Feeding quail — what to feed at which age, and what you can skip

Which feed quail need at which age, why the form of the feed matters, how much water they need, and which supplements are unnecessary or actually harmful.

Quail are fed a ready-made complete feed for quail, pheasants or turkeys — poultry feed for chickens has too little protein for them. Chicks get a starter feed with a high crude protein content, generally in the range of 24 to 28 per cent; from about the third to fourth week of life you change over to a rearing feed with about 18 to 22 per cent, and laying birds then need a layer feed with roughly 20 to 24 per cent crude protein and considerably more calcium. Almost everything else you can save yourself: home-mixed grain without a protein source, kitchen scraps as the basis of the ration, and most of the supplements on offer.

The figures are practical ranges. What counts is the declaration on the sack you actually buy, and not a guide value from the internet.

Feed by stage of life

Stage	Crude protein (range)	Form	Note
chicks, about week 1 to 3	around 24 to 28 %	mash or fine crumb	starter or rearing feed for quail, pheasants or turkeys
rearing, from about week 3 to 4	around 18 to 22 %	fine crumb	change over gradually, not from one day to the next
laying birds, from the start of lay	around 20 to 24 %	crumb or mash	additional calcium requirement for the shell
birds for meat	around 22 to 26 %	crumb	higher protein share right through to the end
resting or non-laying birds	at the lower end of the range	crumb	layer feed with a high calcium content is not needed here

Two points about this table matter more than the percentages themselves.

First: the change to layer feed belongs at the start of lay and not on a calendar date. Layer feed contains considerably more calcium for shell formation, and for a bird that is not laying at all yet that quantity is not a precaution but a burden.

Second: a feed is either a complete feed or it is not. If you eke out a declared complete feed by half with wheat, you have halved the protein and mineral content without it saying so on the sack.

Why the form of the feed matters

A quail's beak is a few millimetres long. What a chicken picks up comfortably is a lump for a quail — and out of reach for a newly hatched chick. The form of the feed is therefore not a side issue:

Chicks need mash or a very fine crumb. Commercial chick feed is often still

too coarse; it can be ground down further in a mill, a mortar or a blender.

Pellets are generally too big for quail. They are not eaten but pushed

aside, and what is left lying spoils.

Very fine mash makes dust. Moistened mash solves the problem, but it

spoils quickly and then has to be given fresh several times a day.

Quail scratch in the trough. A trough with an inward-turned lip or with

grid bars over it costs little and saves feed every day.

Water

Water is the part of the ration that is most often underestimated. Over the day quail take up several times the amount of water as feed — considerably more in summer than in winter — and an empty or dirty drinker takes effect faster than any mistake in the feed.

Always available. Not rationed, not only in the morning.
Fresh daily, and the vessel wiped out regularly. In warm water with feed

residues a biofilm forms within a day.

For chicks shallow, or secured with stones. A quail chick is tiny and

drowns in an ordinary bowl. The usual solutions are shallow saucers with a layer of marbles or clean pebbles in them, or small inverted-jar drinkers with a narrow rim. After the first few days the vessel can be made larger.

Frost-free in winter, shaded in summer.

Grit and calcium are two different things

The two are often lumped together, and each has a different purpose.

Grit is insoluble, hard material — fine gravel or quartz sand in a suitable grain size. Birds have no teeth; the grinding takes place in the gizzard, and there the grit works as a mill. If you feed nothing but ready-made crumb, you can manage without it at a pinch. As soon as whole grains, greens or insects come into it, grit belongs on the menu.

Calcium is soluble — mussel shell, oyster shell grit, or well-dried and crushed eggshell. It supplies the calcium for the eggshell. Offer it to laying birds in a small container of its own for free choice, rather than mixing it into the feed: the birds take what they need, and the requirement varies.

If you use eggshell, dry it and crush it far enough that it is no longer recognisable as eggshell.

Greens and kitchen scraps

Fresh greens and small extras are a sensible variation and an occupation, but they are trimmings. As a rule of thumb: whatever is given on top should not exceed a small share of the daily ration, otherwise it dilutes exactly the protein you bought an expensive complete feed for.

Suitable in small amounts and finely chopped:

lettuce, herbs, dandelion, chickweed, nettle (wilted)
grated carrot, cucumber, steamed pumpkin
rolled oats, boiled egg, unseasoned boiled rice
mealworms and other insects as an occasional addition

What does not belong in the trough:

Anything salted, seasoned, fried or sweet. Quail tolerate salt badly;

processed leftovers are almost always salted.

Mouldy feed or bread of any kind. Moulds in grain and bread are one of the

most common and most insidious causes of losses. When in doubt, throw it away.

Avocado, raw beans, green patches and sprouts on potatoes, rhubarb leaves.
Onions and garlic in any appreciable quantity, chocolate, coffee.
Long, fibrous grass. It can mat together in the crop. Always cut greens

short.

If there are signs of illness — birds sitting apathetically, fluffed up, leaving their feed or showing diarrhoea — then the feed is not the right question. That is a matter for the vet.

How much goes through

A fully grown bird eats roughly in the range of 20 to 30 grams of feed a day. In the first few days chicks are down at a few grams and work their way up to the figure for adult birds over the weeks.

This range is a pointer for buying and nothing more. Actual consumption depends on the line and the weight of the birds, on the ambient temperature — in the cold it rises considerably — on the energy content of the feed, on the laying performance and on the design of your troughs. If you want a figure of your own, weigh: note what goes in over a fixed period, at the end subtract the feed left in the trough and in the opened sack, and divide by the number of birds and the number of days. After two or three periods you have a figure that holds for your own stock.

In practice: Spillage and vermin ruin any consumption calculation. What you work out at the end of the period is not consumption per bird, but everything that has disappeared from the sack. Quail scratch in the shallow trough and throw a considerable part of it over the side; what lands on the bedding is only partly picked up again and still turns up in your calculation as consumption. Mice and rats quietly take their share from the storage sack and, at night, from the troughs, and storage pests and damp do the rest. Three measures are usually enough: troughs with an inward-turned lip instead of open bowls, feed in tight containers of metal or firm plastic instead of in the paper sack, and a look at the floor before you take your fine figure at face value. A consumption figure that jumps from one period to the next for no apparent reason is usually not a statement about the birds, but about the trough or the store room.

What you can skip

A good complete feed, clean water, grit and, for laying birds, a calcium source cover the requirement. Vitamin preparations and supplements "for support" generally achieve nothing in healthy birds fed to their requirements. Save yourself the switching out of nervousness as well: anyone who changes brand every three weeks creates exactly the unrest they are trying to fight — and will never find out which feed was the better one for their own stock.