40 days ago, I put 9 quail eggs into my incubator.
3 days ago, I moved them outside into their new pen.

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Esmeralda and Bob, 11 days old
on top of the heat plate
_{Yes, they are meant to sit under it ...}

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Some time in April, I was looking for a second hand woodchipper.
During my research, I found an ad for 7 week old quail. I called the guy spontaniously and prepared myself for picking up 4 hens.
It took me longer than I had expected to fix the pen and when I called again 2 days later, the guy had already sold all his stock. I was already committed now, because I had spend an afternoon refurbishing the chicken coop.
I could not find any live quail , so I ordered the cheapest incubator I could find ( motor, egg turner for 15 eggs ) and 12 eggs for hatching from a breeder. ( incubator: 50 €, eggs: 10€ )

While the eggs were in the incubator, I did a lot of research on how to raise quail.

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Legal Situation

In Germany, you have to register and vaccinate your chickens, or you can face heavy fines.
You have to register your quail as well with the federal Seuchenkassse, but you do not have to vaccinate them.
In all members of the European Union caged chickens are also heavily regulated.
For quail there are no such regulations.
Legally, you could have 40 quail per m² (!!).

For comparison: I have a small coop and my 4 quail have 3 m²

Basically, you can keep them however you like.

Lifecycle

Quail have a short life.
They can start laying at 7 weeks of age and rarely grow older than 3 years.
During their life, they can lay around 300 eggs.
If you keep the days longer than 12 hours ( artificial light ), you can make them lay their 300 eggs within a year.

Coturnix Quail have been bread for centuries if not millennia and during the process lost their ability to go broody. This means you have to hatch them in an incubator.
If a quail goes broody, it is a rarity and can fetch a high price.

Socialization

Quail like to live in groups. For the next batch, I will aim for groups of 10 animals.
At the age of 7 weeks, they are mature and start exhibiting gender specific behaviors.
The boys will fight, if there are not enough hens in the cage or overbreed the hens.
Therefore, it is best to keep hens and roosters in separate pens.
This reduces the stress for the hens and allows you to feed the roosters cheaper feed, since they do not need as much protein in their diet - they do not lay eggs after all.

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Esmeralda, 3 weeks old

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Feed

In nature, quail feed on insects and seeds.
As mentioned above, Coturnix Quail have been bread for ages and can live on a variety of diets.
After careful consideration, I decided to feed my quail with a turkey starter commercial feed and will later switch over to a standard (organic) chicken feed.
I will also feed them herbs and comfrey from my garden and the occasional insect or worm that I dig up during garden work.

Quail are not chicken and will not eat most kitchen scraps.

Habitat

Other than chicken, quail do not sleep in trees, but on the ground.
Preferably outside. They do not go inside at nights.

Quail are very timid birds.
They are scared of everything.
They do not like if anything hovers over them.
I made a mistake, when I build my pen on the ground. I will build the next one elevated.

I found out, that a large cage is not necessarily the best option.
These birds do not need much space and a small cage is easier to handle, easier to clean and at the end of the day can provide a better habitat for your animals than a larger cage. In case you get any diseases or parasites, these are much easier to control in a small cage, too.

I find it very important to give them a space for their dust baths.
They love it. I use a mix of dirt and wood ashes in a tray.
This also helps parasite- and disease control.

Cost

Incubator: 50€
Heat plate: 30€
Eggs: 10 €
Feed: 20€/25kg

Additional: cage, trough ( I built mine from junk )

Conclusion

It is very easy to raise these animals from eggs.
It was the first time I ever tried anything like this and it worked out quite well for the most part.
I would not recommend raising them in your apartment; Even though I cleaned twice a day, they still smelled a lot. They eat and poop all day. .... It is absolutely possible though.

Also, I can not recommend them as pets.
I raised them by hand and picked them up every day, but they are still extremely scared of me.
If you want to pick them up and play with them, these are the wrong animals
( perhaps, there are better breeds for this ... ).

Other than that, they are friendly animals and do not make any noise in their first weeks.

If you consider these restrictions, I can absolutely recommend it.
You could keep them on your balcony, if you wanted to.

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I will post an update when I find the first egg.

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Renate, 3 weeks old
Hiding from me and being scared, as usually

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