Raising Quail Articles

As the daylight hours grow shorter here in the United States. The egg laying and quail breeding season starts to slow down and eventually stop. Even if you are a quail farmer that is raising quail to lay all year long, using artificial means. Your layers and breeder quail need a break, the laying season does take its toll on them. They need time to rejuvenate and get their strength back up to start again.

I feel that it is a good idea to let them stop naturally. Once they have stopped, take them off of their breeder or layer diet that they should be on. Put them back on the developer diet and give them around a 3 month rejuvenation period if using artificial means. This will give you much better results and keep your quail healthier. Then the last 2 weeks of the quail’s 3 month break, you can get them started back on the quail breeder feed. This would probably be around January or so.

If you are raising quail to just let everything happen naturally. Then once the quail have stopped laying, just put them back on their developer feed and perform good management procedures. Then put your breeder or layer quail back on the layer diet 2 weeks before the season starts again. The middle of March or early April.

This is also a good time to reflect on your quail breeding season. If you are raising quail as a business or trying to head into that direction. You will definitely not want to be wasting your money on the quail that did not meet your expectations during the breeding season.

If you are not raising quail for meat purposes, then the quail you keep and feed over the winter are overhead. Remember if your quail are not laying eggs to make you money, then they are costing you money. I know this can be a hard decision, but if you are raising quail to make money. Then it may be a good idea to just keep your best breeders over the winter months. Feed is expensive, this will help you cut down on that overhead. Just make sure depending on the type of winter’s you have, that you keep enough quail so they can form their covey to keep warm.

In other parts of the world however, your quail breeding season is just starting. So I wish all of you a very healthy and productive quail raising season.

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Copyright © Gary Ortlieb
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Quail disease, Ulcerated or Ulcerative Enteritis affects Bobwhite, California, Mountain and Gambel’s quail, Sharptail and Ruffed grouse, Chukar and European partridge, Wild turkey, and of course domestic poultry. If you are in the game bird business (or hobby) you have either a chronic, periodic, or infrequent outbreak, or a consistent fear of Enteritis. This one disease of quail nearly makes a preventative level of antibiotic in feed a necessity. News articles about antibiotic bans in livestock heap an additional layer of stress on the al-ready stressed bird grower.

Take heart! Your tax money is working for the game bird industry (and Hobbyists) at the Agricultural Research Service Laboratory in College Station, Texas. A valiant effort at decreasing food borne illness will give the game bird industry a much needed product. Expensive antibiotics will be replaced with a reasonably priced, chemically non-controversial alternative that probably works better. All we have to do is wait for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve it for use.

Chlorate is so inexpensive that it is used to bleach paper during manufacture. Chlorate is the control for Enteritis long sought. This is how it works. Disease organisms that grow without oxygen cause terrible disease problems. Most intestinal bacteria that do not cause problems but maintain good intestinal health need oxygen to thrive. During periods of disease the bacteria in the intestines become imbalanced with the bad bacteria overwhelming good bacteria. Clostridium colinum is the disease agent of Enteritis. Clostridia can thrive in conditions without oxygen. They can be anaerobic. When these bacteria grow without oxygen they use other chemical to get their oxygen. They usually use nitrogen compounds to do this, but if chlorate is available they will convert chlorate to chlorite. Here is the best part; chlorite is poisonous to these bad bacteria – so they make their own poison and die. The good bacteria only use oxygen so they are not killed, maintaining a healthy balance in the intestines. Good-by Enteritis!

Now you may ask, “How expensive this stuff will be?” It is much cheaper than antibiotics. Also, the chlorate method was developed to prevent Salmonella poisoning in food. So it is very likely to be approved by the FDA. In this case more than one problem is solved, research is good. You never know what will be discovered!

(The above article is from: Wildlife Harvest, Vol. 37 NO. 6, June 2006 and was written by Lee Cartwright.)

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To find out more about Raising Quail visit:
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When raising quail in ground pens, this can create many disease problems. Especially when living in a damp or wet environment. The droppings from the quail build up on the ground over time and with wet or damp conditions, this allows bacteria and/or parasites to enter. Once this happens, it will start entering you quail’s system which will cause disease outbreaks.

Some breeders may get lucky and be able to avoid this problem for awhile. I have actually heard breeders bragging about never having this problem. If they keep raising their quail on the same ground, under these conditions, it will catch up with them.

The only possible way to raise quail in ground pens without moving them about every 3 to 4 months. Would be to live in almost arid conditions. The sun acts as a natural disinfectant and in dry conditions would keep the bacteria and parasites down to a minimum or not allow them to be a factor at all.

So what would be the answer to this potential huge problem:

1.) Would be to have several pens. Start out with your raising your quail in just one of these pens. Then after the breeding season, if not sooner. Move them to your other pen. I say after the breeding season, because when your quail are still breeding. Moving them during this period will probably cause stress on your quail and could create a pause in their breeding, unless you have your breeders in separate breeding pens . Then you would need to plow or turn the ground over (very deeply) in the pen that has been used. Doing this will put all of the droppings underground and the sun will disinfect the ground.

2.) The other solution would be to have a movable pen. This would save on the cost of having separate pens. It also may not cause as much stress when moving. You would still have to tend to the ground of the previous location, but it would be a lot easier to get to.

I just came across a web site that explains how to construct a movable pen. You may have to make some modifications to these plans for raising quail. But I think it is pretty unique.
Here is the link to the web site: http://www.utm.edu/departments/cece/idea/mopens.shtml

About the Author:
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To find out more about Raising Quail visit:
How to Raise Quail.com
Copyright © Gary Ortlieb
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