Vicious Behavior

Something that is important to know before adding quail to your backyard is that they can be known for their vicious behavior. This isn’t because they are aggressive birds- they are just bored.

If you can find ways to help cure their boredom, then quail are quite pleasant to have around.

Some simple ways to keep quail entertained can include adding a hollow log to their home so that they have something to crawl on. Another popular idea that quail love is to add runs as well as a place to take a dust bath.