CPjr's market poultry projects have sparked something and he's been toying with broadening the scope of his project and raising some layers. My Aggie buddy who very generously set him up with the incubator & brooder has talked him into raising some quail. Methinks he's getting even with me for something. Akin to giving him a drum set.

This isn't on a commercial scale, just some birds to release around the yard/pasture - and I'm sure - feed the coyotes.

Just curious if any of you are into this and have any suggestions on what we need in the way of a fly pen.

I'm seriously considering a meat bird setup at the new house. I haven't had poultry before and and going to start with a few chickens. Quail looks super easy though.

I'm not wanting to release and I'm not in a place to do so (suburban Garland). I'm just interested in quality eggs and meat and getting my daughter (4 in May) more involved in her food.

I've been reading on backyardchickens.com and we'll be watching responses here.

Contact an Aggie by the name of Todd Smith in Lockhart. He raises quail for restaurants in Central Texas.

Skunks, raccoons, and hawks more than coyotes, just fyi.

I happen to like quail myself.

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This isn't on a commercial scale, just some birds to release around the yard/pasture - and I'm sure - feed the coyotes.

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Why would you release the quail? Eat the suckers.

Yo tambien. But if you're just turning them loose for fun (or for puttin' in my belluh!) then you should try some chukar too.

My dad used to. From what I recall they were pretty easy. Kept them in rabbit hutch size cages. Probably more birds per cage than we should have. Had gravity feed food and water dispensers that we would fill/refresh daily. Gathered eggs for incubator or pickled eggs. Butchered birds when we had way too many for the cage we kept them in or the hen to rooster count was too off.

Centerpole90 said:

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This isn't on a commercial scale, just some birds to release around the yard/pasture - and I'm sure - feed the coyotes.

Just curious if any of you are into this and have any suggestions on what we need in the way of a fly pen.

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Feeding hawks for the most part once you turn them out.

As for the flight pen, I would lean to the small side. The types of places that need great big flight pens are the ones marketing "flight conditioned" birds. These folks are selling birds to hunting preserves.

I've seen flight pens half the size of a football field all the way down to like the size of a bedroom. Don't make it taller than you can reach the top with a big bass fishing net.

Used to do it quite a bit so we'd have birds to help train our pointers. We would buy day old chicks and housed them in an old tool shed, about 500 square ft in size. One thing we learned the hard way was dealing with the crap. Initially we lined the floor with newspapers but the birds couldn't keep their feet clean and died. We then spread out hay and that did the trick, the crap would fall down to the floor and birds could walk on top.
Once they reached adulthood we would keep some of them in a recall pen out in the pasture and let out about half for the dogs to try and find. The remaining birds would call them back to pen, but there were always some that got eaten or disappeared. Pen raised birds don't survive very long in the wild.

They were really good eating though.

So you're gonna be hosting an OB bird shoot next year? That's my takeaway here.

Finn Maccumhail said:

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So you're gonna be hosting an OB bird shoot next year? That's my takeaway here.

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Pointing Labs from all over Texas just gonna descend on the Valley!!

I've got 17 Coturnix quail that are 6 weeks old. First group of a flock that will hopefully be 30-45 strong. I'll post some thoughts, resources, and pics when I get home tonight.

A buddy of mines mom raises quail for the restaurants on this side of the valley in a converted batting cage.

Hmmmmm..... maybe I need to rethink this; Agribusiness SAE in the making?

And thank you everyone for your comments, this is the kind of info I'm looking for.

We raised 1000 at a time. Bought the eggs and incubated them. It's not a hard process, but I wouldn't do it if you're not trying to make money and you need a big buyer(at least one).

If you flight train them the hunting clubs will buy almost all you can get. Restaurants are harder and they just don't sell as many as you'd think. You end up shipping everywhere all the time.

You also have to debeak all of them. That sucks. Takes a while. Eagleford is right. You need a long, high pen and you teach them to fly. I turned the dog loose and he'd run them from one end to the other (on the outside of the pen of course). Some will simply not fly. No idea why, they just won't. Eat those or sell to restaurants if you go that route.

Fix the flight pen so that the net moves up and down. Lower it down to catch the birds when you're ready to sell They'll never fly like real birds but I think the dog trick helped. They hated that dog and would fly as soon as they saw him coming. Lol. My dad lucked into that. He was to lazy to try and run them himself.

You won't get rich but it's a blast for kids.

Edit. Sorry. I didn't read completely. Thought you were asking for commercial. Apologies. Your kiddo will have a blast on a small scale. Bet him if he can catch them. Those turds are fassssssst. Lol

Centerpole90 said:

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Hmmmmm..... maybe I need to rethink this; Agribusiness SAE in the making?

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Take what you learned from your broilers and apply it to smaller, tastier birds. Also, it would be better than most of the "my daddy runs an Ag business and he lets me run a scaled down version of the same business" entries in that contest.

