How to Raise Baby Quail? Detailed Guide to Breeding Techniques and Precautions

As the quality of life gets better and better, quail meat and quail eggs have become indispensable delicacies on our dining tables. As market demand exceeds supply, quail farmers have also encountered many puzzles. The simplest one is that quail are very difficult to raise when young and are especially prone to dying! Today the editor will explain what issues should be noted when raising young quail, come and take a look!

How to Raise Baby Quail

1. Quail that are 5-6 hours after hatching will already run around, so feeding should start early rather than late. For the first feeding, a mixture of corn, broken rice, wheat flour and other ingredients can be used, and it is even better if cooked egg yolk can be mixed in. After two or three days, gradually switch to a complete mixed feed. For young quail, the formula can use 52% corn, 27% soybean cake, 10% fish meal, 5% bran, 5% grass meal, and 1% bone meal, with a crude protein content of 24-25%; the calcium-to-phosphorus ratio is 2:1. In addition, 15% pulped green feed can be added, or for every 100 jin of feed, add 10 grams of multivitamins and an appropriate amount of trace elements. Adding a small amount of antibiotics to the feed gives even better results, as it can both prevent disease and promote growth.

2. To feed young quail, a small feed trough can be used inside the brooder box, with a small amount of water added to make the feed into a paste. Quail like to eat it, but the feed is easily contaminated and spoils easily in summer. When feeding dry feed, a drinker must be used to supply water, and water should preferably be provided continuously all day. At the beginning, feed all day; after two weeks, feed six times a day; after four weeks, change to feeding four times a day. To raise one young quail to maturity, about 0.5 kg of concentrated feed is needed.

Quail Breeding Techniques and Precautions

1. Brooding work should pay attention to heat preservation. Heat sources for keeping warm can include electric lights, kerosene stoves, charcoal braziers, or honeycomb coal stoves. Using electric lights to provide heat from above the brooder, while also using a kerosene stove, charcoal, or honeycomb coal to provide heat below or beside it, gives even better results.

2. The brooding temperature for quail can initially be 350-370C, then lowered by 1-20C each day, gradually dropping to around 240-260C. After 20 days of heat preservation, heating can be stopped. For brooding quail at 3-4 days of age, 24-hour lighting can be used so the young quail become familiar with their living environment, eat their fill, and sleep warm; afterward, it can gradually be changed to natural lighting with supplemental lighting in the morning and evening.

Prevention of Two Diseases in Quail Raising

1. Feather lice: Feather lice are some external parasites belonging to the phylum Arthropoda, class Insecta, order Mallophaga. Due to differences in parasitic sites, feather lice include two types: head lice and feather-shaft lice. They bite and eat feather pieces and skin flakes, and some suck the blood of partridges, causing the partridge feathers to become messy, fall off, and be incomplete, with skin damage and bleeding, restlessness, anemia and emaciation, and stunted growth.

2. Mites: Mite bodies do not exceed 2 mm. During the day they hide in the gaps inside the cage, and at night they come out to suck the blood of partridges. After sucking blood, the mite body turns red, so they are also called red mites. Warm and humid climates are most suitable for mite reproduction, and the harm to young partridges is especially serious.

How Quail Reproduce

1. Selection of superior breeds

For superior breeding quail, the eyes should be moderate in size, the neck should be slender, the head should be small and round, the feathers should be glossy, the muscles should be plump, and the temperament should be gentle. Do not choose closely related quail. The selection standard for female quail is a large abdominal volume and a body weight of 130-150 grams; those exceeding 170 grams have weak egg-laying ability. Specifically, the egg-laying standard is that, based on the egg production of female quail over 3 months from the start of laying, those producing more than 250 eggs per year are good. Male quail can be selected 50 days after hatching, requiring a loud crow, with a slightly longer and continuous sound, a strong body and broad chest, fully extended quail claws, and a body weight of 120-130 grams. The vent is dark red and raised; if white foam appears when pressed by hand, it indicates that it is in heat and has mating ability.

2. Timely mating

For the mating age of breeding quail, female quail are from 3 months of age to 1 year, and male quail are best at 4-6 months of age. However, in actual raising, male and female quail at 50-60 days of age begin mating and reproducing, with a reproduction period of 1 year, replaced every year. Quail have the strongest sexual desire in the morning and evening, and fertilization is highest after mating, so it is best to let them mate after the first feeding in the morning. If artificial incubation can be reliably carried out, quail can be allowed to mate and reproduce in all four seasons of the year.

3. Egg-laying management

During the egg-laying period, lighting is very important. According to experiments, increasing lighting at night can raise the egg-laying rate by 25%. Therefore, a 60-watt electric light should be hung to supplement light for about 4 hours, so as to achieve 16 hours of lighting per day. During the rest of the time, switch to 4-watt electric lighting.

4. Incubation techniques

Quail incubation includes two types: natural incubation and artificial incubation. For natural incubation, female chickens or female pigeons can be chosen to hatch the eggs. Artificial incubation uses a chicken incubator to hatch selected good quail breeding eggs. The incubation temperature is slightly higher than that for hatching chicks; generally, a room temperature of 20-23°C is sufficient, and the relative humidity should be maintained at about 65%. In the two days before hatching, the humidity should be increased to above 80%, and ventilation should be frequent. When the embryo is about to break the shell and hatch, turn the breeding eggs at a 90-degree angle every 2-3 hours to help the embryo move. The incubation period for breeding eggs is 17 days. After the young quail hatch, start feeding and watering 12 hours later, and no later than 24 hours.

After reading so many breeding methods, have you, as a farmer or a friend who wants to raise quail, also learned some breeding methods and some matters to note during the breeding process? Hurry up and start raising them! The furry little adorable quail are waving at you!