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Quirky Quail Acres
Today I'm talking with Caitlyn at Quirky Quail Acres.
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00:00
If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm.
00:26
A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Caitlin at Quirky Quail Acres in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Caitlin. How are you? Hi there. I'm well. How are you? I'm good, except I can't get through an introduction without stumbling all over myself today. I don't know what's going on.
00:57
Um, so I would normally ask about the weather because that's the question I ask on every single podcast episode, but you're only half an hour away from me. So I'm guessing it's sunny outside. Yep. Sunny and feeling balmy compared to yesterday. No doubt. Yesterday was terrible. I mean, it was pretty, but it was cold. Yeah, it hurt. It hurt, especially after tank top weather last weekend. Yeah.
01:24
Yeah, that was really nice. And I knew it was fall, spring, but I was like, I will take it. It's a good reprieve. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. OK, so I again, I'm Caitlin and I am a mom and I work full time and we have our little farm here just outside of North Mankato, Minnesota. We
01:53
He are kind of jack of all trades sort of farm. We raise quail and we raise chickens and we have an orchard and we have a very large garden. Hopefully this year we'll also have a greenhouse. We also tap all of our own maple trees and we make maple syrup. And we also have, we.
02:20
We volunteer at a nearby shelter. So we have three rescue dogs. Um, it's just chaos all the time. It sounds amazing to me. Well, we're right there with you on the big garden and we have 20 apple trees. We have one huge wild plum tree. have some Alden plum trees. We have peach trees. have rhubarb.
02:48
We do have a greenhouse. have chickens, we have a dog and we have five barn cats. So there's a lot of overlap there between you and I.
02:59
I freaking love it. Yeah, no, I wouldn't choose anything different. um I'm so passionate about it. And it's I've never been one to like I don't want to go to the gym to exercise, but I want to be I want to be active all the time. I want to be I want to be moving and working. And I like I like the hard work and I like feeling accomplished at the end of the day. Absolutely.
03:26
So the reason that I asked you to be on the podcast, I have a little tiny ulterior motive and I don't usually. My husband and I have been talking about maybe getting a few quail and seeing how they do. And I'm guessing you know a lot about quail. So can you tell me all about quail today? Yeah, absolutely. So we, we raise Coturnix quail because A, they are the largest variety that
03:56
and that you can own really. um You don't need a special permit like you do for other species of quail because they are considered a domesticated species. uh Whereas for like, bobwhite, you would need a game permit. And also they don't lay as many eggs. um They are smaller birds, so they're not really good meat birds. Generally people raise
04:23
Bob White for dog training and stuff. we're not, again, our dogs are, they're pound dogs there. They'd be useless for that. um Anyway, and Coturnix quail lay about 300 eggs a year. um We don't raise exclusively jumbo because we like to go for a good mix of colors in our birds too, just because it's, you know, it's nice to have a pretty bird that you're raising also. So we
04:53
focus more on um egg and feathering color genetics, but they are highly productive. are their eggs are so nutritious when you compare them side by side with like an equal weight of a chicken egg. The nutritional profile is just phenomenal because they are heavier in the yolk. So then they have all of that additional um
05:22
nutrition to go with that. We find them very, very easy to raise. They were kind of our poultry introductory species. My husband had been wanting to raise birds for some time and I was kind, I knew, I knew that I would be doing the majority of the work and so I kind of said, whoa, hey, we're not going to dive in head first.
05:48
until I feel really prepared for this, let's try quail first because they require less space, they mature faster, they're productive enough that it can serve our family's needs off of that. We started with about 15 quail and now at any given time we're sitting at about 100 quail. so quail math equals chicken math. Same thing. very much so. And it's especially because it's so easy to hatch out your own.
06:17
They're mature in eight weeks. uh Some mature faster, but generally they're all mature by eight weeks and laying. You know who's a boy, who's a girl. So within two weeks or within two months, you can vent sex them and separate the boys from the girls. Unfortunately, they are not like chickens in you can't you cannot successfully have a bachelor flock. So unfortunately, um
06:45
The extra males do end up in freezer camp because um they are very unkind to one another if you have too many roosters in the cubby. But yes, we very quickly went from 15 in a hutch to now we have an indoor aviary in our barn because they are very flighty birds. They are very prone to oh
07:11
offing themselves if they get scared by anything. And so just with the number of predators we have around, we felt that it was best to keep them under stimulated a little bit in that sense. And so they have an indoor aviary that we have a bunch of hidey holes and we have artificial sunlight and we keep them as entertained as possible and they get to run around but they you know, they just seem to live their happy little lives they are.
