( 
)We are an NPIP hatchery located in the city limits of Cumberland, MD. We have a capacity of 240 organic fed hatching eggs every four days. We have eating egg production of about 500 per week but by simply moving a few adult boys, we could turn those into hatching eggs. We have hatching equipment at this moment of 120 quail capacity every four days. We have space for about 1,000 birds (in the varying stages of life) but only room for about 300 adult birds.
July 12th, 2008 update:
Since November of 2007, we managed to get City Occupancy permits for our farm and, as blessed as it has been, we began having a very hard time managing large non-fertile egg quantities, quail quantities and too much guano! Donald's prodigy bird pool and our selective breeding has been super to us especially the Texas A & M... those would probably hatch by themselves if left in the trunk of my car. While we have hundreds of brown quail, our 7 Texas A & M layers lay up to 2 eggs each every day!We had state department of natural resources here not too long ago. Our egg and bird tests came out clean as a whistle and we have a bunch of permits and such from various county, city, state agencies. NPIP certs.
I finally, this weekend, smartened up and added a quail "lights out" room... IE I close the door in the morning just before sunrise for lights out and I open just after sunset... We need to open the door every night because that cools the area. They get some light in the day from a little sun leakage and some moon and street light but instead of eating and pooping and laying eggs along with the breeders, they should begin to nap comfortably for much longer periods. I set our family at task to try to eat at least a days production worth of non-fertile eggs somehow until we get the craziness under control. 150 lbs of feed e-quails (spelling) many eggs, quail and guano.
Our little farm was on the front page of the local newspaper recently and so things have picked up. We have been freezing quail meat and having sandwiches and stews.
We have dared to try putting some (60 birds) in the concreted side yard along with some composed soil, leaves, twigs and soft wood bark. We've checked for some motherly instincts by placing a few just hatched babies in with them... some babies find their way to a willing hen, the ones who do not, won't make it.
We have during this time also hatched some NPIP guineas... they are quite a bit more wild than the quail.
March 3th 2008 update:
We finally have our own little babies from own eggs babies purchased and arriving
December 5th until today... 6 little organic life fed brown and 2
little organic life fed white hatched yesterday. 90 days from egg to
chick (18 days) and chick to egg laying bird (54 days) and egg to chick
(18 days). The cycle of life in less than 62 days. A nice small
peaceful group of baby birds with their 30 chattering mamas and a bunch
of dads with the occasional quail stew.
Now every day we have about 15-20 possible new babies which can be new chicks in only 18 days. I have two small incubators and one small hatchery. Each incubator and hatchery can hold about 120 quail eggs. The eggs need to stay in the hatchery only 4 days. That means with enough incubators, right now (2) I could hatch potentially 120 eggs every 4 days!
However, they need to stay in the incubator 14 days. Eggs should be incubated within 4 days of laying (outside of a higher controlled environment) for best results. Every four days, I have 60-80 eggs, or about 1/2 of the incubator. At capacity and 75% hatch rate, we could hatch 440 chicks every month... this not bad considering we only had eggs starting in December.
If we carried the birds out to egg laying in a mere 62 days, then every four days, we would be adding back as much capacity as we currently have!!!!! In addition, I could eat 5 quail every day with no impact on the continuing increase on production!Here's the result:
Day 62 20 eggs every day
Day 66 40 eggs every day (double ) Hatchery would be maxed out in less than three days...
Day 72 60 eggs every day (triple)
Day 76 80 eggs every day (etc)
Day 80 100 eggs every day (etc)
Day 84 120 eggs every day (etc) need a thousand egg per week hatching machine
At Day 114, there would be a monster production machine... 770 (up from 30 now) more laying hens but the eggs incubated from day 62 - 66 would add 20 more per day on top of the 20 more per day....
That would make thousands upon thousands of eggs and then laying birds in less than 176 days from my original ebay purchases!!!!!!! And I would eat so much quail that I could not stand it anymore! This is oversimplified since one needs to mix the gene pool by eggs swaps and adding tons more equipment.
So, I decided to eat quail eggs and sell extras on ebay.
Happy hatching.. :)
March 7th 2008: Further Update: We had a few more eggs in the bator... every four days. There are 24 more hatched today. We are planning on a big hatch this week. We'll keep you posted.
