Buying quail — what to look for at the breeder

Why you should see the flock before you buy, what speaks for hatching eggs, chicks or adult birds, and how many quail make sense for a first group at home.

Buy where you are allowed to see the flock with your own eyes, and start with fewer birds than you actually want. For most beginners, young birds shortly before point of lay are the calmest way in: you see what you are getting, and you need neither an incubator nor a brooder. Anyone who meets a seller who gives information readily and asks questions himself has already found the most important thing.

Hatching eggs, chicks or adult birds

All roads lead to a group of quail, but they demand different things — equipment, time and the willingness to deal with losses and with cocks.

What you buy	In favour	Against
Hatching eggs	Cheap, wide choice of colour varieties, no risk of disease from bought-in birds, shipping possible	Incubator and experience needed, hatch rate uncertain, about half turn out to be cocks
Chicks	An experience, cheap, birds grow into your husbandry	Heat source needed, sex still open, the most delicate phase of life is with you
Young birds shortly before point of lay	Sex can be determined, you see the condition of the birds, short wait until the first egg	More expensive, adjustment to new husbandry
Adult, laying hens	Eggs at once, robust	Age often unclear, best laying period possibly over, a seller rarely parts with good birds without a reason

One uncomfortable truth is part of hatching eggs and chicks: roughly half the birds are cocks, and you cannot keep more than one to three to five hens without the group suffering. Anyone who does not want to think the giving away or slaughtering of surplus cocks through to the end does better to buy hens straight away.

In practice: Why the parent birds decide the hatch rate. With hatching eggs you are not buying a product but the result of a way of keeping that began weeks ago. Fertility and hatchability depend on how the parent birds are kept: on the ratio of cock to hens, on the age of the group — very young and very old ones deliver poorer results —, on the supply of protein, minerals and vitamins, on the length of lighting, on stress. What comes afterwards you can only make worse: storage time and storage temperature of the eggs, jolting, cleanliness of the shell. That is why two questions matter more than the price — how old the parent birds are and how old the eggs are when they are handed over. And that is why collected eggs as a rule hatch better than shipped ones: shipping costs hatch without anyone having done anything wrong.

How to recognise a well-run flock

Drive over. A half-hour visit says more than any advertisement.

Smell. Crouch down; at bird height you smell what does not stand out when

you are standing. A sharp smell of ammonia is the single most telling sign there is — it means damp, overstocked or cleaned too seldom.

Dryness. Bedding that trickles instead of sticking. Damp spots under the

drinker and the roosting places are the beginning of almost every problem.

Space and structure. Cover, a dry dust bath, several feeding and drinking

places spread around the space instead of everything in one corner.

The birds themselves. Smooth, clean plumage, clear wide-open eyes, silent

breathing. The group should react to you — run towards you or run away, but not sit there indifferent.

Tameness. Birds handled daily are alert but not panicky. A group that flies

up all together has rarely been handled.

Willingness to give information. The best test is a question to which there

is no pretty answer: how many birds have you lost in the past year. Someone who answers calmly and specifically runs a flock. Someone who evades or says "none at all" does not.

Age of the birds. A breeder knows it, and the age of the parent birds too.

If nobody can name a hatch date, the records are in the same state as the house.

Questions you ask before the purchase

Exactly how old are the birds, and which hatch do they come from.
What are they eating at the moment, which brand, which grain size. You need a

small supply of it for the changeover.

Are they siblings. To build up a breeding line you need two unrelated lines,

otherwise you will be stuck in two years.

Do all the birds come from the seller's own flock, and when did an outside

bird last join it.

Have there been diseases, losses or treatments in the past months.
How are the birds housed — floor with bedding or wire, indoors or outdoors.
With hens: are they laying yet, and since when.
What has to be done about papers, identification and registration. Sales,

registration and hygiene requirements are regulated differently by federal state and district; what counts is the information from your veterinary office or your district administration. Clear that up before the purchase, not after.

How many birds to start with

Small groups have proved themselves for a first flock — in hobby keeping many start with about five to ten birds. Quail are group animals; below four birds it gets restless, and a single bird is not an option.

On the ratio: if you only want eggs for the kitchen, keep a hen-only group. That is the quietest option, the hens lay just the same without a cock, and there are no harried birds and no racket early in the morning. If you want to breed, a cock joins them at one to three to five hens — fewer hens per cock means worn backs and unrest. Two cocks in a small group almost never goes well.

Take all the birds from the same source and of the same age if you can. A group put together from two flocks brings two disease histories and a pecking order that has yet to be fought out.

In practice: Why too many birds is the most common beginner's mistake. The wish is understandable — quail are small, they cost little, there is room in the house, and twenty birds sound hardly different from ten. In practice this doubles every mistake you inevitably make at the start: moisture, because more birds produce more droppings and more breath moisture than bedding and ventilation can cope with. Unrest, because the group sits too close together. Time spent every single day, in the rain and in the holidays too. And eggs that nobody eats: a small group already lays more than most households use. On top of that, you first have to learn the normal state of your birds, and that works far better with five birds you can tell apart than with thirty. You can always increase the number later — then you know what you are doing. Scaling back down is far harder, because giving birds away is more trouble than buying them.

Transport

Transport is the hardest hour in the life of a bought bird. Keep it short and boring.

Container: a solid, dark transport box or a carton with many small air

holes, low enough that the birds cannot fly up. The floor belongs bedded so that it is not slippery.

Set them apart if cocks are among them or birds come from different groups.

In close quarters they peck. Do not overfill, but do not be too generous either: the birds should not be thrown about the box.

Heat is more dangerous than cold. A car in the sun becomes a trap within

minutes. Drive in the cool of the morning or in the evening, put the box in the footwell, and never leave the vehicle standing in the sun. In frost the reverse applies: short and without draught.

Water does not belong in the box — it slops and soaks the birds. On longer

journeys a slice of cucumber is the simplest solution.

Drive straight home, without a second appointment.

The first days at home

Put the birds in and leave them in peace. Water comes first, then the seller's accustomed feed, which you change over to your own slowly across one to two weeks. An abrupt change of feed together with transport and new surroundings is one burden too many.

In the first days do without visitors and without any handling that has no reason. Reckon on the hens not laying for one to two weeks — that is normal and no sign of a bad purchase.

If you already have quail, keep the new ones separate at first: their own space, their own equipment, always seen to last, for two to three weeks. After that it is best to put both groups into a freshly set-up area at the same time, so that nobody is defending a territory.

What speaks against bargains from the classifieds

There is nothing to be said against classified ads — many good breeders advertise there. Against the bargain there is. Strikingly cheap offers are seldom generosity but usually one of three things: a flock is being broken up because it has problems; hens are past their best laying period; or they are surplus cocks being sold as "quail".

Three points make the difference between an advertisement and a purchase:

Collection from the seller instead of a handover in a car park. Someone who

does not want to show the flock has a reason for it.

A seller who asks questions. Someone who does not care where his birds go

did not care how they were kept either.

Reachable afterwards. A breeder you can ring in four weeks with a question

is worth more than the difference in price.

The saving on the purchase is small against what a sick bought-in bird costs — in time, in birds and in pleasure.