07:42
They're sweet, they're beautiful. are what I would refer to as a feathered potato. They do not have brain cells or personality of some larger poultry, but that's okay. That's okay. Cause they are still lovable. Well, that was a very good introduction to quail. have a couple of questions.
08:04
Is it a pain in the butt to crack quail eggs? Because I've heard that quail eggs, you need three quail eggs to equal one chicken egg if you're going to do scrambled eggs. So is it is it hard to crack the eggs or is it just like cracking a chicken egg? It's just smaller. So you actually are best off using an egg scissors for quail eggs because they are. It's not so much the size, it's that they have a much thinner shell, but a much thicker membrane than a chicken egg.
08:33
So if you try to crack it, you kind of end up just crumbling it without actually breaking through the membrane. So um you can buy quail egg scissors and cut the top off and dump them out. So that actually makes it very slick and easy, way less getting, you know, digging shell out of the bowl or the pan with your fingers um than sometimes I have with our chicken eggs. using the scissors is very simple.
08:59
Okay, cool, I didn't know such a thing existed. So I have learned something new yet again on a podcast that I am doing. And then for the quail meat, my husband asked me to ask you this. said, can you ask her how she would describe how to cook quail meat and how it tastes? Does it taste like the dark meat on a chicken? What does it taste like? I can honestly, don't eat our quail.
09:28
because I'm just not a big meat fan. My husband reports that it is like the dark meat. It's not a lot of meat per bird, but it is very rich. It cooks quickly. They're very easy to process. And typically the way that we cook them is in a crock pot, kind of with potatoes and spices and
09:58
broth just sort of stewed. um But I know that a lot of people like to braise them and stuff. I will say generally it's just that my husband makes them more than I do because he eats them and he is a little bit lazier about the food preparation. I understand. um My husband and I both love to cook, but weeknights are kind of a pain in the butt because he doesn't always get home at the same time. um weekends are when we actually cook.
10:28
And that's when we make things that we want to spend time making together. um The reason he asked me to ask you is because I'm not a fan of the dark meat on chicken. And he was like, if we get quail, we can have quail meat like three times a week. And I was like, not if it tastes like the dark meat on chicken. Maybe not. Yeah, I can say it definitely. um
10:53
It has that game-ier smell to it when it's cooking. And so you can tell it is, you know, even though they are conventionally raised, is still definitely a game bird that you're eating. Yeah, I had pheasant one time and it was really, really good. And I was like, why did I not know that pheasant is yummy? I had no idea. um OK, so here's my here's my big question, because he and I have been going around about this a little bit.
11:22
because we both have differing opinions about many things. I don't know that there is a market in Minnesota for quail meat or quail eggs. And I also don't know how much it would cost, you know, a round number to get started with like a rooster and six hens just to try it out for ourselves. So do you have answers on that? Yes. So I can say there is a market in Minnesota and in Southern Minnesota. We actually sell our quail eggs at the St. Peter food co-op.
11:52
um And depending on the time of year, so like around the holidays, we were selling a lot more. We were resupplying them pretty regularly. There are other times where it's, you know, we're only dropping off 10 dozen every few weeks. So it's not, they're not necessarily flying off the shelves, um but there is a market for it. And we are...
12:17
going to be opening our own farm stand here in the next month once we can get all the ice cleared away and keep it cleared away for a little bit to get that set up. there is Soul Foods in Lower North Mankato, a Korean foods market. They sell quail eggs. ah I know that Rebel Rooster partners with some wineries and they have
12:42
quail egg pizzas and stuff that they get, they source their quail eggs from rebel roosters. So there, there is a market. I, we have not tried to sell our meat yet. Our meat, have mostly kept for ourselves or given away to friends and family. So I can't speak to that, but, um, the spaces I'm in online, does seem like there is definitely a market for that. Okay. Cause
13:09
I was just, he was all excited and he was like, we could get quail and we can take the eggs and we can incubate the eggs and we can sell the meat and we can sell the eggs and that. And I was like, um, number one, cool idea. Number two, slow down for a minute. We need to some research. Yes, absolutely. And that's where we started with so few. Um, and where we started, I mean, we would have every, if my husband had his way, we would have every farm animal under the sun. Um,
13:39
that, as I mentioned before, I would end up taking care of because once it comes to that part, he's like, oh, well, I'm not that interested anymore. um But so we started small. We ordered, I want to say from Hoover Hatchery down in Iowa. We ordered some chicks to start with once they aged out. um
14:03
We were able to figure out the hens from the roosters. Our kids had already named every single one of them. We tried to do the bachelor flock because we did not have the kids permission to process the quail. That didn't work. they did end up in freezer camp and we don't even bother with it anymore because we know it's not going to go well. But the introductory cost, especially compared to larger poultry, is much lower.