March 18th 2008: 25 newly hatched babies... 11 brown and 14 white. This is in addition to the 24 last week and our first 8 the week before. We have over 60 young quail which is more than we have in all our breeding cages. We also have 5 juveniles who started laying their first eggs on Sunday. ME - See coturnix quail video! For this week, I will be setting aside extra two dozen eggs for eating. We put another 29 eggs in the hatchery. They should hatch on Sunday.
What we have left in the incubators is about 100 quail eggs and twenty-six Giant RI Red chicken eggs. I got the chicken eggs from a young kid whose small 4-H project has gone into production. We have already hatched six of his birds and they are absolutely big and beautiful. Even more positive, I found a supplier of the organic feed which only costs me $19.90 a bag!
If you are new here and a very very green beginner looking for some ideas and comfort, you might want to begin by reading here.
December 5th 2007... my first set of ebay hatching cortunix quail arrived (not all in one piece either). I was afraid for them. The seller was kind enough to send more to make up for those but that would be next week... Also, in my haste I ordered a second batch of eggs from someone else which arrived a day later. Oh no! how could I handle the different hatch dates? what would happen to them.Well my first quails just hatched but I was afraid and worrying the whole time.
Hey, if it's your first time that probably describes you too. I ended up researching all over the place. I also accidently "cooked" the eggs for 5-10 minutes at 105 degrees when I installed a fan in the hatchery and had moved on to setting up the brooder without checking on it. I candled out a couple of live babies too when I tried using a light bulb in a box, I did not know any better. Oh no... I'll tell you what happened in the end.
In setting up quail shop I bought a few things.... mostly seat of my pants as I went along.
Here is what I ended up buying along the way (and after the hatch) to minimize the worry and the work load.
(1) small incubator for incubating complete with fan, later adding an egg turner and quail cups.
This was after several days of hand-turning and worry if I was doing it right. Everyone says minimize touching the eggs.
(1) small second incubator for hatching complete with a fan.
This was after reading at how I could not hatch with the egg-turner present and how I should not open the lid very often at hatch.
(2) indoor temp and humidifier gage combo (Walmart for $6.47 plus batteries). Be sure to also use your incubator's temp gage for better and faster accuracy on temp.
After trying to figure out a wet-bulb test with a non-mercury thermo and failing several times! Digital Temp and humidity at a glance! I used the red plug over the fan in the Little Giant to adjust incubation humidity (but not hatching humidity) and carefully followed temps most of the time but not always.
(2) For the Little Giant incubators, I ordered two clean out trays for the incubators.
After finding out that the hatching process is not exactly sterile and that styrofoam does not clean very well. Oh yeah, and you can lose your entire hatch from left-over nastys in the incubator.
Fish tank tubing - less than a foot ( putting water in without opening lid. drill a hole in a plastic cup and insert tubing watching out for incubator heater, fan circuit boards electronics etc when putting in water!)
After the woodstove put out continous dry heat and deciding the woodstove stays on when it's freezing outside (and I keep lids on!)
(1) humidifier (if your home heat source is dry -- see above)
(1) Single Led Flashlight for candling.. free - someone gave me a handful at a business expo.
After seeing led flashlight used for the purpose selling for over $8 plus shipping. Fun in the dark project!
Okay. What happened to the babies? Many babies were okay for a few minutes in the heat... Lesson learned: The heater needs to run much cooler with a circulating fan.
Out of the 1st sellers 36 eggs started with, I ended up with 26. Six or so of these were just plain eggs (no baby inside). Because I was not learned enough and I was struggling with humidity the whole time, I had to peel the shells off several and the babies, most had a hard 2 day time getting out. Even so, of this group, I had only one complete bird die in the shell after pipping. Another bird had a handicapped foot and subsequently drowned in the water bowl (my family refused to acknowlege the "cull" function) . The all the marbles in the waterer did not keep him from drowning in the chicken waterer so we replaced it with a small bird waterer instead.
The other egg group from a different seller had more eggs. Same environment. I had many casualties here. I opened the eggs and many were dried because they had hairline cracks, many were under developed, many were deformed etc... Oh I'm so sorry.... so very sorry! Though I'm not sure how they would have been if I had done everything right! A full day after the hatch, only ten hatched without some help, one we opened up, it was still alive and the family insisted on keeping it alive even though all the books say not too. Equal opportunity for late bloomers I guess. He/she's doing well and for real practicing flying tonight... Had to remove the brooder guards.
