Raising quail part 1: A permaculture powerhouse

To launch a series about raising quail, I'll start with their many benefits.

Quail, specifically, Coturnix quail (Cortunix japanoica) can be overlooked. The COVID Victory Garden boom and the egg shortage-induced runs on feed stores for baby chicks fueled emphasis on raising chickens. Most folks consider the chicken to be “the gateway to homesteading” and I feel like quail get passed over. Coturnix quail are actually, “the smallest possible avian species raised for meat and egg production.”

Chickens offer great benefits. I always say our primary chicken harvests are eggs and entertainment, but they can offer excellent compost, help manage food waste, aid in pest management and soil building through strategic rotational grazing with other livestock and, if you have a rooster and plan to raise chickens for meat, they can be a great sustainable food source. However, quail can do all this too, and they do it faster, and they do more.

My first experience hatching quail happened many moons ago when I was 9. My dad had ordered Coturnix quail eggs from a catalog. The tiny speckled eggs arrived in the mail and we placed them in an equally tiny yellow incubator that looked like a spaceship. We turned the eggs several times per day for two weeks. A few days later, two quail chicks hatched. (By luck, we hatched one hen and one rooster, so we were able to try hatching out more later on.)

It wasn’t until a few decades later that I decided to bring quail back into my life. As a kid, we didn’t use the quail for anything other than eggs and entertainment. As an adult, an avid gardener, and a permaculture designer, I chose to add quail to our homestead because I want each animal that we introduce here to not only serve a purpose, but many purposes.

A blue quail egg from one of our Celadon quail. Celadon are a rare strain of Coturnix quail that lay blue eggs.

Let’s get past the basics. Common reasons to start raising quail:

1. Eggs. If you’re interested in making your diet more nutritious, quail eggs are nutritionally superior to chicken eggs. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a quail egg contains 64 mg of calcium and 1.32 g polyunsaturated fat (the omega-3 fatty acids that our body can’t make on its own). A quail egg is about one-fourth the size of a chicken egg, so take into account an equivalent serving size would have 4 times as many nutrients. A chicken egg’s nutritional content has 48 mg of calcium and 1.82 g polyunsaturated fat. Another benefit of quail eggs, they can be used raw without risk of salmonella. Raw quail eggs are often used in Japanese dishes, with steak tartare, and in Caesar salad dressings. In 2019, the International Journal of Current Research published a study that showed, out of more than 350 quail eggs, none had salmonella. Other claims, none that I could find validated, purport that quail have antibodies that prevent salmonella from living in their digestive tracts, so it doesn’t carry on to their eggs or droppings.

2. Limited space requirements. Quail actually prefer smaller spaces for their covey (the quail word for a flock). As ground-dwellers, they don’t need high spaces to roost. They also do better in enclosures that don’t have a high ceiling or roof because a quail’s instinct when threatened is to jump/fly up very fast. With high ceilings, they’re prone to break their neck or hit their head and hemorrhage. (We unfortunately had firsthand experience with this with one of our quail in our main enclosure, which is only 5 feet high at its peak.) Some apartment dwellers are known to keep quail on their balconies (or even inside) because they’re very quiet and don’t need much room. Modified rabbit hutches are popular with folks who choose to raise their quail off the ground.

3. Loophole to chicken restrictions. Most homeowners associations or municipalities that ban chicken keeping often have language in their bylaws or regulations that ban livestock and/or poultry. Technically, quail aren’t always labeled livestock or poultry. Quail are game birds. Of course, check the regulations specific to where you live to verify the language used. If you rent, read your lease too. Quail are also very quiet, which helps quell fears associated with loud chicken roosters.

Our three-season quail cottage and coop.

