Annie here, and this has been a busy week and a half since I returned from the SouthWest with my teenaged son. We traveled through the Mojave, the Sonora, and finally the Chihuahua deserts, before returning to the plains and woodlands. Three of those deserts had egg traveling carefully secured with us that we are looking to enrich our flock with once they’re grown and breeding age. They hit the incubator on Oct 4, and we go to lock down on the 18th of this month, with an estimated hatch date of the 21’st of October.
When we moved the cages out of the greenhouse in spring, we had a couple of months of false security. Our cages were built well, and we thought reinforced adequately, but alas, we were discovered by Raccoons – first, they got into our egg rollouts and then figured out how to attack one of our cages that we were sure was secure… It necessitated a reinforcing of cages, and re-evaluating how we operated as we lost almost all our Pearl line.
We have been working to bring them back slowly. Part of that has been enriching our line from other sources as we grow and we’re hoping that this next batch of eggs in the incubator will hatch enough Jumbo Pearls to help really strengthen the line. The visit to Southwest Gamebirds in Tonopah AZ, helped us in that manner, as well as adding to our Celadons we started with from Quails n Tails in Quincy, IL and some sweet little Roo’s to blend into our lines from the beautiful Pharoh and Rosetta birds from Blessed Hill in Southern Middle Tennessee. Along the way we’ve raised birds from MyShire Farm in Ohio, HH Farm in Southern IL and a couple of others locally as we refined our processes, and furthered our education about hatching, raising, and harvesting not only eggs but the birds for meat themselves.
We’re looking to continue our English White Jumbos, with descendants of the Texas A&M study… these produce beautiful chocolate chip mint-colored eggs which are celadon eggs with brown spots all over them, and an average weight of 15 grams per egg. Our smaller birds from that line don’t make it to contribute to the genetic line (heading to freezer camp,) and we are bringing in some genetic diversity for that line as well in the eggs we brought back from SW Gamebirds.
The meat we use for our own family – we can’t sell processed quail for human consumption. I have a few larger hens to process today and get ready to go to the freezer in a couple of days. I jokingly call these “unhappy campers” because they aren’t happy critters at all… well they were up until the last moment, but once they hit this stage they have gotten the ultimate pedicure, and extreme exfoliation, as well as a long cold bath in water that is as salty as the kid that wanted to be homecoming queen without doing the work to be so.
We do have a local homestead that we’ll be providing some of our smaller birds, culls, for their LGD’s as food as they provide their dogs a raw food diet. We will be getting our NPIP and AI Certification soon and will be looking to reach out to those who keep birds of prey etc so there is no waste. We’re keeping the wings and feet when we process birds as the goal here is to make sure that we can have the feet to make broth with, and the wings will be sent to someone who collects them for dog training treats. On a homestead now, like in days of yore, we don’t waste if we can avoid it. We don’t feed our dogs a raw food diet, but other homesteaders both want and need it in theirs. We’re happy to support this.
We don’t need our Chihuahuas or Yellow lab taking on quail, nor the backyard chickens. When it comes to the raccoons we’re good with simply scaring them off.
Now, on to our eggs! We have received written approval from the Illinois State Department of Agriculture to sell them for consumption. Eating eggs are washed, beeswax coated, packed, and refrigerated. As such we are legally able to sell quail eggs beyond our homestead doors. Keep an eye out in our region as we develop that aspect of our business.
If you notice soon, we’ll have a shopping cart here for quail cage orders, laying/breeding sets, and egg orders. We are getting things together to be able to accept credit cards via square and are excited to partner with a local gal to offer her handmade soaps too at some of our live events. Overall, this has been a project a few years in the making that we’re watching turn into something viable that is able to serve others here in the Midwest, and we will be closing out one year of actual Quail keeping soon. We are delighted and thankful that Southwest Gamebirds had just what we needed for the order we picked up on September 30, and it’s getting close to candling day (day 10 this time.)
We’re readying our brooders for this large hatch that will help us strengthen some of our lines, and expand into others. We are excited to keep growing and thrilled you are following along. If you don’t already follow us on Facebook – you can find us at http://facebook.com/tinyfeatherhomestead