[john and helen]

Lidle are doing 4 for £5 in the freezer department…

[Sbom]

Not sure how they'll work out as layers........

[in the hills]

 

We've only kept them for their eggs.

A friend bought some hatching eggs of Italian jumbo I think they were described as. She hoped they would be more 'dual purpose'. She had some of my Japanese in with them and there didn't seem to be much size difference in the end. Maybe just the eggs she bought. 

[Victorian Farmer]

The medicated chick crumbs got them to size and laying quicker and diesese resistent .Then chick crumbs.

[Clarebelle]

We started keeping quail for meat and eggs last year. We have a mix of japanese jumbo and golden jumbo. They were originally kept in an eglu but they made so much mess and were so hard to clean out that they went in a large rabbit hutch instead.

We kept 1 cock to 8 hens and had a very good hatch rate. The hens lay an egg a day. We fed the chicks on un medicated chick crumb which we ground even finer for the first couple of days. We buy marridges quail pellets online at £6 for 10kg plus postage.

When I cook them i usually do them in the slow cooker and remove them before serving, take all the meat off the bones and put the meat back into the dish. That way we get every last bit of meat and it also helps with my children, we have three young children who might struggle with the small bones. I find that doing it this way you only need a bird each as the meat is richer than chicken, although i don't find it particularly gamey.

they are lovely birds to watch, they make lovely noises as they potter about and mine sing when they lay an egg just like chickens do. The cocks crow can be loud but not compared to a cockeral.