14:31
not only in the sense of the birds themselves being less expensive, or if you can find hatching eggs, even less expensive. And I will say, that sense, shipped quail eggs, so you might not be able to find a local supplier. Anybody who wants to look at hatching out eggs can feel very confident in ordering shipped quail eggs because
14:58
they have a much higher success rate than shipped chicken eggs or goose eggs or whatever. They are safely going to get an 80 % hatch rate on shipped quail eggs. They're very, very hardy. So that's a good way to cut that introductory cost is just ordering the eggs because uh most of them will end up hatching. And then just their space requirements. Each bird requires about a square foot. Some people will say
15:28
three birds per square foot, but that is too crowded and quail can be very, very vicious with one another. And we would never recommend anything less than one square foot per bird, um even in our aviary setting where they're running around all day long. a lot of people keep them in hutches are first because we just had so few. We bought some two by fours at Home Depot and built our hutch, made a plywood floor. um
15:57
And the, was a couple hundred bucks versus our chicken coops, which we all know you cannot build for a couple hundred bucks. Not unless you have your own trees and a sawmill. Exactly.
16:14
Yeah, we bought some of the already made garden sheds that they have at like Home Depot in Lowe's. our chickens have chicken mansions because they're bigger sheds. so it's really funny when it snows because the front of the sheds look like little houses. so it's really pretty. And my husband will take pictures of the snow sticking to the doors. And I'm like, oh my god, our chickens live in a castle.
16:43
That's funny because we actually have the same setup for our coops. we just like that, A, they have more vertical space. They like getting up high to roost. ah It's functional. It's pre-made. Handles the weather well. Yes. It's so easy to insulate. um So we actually do the same thing. They have like a little loft in there that they can go up and.
17:08
hang out in. We have outdoor runs. We have such high predator pressure that we don't do free ranging. But we have massive runs that we were able to just attach to this pre-made shed that's very sturdy and build it out from there. ours too. And we've got the little like solar lights that are, it looks so fancy and it's just full of chickens.
17:35
It's such a special building for such an average animal. Okay. Well, I am so thrilled that you told me all those things about quail because now I have answers to give to my husband. Because I was trying to look everything up and I was like, why don't I just talk to somebody who knows what they're doing? So much easier. um So when you when you incubate the eggs, is there
18:03
Is there a special incubator for quail or can you just get an incubator and it has trays that will fit the eggs? No, you can put it into any incubator. um You can get attachments, inserts for different incubators. So like a Matty Coop, you can buy 3D printed inserts that keep smaller eggs upright or a Nurture Right 360 is another incubator lots of people have.
18:33
you can buy an insert for that, or you can double up eggs in any incubator that has chicken slots. I find that they roll around a little goofy and sometimes they get crunched with that thin shell. So I prefer to get a quail specific insert when I can. But I've had 95 % hatch rate success in cheapo incubators I got off of Amazon. So you don't need anything special at all. They have a
19:02
shorter incubation period than chickens as well. So they are an 18 day incubation period. Like a little over two weeks. Yeah. Yes. And I don't know that I've ever had them take the full 18 days. Usually we have them popping out like popcorn after about 16 days. um And they do pop out like popcorn. They hatch so fast. You can hardly even catch them unzipping. just like, there's a quail. um
19:32
They don't require different um humidity or temperatures or anything like that. So it's very much as set it and forget it as a chicken egg. You just got to put it in the lockdown a little earlier. Nice. And then do you have to put them in a brooder for a few days or a week after they're hatched? Yes, we do keep them in a brooder generally just because we um
19:59
don't want to mix them in with the rest of the covey until we have been able to sex them. We keep them in a separate, we brood them in the basement for the first week or so when we want to keep a close eye on them. And then we move them out to the barn and they're in a hutch situation where we can keep the heat lamps on them and keep them separate until they are grown out enough for us to tell who's a boy, who's a girl. And then the girls and any boys we want to keep get.
20:28
tossed in with the cubby. And on the Hutch's, how tall do they have to be? Because you mentioned that they're very good at unliving themselves. how tall do they need to be? Yes, that's a really good question. this is, it's so specific. This is one of the very specific things when it comes to quail. You do not want any height that is between 18 inches floor to ceiling or six feet floor to ceiling.