Now, let’s move beyond the basics. A few reasons why quail can be a permaculturist’s dream—they tie into ALL twelve permaculture design principles. I’ll only tap into a few today:

1. Observe and interact. Observing a site for a year helps to understand microclimates, challenges, and resources. The same can be said for quail. Observing your quail for a year will let you see how much waste they produce, which garden or kitchen scraps they prefer (they don’t have the same preferences as chickens!), and how they respond to climate changes through the seasons in your area. I hatched our quail in October a few years ago, which meant that in late November or early December they would have been mature enough to start laying. But we didn’t get any eggs, and I didn’t hatch all roosters. Come the spring equinox they started laying like crazy….then when the fall equinox came they immediately stopped. Going through that full year made me realize their egg production was a seasonal benefit, and that I would need to schedule my incubator rounds during that six-month window.

2. Obtain a yield. This permaculture design principle emphasizes producing something useful, and that doesn’t necessarily have to be something edible. When you design efficient spaces that mutually benefit from each other, those benefits are yields. With quail, integrating them with a landscape produces multiple yields. The spaces where they’re kept enjoy pest management, which can yield healthier, more productive plants that have minimal pest damage. Their high-nitrogen droppings can either add immediate soil benefit if they’re kept within growing spaces, such as with a quail tractor system. A quail tractor is similar to a chicken tractor, which is essentially a movable coop. Since quail like small spaces, small tractors can be easier to move. Beyond these rewards in the environment, quail mature extremely quickly in relation to chickens. Most chicken breeds take approximately 4 to 6 months to start laying eggs. Meat chickens (broilers) vary in their time to processing—high-production breeds can be ready in about 8 weeks for the freezer, some a little less. Older heritage chicken breeds can take 6 months or more. Within 6 to 8 weeks, quail are not only producing eggs, but they’re ready for processing. It helps to consider that a specific quantity of meat from one animal is not equivalent to the same amount of meat from another. Yes, quail are significantly smaller than chickens. Where one 4-pound chicken could produce several meals for a single person or a couple, one 4.5-ounce quail is a single serving size. Frontiers in Genetics published an article a few months ago in April 2023 based on research of almost 200 Coturnix quail up to 4 months old. The piece says quail meat has a “low fat content, primarily saturated fatty acid and cholesterol.” The same article (on page 2) cites a 2008 study, “a daily intake of two quails provides the human body with 27–28 g protein, 11 g of essential amino acids, and covers 40 percent of the human protein requirement.” Two years ago, the National Institute of Health published an article about the nutritional value of Coturnix quail meat. When it comes to polyunsaturated fats (remember, those are the “good” fats), quail shine. The study found that, “quail breast meat presents [a] high polyunsaturated fat content proportion, similar to turkey breast.” Combined with other citations in the study, comparing game fowls like pheasant and partridge, wild quail shows a much higher proportion of polyunsaturated fat—but farmed quail is approximately 20 percent higher than that. When trying to decide if you want to keep quail, consider what kind of yield is most valuable for you and your needs.

3. Produce no waste. Everything can be used. With our covey, the head, feathers, blood, and organs other than the heart and liver get composted and help to build soil with the intent of producing more nutrient-dense food in our garden areas. I dehydrate the hearts and livers and use them as training treats for our puppy. Our pup also enjoys a daily treat of a quail wing or foot. After a quail dinner, we save all the bones and use them to make a rich bone broth. Then all of the post-broth, soft bonemeal and marrow gets added to our pup’s dinners. Truly, nothing is wasted. Even the quails’ waste is used to fertilize growing areas. I use leaves as bedding in their run, which I scoop out and compost for the garden. Once temperatures cool down and it’s time to roll down the sides of the high tunnel, the quail spend the entire winter roaming the high tunnel and directly fertilizing the ground.

Our quail spend their winters in the high tunnel.

I’ve hatched hundreds of quail over the past few years and my latest hatch is just a few days (and some a few hours) old at the time of this writing. This post kicks off the first in a series. I’ll take you through, week by week, quail care and what to expect, plus specific tips on how to help them thrive and make it easier to care for them.