The biggest lesson learned is that you can mess up some with hardy egg quality and still have an okay hatch. But with most eggs out there, you must proceed with great care. The beginner might be best to start with some hardy Texas A & Ms. (Amy's) I'll share my lessons learned for brooding for an update later.
Have fun and happy hatching!
I have purchased books and read but many are vague on issues like how to overcome a woodstove.
December 29th, 2007. The 1st set of chicks are doing fine in the brooder with food and water on wire and nesting materials near and around the brooder lamp... I picked a blue 85 watt outdoor floodlight for now. After a while, I will go with a red 60 watt bulb to reduce the temp. They are 5 days old and gaining weight. 2nd Amy group batch pipn tonight. 30 eggs (started with 36 but 6 were just yolk and white) I have the mini-brooder almost ready. For the smaller group I used a large plastic box instead of a huge aquarium.
December 30th, 2007. Bad news. I was tending to the humidity levels in the bator for three days straight (woodstove again dries the air out). After off and on sleep for days, I finally crashed out between 5am and 11 am. Someone put the ceiling fan on and it spread the dry air out hard. Even though I had filled two humidifiers and drowned the bator with water before crashing so much so that water was leaking out the side, the humidity levels were below 60%. I was very sad having to remove two eggs with dried up quail beaks sticking out. I also had to struggle with the chicks that did hatch... sticky shells and those that were free, jumping in clumps of wet paper towels, on the sponge too close to the heating elements and then shivering when I had to open the box to clean up the mess. Further, they moved the temp/humidity gage completely around so I could not see it. The suicide run to jump out of the bator when I opened it almost killed me... arrg. Lesson learned: never put wet paper towels, sponges etc where little ones can get to them. Put them below on a liner that holds moisture instead of leaking it out the bottom. I have the liners, which arrived a day late for this hatching! I'll be lucky to get 50% hatch rate because of the ceiling fan being on for a few hours (after 3 days of great care) and me snoring away not knowing. Get The Liners If You Have A Woodstove!
January 2nd, 2008 - A new lesson learned. The big aquarium with a big brooder light is a great idea UNTIL they start to fly (straight up). I created a hop up ledge for the food and water and for the quail to practice flying as soon as they were three days old. They had no problems until this weekend. "Clunk, clunk, clunk" was a typical sound for several hours and I could not figure out what it was.... Turns out they were using the "hop up ledge" as a "take off platform" with destination being the brooder lamp. One Amy died in the attempt from head injury (very, very common). Lesson learned: these birds fly straight up regardless of the pain of hitting head. Now I have removed the big brooder lamp and put in a desk lamp with a clamp with a lighter weight light IE 40 watts. I dropped the lamp down and put it directly over the glass feeder to give the birds the "illusion" of a column instead of the sun. More news: The newest Amys had to be culled down to 12 birds (out of 36 eggs originally) because of handicaps. Three smaller bible quail birds (5 days old with beaks trimmed) were placed with these babies to show them food and water and how to build comfy nests in the pine shavings.
February 9th 2008 update:
We designed some breeder cages for the Amy's and Courtney's by looking at other successful cage designs... IE egg rolls out to the front. We are now getting our own eggs. You might want to cull for aggression because a single aggressive male in a shared cage will turn a gentle roommate male bird into a fearful "back and forth" pacer and the gentle one becomes too wimpy to be a ladies man until the aggressor is gone for quite some time. . We, at this point, get the satisfaction of chowing down on a nasty pecker head mean bugger before it gets crazy in the shared cage.
Some other stuff: I'm feeding them organic barley and wheat grass... they love it. We are comparing production with and without the organic
grasses.
Another observation: while I wanted to feed all of my birds ORGANIC layer mash, I find it impossibly expensive to do so. Compare $10 per 50 pound bag VS $25 per 50 pound bag. Ouch.
Added May 12, 2008: At the moment, we are hard-pressed to find an organic mash to overcome the less than one week old babies desire to eat each others poop on even the wire cages. We culled many baby to baby poop diseases because it's either non-organic medication or natural immunity development via heavy casualty.
In June, we firmly decided on medicated 28 % protein feed for the first two weeks of life. We now give all-grain all-natural feed up until 3 weeks before breeding.
Thank you for voting. If your vote meets our 