20:57
So you can have them in a hutch that is no taller than 18 inches, Florida ceiling, or in our aviary, we have eight foot ceilings because um quail cannot control their flight. They get startled at their own shadows. They get startled at absolutely everything. um One time I had an extra nesting pad and I was like, oh, maybe they'll like this. I put that in their aviary. They did not lay for two weeks because that was such a disturbance to them.
21:25
terrified them, they wouldn't do it. So they are very flighty and they go straight up. So if they flush and there is a ceiling at say two, three, four feet above their head, they will hit the ceiling and break their necks. So it's really important. That is the one most important thing with raising quail. The other thing being their feed, which I'll touch on in a second, but
21:53
that height is very specific. So I would say 15 to 18 inches floor to ceiling for a hutch. Okay. Cool. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. And then I would say the only, the one other really important thing I would say with quail is their feed requirements are a little bit, well, they're quite a bit different than um other poultry. They require a higher.
22:19
protein. So they do need be started on a 30 % game bird feed. We get ours, we source ours locally here in Minnesota from a mill down in Mabel. And then we use Chick Starter for them in their adult life because that's at that 21 % and that keeps them a lot healthier. um We
22:47
don't use a layer feed because of the roosters. So we provide calcium separately. We actually use uh a reptile enclosure substrate that's calcium based because they're so small. can't handle the crushed oyster shells and we're not going to try to grind it up in a food processor.
23:10
But so that is another distinction to be aware of is that they do have different nutritional needs. So you can't start them on a regular chick starter, a regular adult layer feed. They do best when they have that higher level of protein. Okay, good to know. Thank you. Hold on one second.
23:33
I was gonna cough and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh So we're looking at a little bit of of fundage for the outlay to start this but once we get started it would be okay. Yes, yes and they're they're so self-sufficient like you can just keep going you can just keep taking your own eggs especially because they lay so many.
23:59
that it doesn't feel like you're cutting into anything to save a few to toss in the incubator. um And you just keep going. There's never a point where I feel like we have to invest anymore in new birds. We do like to. Every so often, we will buy some hatching eggs from outside to just add genetics back into our covey to keep things fresh.
24:29
But you can go several generations before that's even a concern. And certainly we have more than the average person keeping some for their family would have. Yeah. Cool. Oh, my God, Caitlin. I was really hoping that you were going to be a quail expert lady. And you are. I'm so thrilled that I got to talk to you because this whole weekend, every other sentence was I was thinking about the quail question.
24:57
I'm like, oh my God, we're obsessed. Okay. And I just, needed somebody who does it because you know things that Google doesn't know. Trial and error. And I do, I'm glad to info dump about our uh quail anytime. Yeah. And I was like, am I being like, I don't know, terrible? Am I a terrible person asking you when you're only half an hour away? But
25:27
But people aren't necessarily gonna drive from Jordan down to Mankato to get your quail eggs. No, absolutely not. And we don't expect them to at all. And again, you know, we know we're not even the only ones in the Mankato area. And I think that's great. And I think that's fine. And, yeah, definitely not a concern on our front. Good. I just I always worry because usually people who are in
25:56
agriculture because quails agriculture. They're pretty good about no, you should try it if you want to try it. Absolutely. But there's always one person somewhere that's like, oh, they're going to be competition. That's not cool. Not not not my vibe at all. Yes. And I didn't say anything to my husband about this and he's going to listen to this episode because it's full of information he wants. I'm going say it anyway. He was talking about ducks and I was like,
26:24
It wouldn't be fair to get ducks. And he's like, why? I said, because we have no running water on our property. There's no creek, there's no pond, there's nothing. And ducks like to swim. Quail don't care. They don't want to swim. Nope, they don't at all. They just want to... We have some... I bought some totes, some like decorative storage totes.
26:47
Those are flipped upside down inside their aviary. You can cut some evergreen boughs down and create little hidey holes for them. They don't even want to roost. They just want to run around on the ground and hang out and eat. How do they handle the really cold weather in Minnesota? They do fairly well. Again, ours are indoors, but they are in an unheated barn. know, they're...
27:17
there have been times as you know this winter where it has been absolutely necessary to go out three times a day and give them some fresh water because freezing in 20 minutes. But aside from that, do well. I will say when we were having 40 below, we would lose one just from.
27:39
shock to the system. were generally our older birds that we would lose one after got super, super dangerously cold. aside from that, they do really well. just huddle up together, fluff up their feathers, especially because they're on the ground um and they can kind of burrow down into the bedding. do great. Good to know. Thank you. uh
28:04
And then the other question I have, because I didn't think I'd look it up or ask my husband if he knew, is are there wild quail in Minnesota? There are not wild quail in Minnesota. um We used to have a small population of Bob White quail in Minnesota, um but we do not have an extant population at this time of any species. OK. Hmm.