Burdizzo said:

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Contact an Aggie by the name of Todd Smith in Lockhart. He raises quail for restaurants in Central Texas.

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http://texquail.com/

Great guy.

I have raised them on occasion. I recently had 40 or so that I raised for release.

Basically, if you don't have quail now, they won't make it. For several months I would hear the bobwhite call but not in the last few months.

Reread your OP and realized you are talking game birds. Lots of good suggestions already.

If you want a meat and egg bird get some Coturnix. They have to be confined but will produce 250-300 eggs per year and can get fairly large for meat.

I do have quail. Surprisingly. The pasture around the house is improved so I was always surprised to bust a covey or see a covey running around the yard. But, around the edge of the pasture there is a native buffer that holds quail and I see them bopping around in the cotton field across the road. I guess I hoped if he released them we could augment the herd - but we have to get that far first.

My compadre' (the one that got me into this) encouraged him to leave them as 'wild' as possilble when rearing them. He said the more we jack with them the easier prey they will be for whatever comes along.

ETA - sitting on the back porch on a pretty evening and hearing a Bobwhite whistle is just about heaven.

Best thing to do is put out feeders and water sources for the native birds and eat the pen raised ones.

Centerpole90 said:

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I do have quail. Surprisingly. The pasture around the house is improved so I was always surprised to bust a covey or see a covey running around the yard. But, around the edge of the pasture there is a native buffer that holds quail and I see them bopping around in the cotton field across the road. I guess I hoped if he released them we could augment the herd - but we have to get that far first.

ETA - sitting on the back porch on a pretty evening and hearing a Bobwhite whistle is just about heaven.

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Yessir, I agree. Bobwhites whistling around the house is some good stuff.

I don't want to discourage the project cause I think it's awesome for a father son deal. But, there is zero science that says you can "augment the herd" by releasing pen raised birds. Trust me I have tried. I wanted to have more birds so I hoped that it would work too.

They will be alive for a while and you will think that you really are adding to your bird numbers. That's what we thought. But none of them will survive the winter and not a one of them will ever hatch a nest. That's the hard facts.

The good news is that you can add wild birds to your herd though. Take the Field of Dreams approach. If you build it they will come. Call your local biologist and pick their brain about habitat projects.

I used to raise quail and even tried releasing some them around the place, but they didn't seem to last long. In my experience the pen raised birds just don't survive once released to the wild. I did enjoy raising them though and enjoyed listening to them.

I appreciate all the advice everyone. Just the help I was looking for. There's going to be 100 eggs hitting the mailbox about May 1. CPjr can hatch them out and we can decide where to go from there - whatever he wants to do is cool.

He started this after show season and the coop was empty. He said he'd like to raise a small number of a variety of chickens and started with 5 Polish that a buddy gave him (chicks). Those 5 are doing great and making themselves right at home pecking around the steer barn - but I need to build some improved quarters because the first time I catch them roosting on a galvanized Purlin Ima slap those silly feathers off their faces.

The quail will probably be a one tine thing - we won't know until we get there, but in sure they'll give way to chickens eventually. I will post progress photos.

I had a friend that used to work with the Bobwhite Brigades. I was talking to him this year while we were hunting in the Panhandle about releasing quail into the wild. He mentioned a time when I am not sure if was TPWD or another group that released a good amount of birds on and area of grade A habitat. He said the birds proceeded to run clean out of that area(big area) and into horrible habitat and eventually gone(dead).

Also I think the Mortality rate of wild quail is like 70%. That's a lot of quail that die every year.

Second the hawks, the blue quail will run for whatever cover they can find when ones around, including burrows.
First time I saw that, I was like I'll be dad gum, a few squeezed into a burrow.

We raised some for a while many years ago along with Pheasant. It was fun, battled fire ants and snakes for a while when we first started. Had to de-beak. The Bobs we had in cages would call others in to them their were wild. Have not seen any around parents place in many years though.

Centerpole?

https://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2848388

Why do you have to debeak them?

Dirty little cannibals

I loved having quail, a ranch I used to work on always had 100-300 in a large cage at the headquarters. Mostly for quail hunts but also consumption. It was nice to go grab 2-3 when you were hungry and grill quail and drink cold beer.
They were always supposed to be flight-trained when we bought them, but we would test em with my border collie before we put em out to hunt. There were always a few lazy ones that my dog got to chew on.

Guess who doesn't comprehend the ordering process at Murray McMurray very well. We had the incubator all set up and up to temp - but where we are going we wont be needing that....

Bumble bees

I threw up the plexiglass and busted out some shavings real quick to get them out of that box. Those little *******s run like water. It was like trying to pin down a ball of mercury with a pencil. They found every little crevice and squirted out one at a time. Finally, though I got them corralled, to temp, and watered. Now running to grab some feed. Wasn't expecting live chicks today.

I thought this was your kid's project...?