It has been over a year (close to 2 years raising coturnix quail), so here’s my update. If I could get my pheasants to lay year round, I would exclusively raise pheasants (we are thinking about doing that anyway and letting the quail run around the enclosed garden when we move). I am loving having (pretty much) no care sources of food and a little income.
- Since the pheasants are on dirt, they do not need to be fed as often as the quail.
- Neither birds need special treatment (like chickens) but the pheasants will eat anything (just like chickens) while the quail are picky (they didn’t even like peaches).
- While both birds are easy to harvest, more quail are required per person (which takes up a lot of space in our fridge while they age).
- I receive more money per pheasant chick vs. quail (my local feed store prefers 4-6 week old quail over chicks).
- The biggest downside (so far) with the pheasants is they require more square footage.
- Both birds eat the same high protein food, so that makes feeding them simple and you do not have to switch up their food based on their age.
- 2 pheasant eggs = 1 large chicken egg
- 5 quail eggs = 1 large chicken egg
I have a few really bad (and one that is a bit more edited and not handheld) videos of my bird setups. My quail hutch I built based off a design by Slightly Rednecked on YouTube. Mine would be much lighter and easier to manage if I would have used similar materials but I reused the lumber and wanted as few cuts as possible.
My feeder is different but it’s basically the same concept. I now am using a plastic ice cream container with 1-inch pieces of PVC pipe hot glued around the base.
And here are the two videos of my automatic waterers for the birds. The first one allows you to actually see how the bird cups are attached to the PVC Ts, the second video is me rebuilding the quail setup due to algae buildup.