28:34
Did people shoot them? Did they migrate? Do you know what happened to the quail? Yeah, they seem to be migrating to... Well, okay, so here's... I'll go on another tangent. I actually work for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever also. That's my full-time job. I have a lot of information on this specific topic too.
28:58
Most of it is because of our habitat loss. So the degradation of our native tall grass prairies has been what has diminished quail populations across the entire United States and has condensed them to very small pockets around the country. uh And it's generally where they can find the best cover. So because we don't have the proper
29:26
ecosystems for them to thrive in. They've just left. Well, they got to go where they want to be, just like humans do. Okay. And then the last thing I want to bring up, because I saw it on your Facebook page and I was very impressed, was your post about chickens and what the definitions are for free range and cage free and all that. Because I am going to share that on my page. Perfect. Yes. That was...
29:56
something, I was looking for sturdier egg flats um for storing our eggs before we packaged them. And I ended up on the site of a company that makes products for conventional farm setups. And I just was struck by this is best case scenario. The pictures they're sharing on their website are.
30:22
best case scenario. This is them saying, look at how humane this is. And it was just like shoulder to shoulder room full of chickens with no room to move. And that's cage free. And so I just think that people are going to the grocery store and they're spending extra money for these labels that do, that don't mean a whole lot. They do not mean that these birds are living in more humane conditions. If they were more humane conditions, they wouldn't be de-beaked so that they don't.
30:50
tear each other apart out stress. Even with free range, they just have to technically have access to the outdoors and two square feet per bird indoors. They do not have any minimum space outdoors. So it could be, you know, a teeny tiny run that only five of them can fit in at a time. But that meets the legal definition of free range. And that's what people are paying several extra dollars at the store for, is to have this label that doesn't actually mean those chickens are treated well.
31:21
And so I just thought it was worth pointing out because I don't think a lot of people understand that. And I know that some people will hear that we don't free range ours and think that that's awful and abusive, but we do have 15, 20 square feet per bird, as opposed to one to two square feet per bird. keep constant enrichment. is exclusively for their safety because we are positioned
31:50
along the river, m surrounded by woods. We have eagles, hawks, um raccoons, opossum, coyotes, foxes. We have red foxes, gray foxes. We have other people's barn cats. We have just so many things around all of the time. uh Plus I am doing breeding. so just from a biosecurity standpoint, we also have lots of wild turkeys that can bring disease. And um so for us, it's just
32:19
it just is a safer thing for them. But we do our best to make sure they have the maximum amount of space. They have the best nutrition they can. They have constant uh enrichment that's very, important to us, constant interaction. They're well loved. um And that's just
32:41
I just think that people should be aware that if they're already paying extra at the grocery store for these labels, then they maybe shouldn't be turning their nose up at the fact that farm fresh eggs might cost a dollar or two more because they are far exceeding those minimum legal expectations for a label to be slapped on an egg carton at the store. Absolutely. And we sell our eggs.
33:06
at our farm stand and I am so thankful to our customers who just swing in the driveway, park, go in, buy their eggs, leave their money in the bin and go home with really yummy eggs at $5 a dozen. Yes, and it's, mean, we're not making a big profit margin out of the $5 a dozen. It's very little really, but it feels good.
33:30
It feels good to know that we're taking really, really good care of our birds. They are not de-beaked. They are well-loved. They get to go out and sit in a lawn chair with them, and they'll all climb up on my lap and get scratches. um we, again, we source our feed locally. We feed our birds on a certified organic diet. So we get a locally grown, locally milled certified organic diet um that we go straight to the mill for. We actually just picked some up a couple of days ago.
34:00
Um, and it's just, I can say they, taste better. They, the, the birds are not stressed. And I feel like you can tell that when you're, when you're eating the eggs. Um, and I think that it's, it's worth the, it's, it's the $5 farm fresh eggs from birds that are well-loved is worth more than the $7 free range.
34:30
eggs at the store. Yes. And as we all learned during COVID supply chains go down. if you want to be smart, get to know your local growers and producers and buy from them. Yes. And that's very much part of my motivation for, what we're doing here is not, not just self-sufficiency, but having the skills and the means.
34:56
to provide support for my community because I think community care is so important. And I think that people need to be able to oh make community. They need to be able to help one another. And this is what I feel like I can do to be part of that no matter what else is happening in the greater scope of things. The only thing that has been keeping me sane in 2026 is the fact that we have chickens.
