KEEPING QUAIL | SIMPLE QUAIL SETUP
COTURNIX QUAIL ARE PRETTY AWESOME.
In my personal opinion, Coturnix quail (also known as Japanese quail) are one of the best backyard poultry. Good as pets, to keep for eggs or even rear for meat, they don’t require a lot of space, are quieter than chickens and are cheap to keep.
Luckily, if you’re delving into quail keeping for the first time, you can create a setup pretty simply, quickly and cheaply. I’m not going to lie … you’ll find yourself getting more and more because it’s addictive. But to start out, you don’t need much.
HOUSING
For a small trio or quartet of quail, something as simple and easy as a rabbit hutch can be the ideal solution. Purpose quail coops can be quite expensive, but there are plenty of rabbit hutches on Amazon that are perfect. I keep my 15 quail in a two story hutch; they’re not very good at working out how to use the ramp so the penthouse is normally empty!
Many quail farmers keep their quail on wire because I’m going to tell you - quail are MESSY. They do not scratch around in the dirt or shavings like chickens. They just poop on top, run around in it and compact it into a thick mat (as you can see in the video below). However, I still prefer to give my quail shavings and just clean them out regularly. A sand bath helps to keep their toes clean of poop balls too.
USE PINE SHAVINGS AS AN IDEAL BEDDING MATERIAL
FOOD AND WATER
As mentioned, quail are messy. They don’t care where they flick their food. They don’t care how much water they spill. I advise getting a proper chicken feeder or something similar rather than just offering a dish. Within minutes, the dish will be emptied of food and probably be full of poop instead. You can buy custom quail food but I provide the same layers pellets that I feed to my hens. They get additional bugs I collect from the garden, and greens picked from the vegetable patch.
In terms of water - again, I don’t use a chicken drinker or open dish. Instead I use a water bottle as you might give a rabbit or guinea pig. Quail pick up very quickly how to peck at the bottle and get the water. One tip - clip on a small dish beneath to catch any drips so as not to wet the bedding.
EXTRAS
Obviously, keeping coturnix quail is more than shelter + food + water = happy animal. As owners, it’s essential that we enrich animals’ lives as much as possible, even if they are being kept and bred for meat. You should consider adding:
Sandboxes - coturnix quail LOVE to dust bath. They will do this in shavings but it’s much better to provide a shallow dish of sand.
Hiding Places - Though I’ve never experienced vicious quail, they CAN be brutal to one another and scalping is a common occurrence. You can limit this by stocking at low levels, limiting the number of males and provide hiding places in cardboard boxes or behind branches.
Food enrichment - Layers pellets might keep them full, but giving greens and bugs adds a little more interest and allows Japanese quail to exhibit natural behaviours. Cut clumps of long grass for them to hide and peck through, or pinch of aphid-covered shoots in your garden for the quail to nibble.
If you’ve got any questions, please feel free to comment below. Also, feel free to take a look at my other quail articles:
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