#Quail for me had a rough start with the quality of the birds I got

[kedreeva]

Hi Ked! Having chickens when I finally get my own place has been something I've wanted for a while (am currently putting it on hold despite in the near future acquiring said own place due to H5N1). However, I have become a little enamored of quail recently in comparison. My goal would be to have eggs and fluffy yard buddies, do you recommend either one over the other?

If you want birds that can free roam your yard, it can't be quail. They are game birds, like pheasants, and will just leave (or get immediately eaten by.... everything, but especially hawks and domestic cats.

If you don't mind having them contained, then 100% quail are a better option right now.

Quail don't take up nearly the same space; an average sized quail tower takes up approximately a 2x3 foot space, and depending on how many levels you have and how densely you populate them can hold anywhere from 15-40 quail. That amount of space cannot even house 1 chicken long term.

Quail are not NEARLY the same initial investment; on average people end up investing around $200-500 in quail equipment/caging/birds depending on how into it you want to get, and $2k+ in appropriate chicken equipment/caging/birds. These costs can vary greatly depending on how handy you are and what connections you have to acquire scrap materials, or how fancy you want to get.

Since quail are not kept on raw ground, they have MUCH fewer health problems on average- they rarely get parasites, they rarely pick up bacterial infections, they rarely pick up anything viral (and if their caging is kept in a more enclosed/covered space there is almost no chance of them picking up HPAI). Since they're contained, there's not very much chance for them to injure themselves (although like any bird, if there's a way they have the will to find it).

Their eggs are more nutritionally dense than chickens. You can compare nutrition per gram anywhere online.

They're (in my experience) more consistent layers than chickens; give them light and feed, and they will lay daily year round, only taking a break to molt in the fall.

Quail's full lifespan is shorter than chickens. This may seem like a downside, but the productive years for a chicken are generally 2-5 years, with a lifespan that should be 7-12 years. Quail have the same 2 years of production, but on average only live 3-5 years, so even if you don't want to butcher the spent hens (which most people do), you aren't caring for nonproductive birds for many years.

Quail are easy to butcher at home with almost no equipment- all you need is a hefty, sharp pair of kitchen shears, a 5g bucket (with or without a liner), and some ice water in a big bowl. No plucking, no scalding, no killing cones, nothing special for cleaning. They can be packed for freezing whole in vacuum sealed sleeves.

If you get or build rollout cages, the eggs gently roll to the front of the cage and "out" into the tray, where they can be picked up clean!

If you get or build wire-bottom cages, you don't technically have to buy bedding. Cost efficient! You can provide resting boards or have solid-bottom portions of the cage, and giving them a sand bath bin will be REALLY exciting for them.

Coturnix quail come in such a huge variety of color and patterns that you can surely find some type you like.

Both species can come with aggression issues- it takes FAR less time to breed it out of quail because they hit breeding age in a matter of weeks, not months.

The downside to quail is that most coturnix quail are not terribly cuddly. you might be able to imprint one (I did once, because my pigeons hatched him and then didn't like that, so I took Robert in), but the majority will just be cute look-don't-touch birds. They are FASCINATING to watch though, so it works out imo.

the downside to both species is. the roosters crow. terrible noises in both cases. I couldn't handle chicken roosters.

Anyway, I think that in all honesty, when MOST people are considering getting into chickens, what they ACTUALLY want is the experience of having quail. Small, cute, easy to handle/raise, genetic manipulation through generations of selective breeding easy to hatch, cute eggies. There's a LOT of people getting into chickens right now because they think it will be a solution to the expensive eggs in the supermarket, but it won't be. They'll end up spending more on the chickens than they ever would have on just getting eggs, and throw a stone in a chicken group on fb and you'll hit 17 people who have had horrific health issues related to parasites, illness, injury, predation, etc.

Meanwhile.... quail groups are largely chill and questions are usually about colors and feed/housing (since most of the problems are bad feeding habits or caging, or genetic issues).

[kedreeva]

This might be an odd thing to ask but my friend just had to do their first cull (quail) and is feeling a little freaked out by it still. Do you maybe have any advice for like, coping with that?

I'll put this under a cut, since it involves animal death

I guess it depends on what they are freaking out about, the physical sensation of any part of it (for instance, if they did a butcher job to use the meat, instead of a euthanasia job for burial or something) or the empathy part of it (taking a life personally).

If it's the former, rub your (general you) hands on some kind of rough surface (like a bristle brush/dish scrub brush), trim your nails short, and take a long, hot shower, and light a smelly candle. It won't particularly stop you from thinking about it, but it will make sure that the actual physical stimuli that remind you (ghost sensations on nerves, any remaining scent of blood or offal or dander, sound) get pushed back in memory behind the new sensations and/or removed.

The empathy part is harder, and there's just not a lot you (again, general you) can do about it, and I think that's okay, actually. It SHOULD freak you out the first time you take a life, and it should freak you out a little every time after that, because it gives weight to this action that this action wholly deserves. You are ending a life that you were responsible for starting, and that's heavy and deserves respect. This is the reality of breeding and raising animals for use, and at the end of the day, your friend will have to sit with that, and decide if they're okay with it if they want to keep doing it. There's no shortcut in this matter.

Some of the things I do made it easier to come to terms with for me. The first is to do my best to produce animals that WILL have a use (as opposed to producing just to produce and not having a plan for what to do with them), and the second is to use as much of what you produce as possible. For me, this means either selling the birds to others for use, or using the meat/bones myself and giving the rest back to nature (usually my crows come and eat offal the same day I do butchering). I find it easier to handle if I set the expectation from the start that a bird will be a use animal not a pet animal (ie, food or eggs or whatever that I intend to invest time and care into, compared to a companion I would emotionally invest in as well)- being able to compartmentalize this distinction is essential, and there are also going to be times when you have to make the sucky decision to end an animal you got emotionally invested in anyway (illness, injury, old age, behavioral changes, etc) because you're human and that's what we often do. I'm also more comfortable culling if I know the animal will have/has had a quality life (both because the meat will be better and because they deserve it). Lastly, it helps to remind myself that I produce some animals for a purpose and when I cull they are either fulfilling that purpose (used by me/others) or they are incapable of fulfilling that purpose (free to go to others/rest). Keeping them longer than that is, imo, a disservice to them.

I'm sorry there's not an easy fix-it. I hope that your friend is able to recover and keep raising quail, if they enjoy the rest of it.