35:24
that lay really good eggs and we get to sell them to people who want them. Yes. It's amazing. It has been a very, very long 2026 in Minnesota for us folk who live here. Yes, it has been. I can't it's only been two months. I can't believe that February is almost over.
35:46
What the heck, it all went by at the speed of really cold molasses, but also in the blink of an eye. And I don't know how that works. Time is just weird. All right, Caitlin, thank you so much. Like if I was standing in front of you, I would hug you. For all the information you just dumped, because I really needed to learn about quail so I can give my husband some answers. Absolutely, I'm so happy to share. Where can people find you? We are on...
36:16
Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We are just quirky quail acres on all of those. Did I say quirky quail farms or did I say... No, I believe you said quirky quail acres. I talked to so many people. I never know if I say the right thing. Pretty sure you did. If you didn't, I missed it. All right. It's quirky quail acres. If I said farm at the beginning, I might have, who knows. um I really appreciate your time.
36:43
And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Have a great day. It's so pretty. Get outside and have some fun if you can. You as well. Thank you so much. All right. Bye. Bye.
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By Mary E LewisToday I'm talking with Caitlyn at Quirky Quail Acres.
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A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Caitlin at Quirky Quail Acres in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Caitlin. How are you? Hi there. I'm well. How are you? I'm good, except I can't get through an introduction without stumbling all over myself today. I don't know what's going on.
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Um, so I would normally ask about the weather because that's the question I ask on every single podcast episode, but you're only half an hour away from me. So I'm guessing it's sunny outside. Yep. Sunny and feeling balmy compared to yesterday. No doubt. Yesterday was terrible. I mean, it was pretty, but it was cold. Yeah, it hurt. It hurt, especially after tank top weather last weekend. Yeah.
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Yeah, that was really nice. And I knew it was fall, spring, but I was like, I will take it. It's a good reprieve. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. OK, so I again, I'm Caitlin and I am a mom and I work full time and we have our little farm here just outside of North Mankato, Minnesota. We
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He are kind of jack of all trades sort of farm. We raise quail and we raise chickens and we have an orchard and we have a very large garden. Hopefully this year we'll also have a greenhouse. We also tap all of our own maple trees and we make maple syrup. And we also have, we.
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We volunteer at a nearby shelter. So we have three rescue dogs. Um, it's just chaos all the time. It sounds amazing to me. Well, we're right there with you on the big garden and we have 20 apple trees. We have one huge wild plum tree. have some Alden plum trees. We have peach trees. have rhubarb.
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We do have a greenhouse. have chickens, we have a dog and we have five barn cats. So there's a lot of overlap there between you and I.
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I freaking love it. Yeah, no, I wouldn't choose anything different. um I'm so passionate about it. And it's I've never been one to like I don't want to go to the gym to exercise, but I want to be I want to be active all the time. I want to be I want to be moving and working. And I like I like the hard work and I like feeling accomplished at the end of the day. Absolutely.
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So the reason that I asked you to be on the podcast, I have a little tiny ulterior motive and I don't usually. My husband and I have been talking about maybe getting a few quail and seeing how they do. And I'm guessing you know a lot about quail. So can you tell me all about quail today? Yeah, absolutely. So we, we raise Coturnix quail because A, they are the largest variety that
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and that you can own really. um You don't need a special permit like you do for other species of quail because they are considered a domesticated species. uh Whereas for like, bobwhite, you would need a game permit. And also they don't lay as many eggs. um They are smaller birds, so they're not really good meat birds. Generally people raise
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Bob White for dog training and stuff. we're not, again, our dogs are, they're pound dogs there. They'd be useless for that. um Anyway, and Coturnix quail lay about 300 eggs a year. um We don't raise exclusively jumbo because we like to go for a good mix of colors in our birds too, just because it's, you know, it's nice to have a pretty bird that you're raising also. So we
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focus more on um egg and feathering color genetics, but they are highly productive. are their eggs are so nutritious when you compare them side by side with like an equal weight of a chicken egg. The nutritional profile is just phenomenal because they are heavier in the yolk. So then they have all of that additional um
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nutrition to go with that. We find them very, very easy to raise. They were kind of our poultry introductory species. My husband had been wanting to raise birds for some time and I was kind, I knew, I knew that I would be doing the majority of the work and so I kind of said, whoa, hey, we're not going to dive in head first.
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until I feel really prepared for this, let's try quail first because they require less space, they mature faster, they're productive enough that it can serve our family's needs off of that. We started with about 15 quail and now at any given time we're sitting at about 100 quail. so quail math equals chicken math. Same thing. very much so. And it's especially because it's so easy to hatch out your own.
