Raising Quail with guest, Autumnprepper

Quail: The low-key source of eggs and meat with no land required!

Raising Quail with guest, Autumnprepper
Host: Renée “The Homestead Honey Hour”

Square foot gardening, vertical gardening, container gardening, edible landscaping and other innovative horticultural, techniques have made raising at least part of one’s own food achievable for many people. However, when it comes to having a sustainable protein source (beyond beans), the urban and suburban prepper / homesteader is often at a disadvantage. City dwellers or those in the ‘burbs may find they have restrictive zoning and/or a lack of land working against them when it comes to keeping a few laying hens or other livestock. But there is a solution. You just have to think outside the box. . . and smaller: Enter the Quail.

Quail have been sustaining people since Biblical times. There are few production animals as easy to keep, nor as prolific. Quail begin to lay eggs at 5 weeks of age, lay 260-300 eggs a year (which is more than the average chicken), can be kept in small, rabbit-hutch-size enclosures – even large aquariums — and are ready to butcher at 7 weeks. Due to their small size, the butchering process for quail is probably the simplest on the homestead and something even the most squeamish about such matters can accomplish. Unlike chickens which are scalded and plucked, most people raising quail prefer to skin them which makes the whole process go very quickly. As an added bonus – the average quail carcass is about 4 ounces. That’s right — they dress out into a single serving size, a great convenience!

Besides providing gourmet-delicious meat and eggs for your own table, both quail eggs and meat fetch high prices on the open market. You can buy two dozen quail eggs on line from Amazon for $16, (for example), and the Local Harvest website lists frozen packages of two quail for $10 each. Raising breeding stock can also be profitable . Many folks have discovered raising quail leads to a lucrative home-based, income source as well.

Now, even if you’re on acres and acres of land in the middle of nowhere and could have a herd of elephants if you desired, raising quail is still worth investigating. They store easily “on-the-hoof” until needed, add variety to your diet, and there’s no extra meat to preserve when you do process them. On the other hand, if you’re in an urban environment and want to add a source of fresh eggs to your food storage, (as well as having an animal that provides meat) all “under the radar” from your neighbors — you’ve found your critter!

So tune in to the Homestead Honey Hour Thursday, November 21st when it will be my pleasure to host “Autumn” from the Autumnprepper channel on youtube. Autumn raises Quail and will be on hand to educate us on what it takes to raise these diminutive, but invaluable birds.
MichiganSnowPony YouTube channel: Here!

Listen to this broadcast on Raising Quail in player below!

You can also listen to archived shows of all our hosts . Go to show schedule tab at top of page!
Put our players on your web site Go Here! 
You can also listen, download, or use your own default player for this show by clicking Here!