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They're mature in eight weeks. uh Some mature faster, but generally they're all mature by eight weeks and laying. You know who's a boy, who's a girl. So within two weeks or within two months, you can vent sex them and separate the boys from the girls. Unfortunately, they are not like chickens in you can't you cannot successfully have a bachelor flock. So unfortunately, um
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The extra males do end up in freezer camp because um they are very unkind to one another if you have too many roosters in the cubby. But yes, we very quickly went from 15 in a hutch to now we have an indoor aviary in our barn because they are very flighty birds. They are very prone to oh
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offing themselves if they get scared by anything. And so just with the number of predators we have around, we felt that it was best to keep them under stimulated a little bit in that sense. And so they have an indoor aviary that we have a bunch of hidey holes and we have artificial sunlight and we keep them as entertained as possible and they get to run around but they you know, they just seem to live their happy little lives they are.
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They're sweet, they're beautiful. are what I would refer to as a feathered potato. They do not have brain cells or personality of some larger poultry, but that's okay. That's okay. Cause they are still lovable. Well, that was a very good introduction to quail. have a couple of questions.
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Is it a pain in the butt to crack quail eggs? Because I've heard that quail eggs, you need three quail eggs to equal one chicken egg if you're going to do scrambled eggs. So is it is it hard to crack the eggs or is it just like cracking a chicken egg? It's just smaller. So you actually are best off using an egg scissors for quail eggs because they are. It's not so much the size, it's that they have a much thinner shell, but a much thicker membrane than a chicken egg.
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So if you try to crack it, you kind of end up just crumbling it without actually breaking through the membrane. So um you can buy quail egg scissors and cut the top off and dump them out. So that actually makes it very slick and easy, way less getting, you know, digging shell out of the bowl or the pan with your fingers um than sometimes I have with our chicken eggs. using the scissors is very simple.
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Okay, cool, I didn't know such a thing existed. So I have learned something new yet again on a podcast that I am doing. And then for the quail meat, my husband asked me to ask you this. said, can you ask her how she would describe how to cook quail meat and how it tastes? Does it taste like the dark meat on a chicken? What does it taste like? I can honestly, don't eat our quail.
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because I'm just not a big meat fan. My husband reports that it is like the dark meat. It's not a lot of meat per bird, but it is very rich. It cooks quickly. They're very easy to process. And typically the way that we cook them is in a crock pot, kind of with potatoes and spices and
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broth just sort of stewed. um But I know that a lot of people like to braise them and stuff. I will say generally it's just that my husband makes them more than I do because he eats them and he is a little bit lazier about the food preparation. I understand. um My husband and I both love to cook, but weeknights are kind of a pain in the butt because he doesn't always get home at the same time. um weekends are when we actually cook.
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And that's when we make things that we want to spend time making together. um The reason he asked me to ask you is because I'm not a fan of the dark meat on chicken. And he was like, if we get quail, we can have quail meat like three times a week. And I was like, not if it tastes like the dark meat on chicken. Maybe not. Yeah, I can say it definitely. um
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It has that game-ier smell to it when it's cooking. And so you can tell it is, you know, even though they are conventionally raised, is still definitely a game bird that you're eating. Yeah, I had pheasant one time and it was really, really good. And I was like, why did I not know that pheasant is yummy? I had no idea. um OK, so here's my here's my big question, because he and I have been going around about this a little bit.
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because we both have differing opinions about many things. I don't know that there is a market in Minnesota for quail meat or quail eggs. And I also don't know how much it would cost, you know, a round number to get started with like a rooster and six hens just to try it out for ourselves. So do you have answers on that? Yes. So I can say there is a market in Minnesota and in Southern Minnesota. We actually sell our quail eggs at the St. Peter food co-op.
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um And depending on the time of year, so like around the holidays, we were selling a lot more. We were resupplying them pretty regularly. There are other times where it's, you know, we're only dropping off 10 dozen every few weeks. So it's not, they're not necessarily flying off the shelves, um but there is a market for it. And we are...
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going to be opening our own farm stand here in the next month once we can get all the ice cleared away and keep it cleared away for a little bit to get that set up. there is Soul Foods in Lower North Mankato, a Korean foods market. They sell quail eggs. ah I know that Rebel Rooster partners with some wineries and they have
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quail egg pizzas and stuff that they get, they source their quail eggs from rebel roosters. So there, there is a market. I, we have not tried to sell our meat yet. Our meat, have mostly kept for ourselves or given away to friends and family. So I can't speak to that, but, um, the spaces I'm in online, does seem like there is definitely a market for that. Okay. Cause
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I was just, he was all excited and he was like, we could get quail and we can take the eggs and we can incubate the eggs and we can sell the meat and we can sell the eggs and that. And I was like, um, number one, cool idea. Number two, slow down for a minute. We need to some research. Yes, absolutely. And that's where we started with so few. Um, and where we started, I mean, we would have every, if my husband had his way, we would have every farm animal under the sun. Um,
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that, as I mentioned before, I would end up taking care of because once it comes to that part, he's like, oh, well, I'm not that interested anymore. um But so we started small. We ordered, I want to say from Hoover Hatchery down in Iowa. We ordered some chicks to start with once they aged out. um
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We were able to figure out the hens from the roosters. Our kids had already named every single one of them. We tried to do the bachelor flock because we did not have the kids permission to process the quail. That didn't work. they did end up in freezer camp and we don't even bother with it anymore because we know it's not going to go well. But the introductory cost, especially compared to larger poultry, is much lower.
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not only in the sense of the birds themselves being less expensive, or if you can find hatching eggs, even less expensive. And I will say, that sense, shipped quail eggs, so you might not be able to find a local supplier. Anybody who wants to look at hatching out eggs can feel very confident in ordering shipped quail eggs because
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they have a much higher success rate than shipped chicken eggs or goose eggs or whatever. They are safely going to get an 80 % hatch rate on shipped quail eggs. They're very, very hardy. So that's a good way to cut that introductory cost is just ordering the eggs because uh most of them will end up hatching. And then just their space requirements. Each bird requires about a square foot. Some people will say
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three birds per square foot, but that is too crowded and quail can be very, very vicious with one another. And we would never recommend anything less than one square foot per bird, um even in our aviary setting where they're running around all day long. a lot of people keep them in hutches are first because we just had so few. We bought some two by fours at Home Depot and built our hutch, made a plywood floor. um
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And the, was a couple hundred bucks versus our chicken coops, which we all know you cannot build for a couple hundred bucks. Not unless you have your own trees and a sawmill. Exactly.
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Yeah, we bought some of the already made garden sheds that they have at like Home Depot in Lowe's. our chickens have chicken mansions because they're bigger sheds. so it's really funny when it snows because the front of the sheds look like little houses. so it's really pretty. And my husband will take pictures of the snow sticking to the doors. And I'm like, oh my god, our chickens live in a castle.
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That's funny because we actually have the same setup for our coops. we just like that, A, they have more vertical space. They like getting up high to roost. ah It's functional. It's pre-made. Handles the weather well. Yes. It's so easy to insulate. um So we actually do the same thing. They have like a little loft in there that they can go up and.
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hang out in. We have outdoor runs. We have such high predator pressure that we don't do free ranging. But we have massive runs that we were able to just attach to this pre-made shed that's very sturdy and build it out from there. ours too. And we've got the little like solar lights that are, it looks so fancy and it's just full of chickens.
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It's such a special building for such an average animal. Okay. Well, I am so thrilled that you told me all those things about quail because now I have answers to give to my husband. Because I was trying to look everything up and I was like, why don't I just talk to somebody who knows what they're doing? So much easier. um So when you when you incubate the eggs, is there
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Is there a special incubator for quail or can you just get an incubator and it has trays that will fit the eggs? No, you can put it into any incubator. um You can get attachments, inserts for different incubators. So like a Matty Coop, you can buy 3D printed inserts that keep smaller eggs upright or a Nurture Right 360 is another incubator lots of people have.
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you can buy an insert for that, or you can double up eggs in any incubator that has chicken slots. I find that they roll around a little goofy and sometimes they get crunched with that thin shell. So I prefer to get a quail specific insert when I can. But I've had 95 % hatch rate success in cheapo incubators I got off of Amazon. So you don't need anything special at all. They have a
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shorter incubation period than chickens as well. So they are an 18 day incubation period. Like a little over two weeks. Yeah. Yes. And I don't know that I've ever had them take the full 18 days. Usually we have them popping out like popcorn after about 16 days. um And they do pop out like popcorn. They hatch so fast. You can hardly even catch them unzipping. just like, there's a quail. um
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They don't require different um humidity or temperatures or anything like that. So it's very much as set it and forget it as a chicken egg. You just got to put it in the lockdown a little earlier. Nice. And then do you have to put them in a brooder for a few days or a week after they're hatched? Yes, we do keep them in a brooder generally just because we um
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don't want to mix them in with the rest of the covey until we have been able to sex them. We keep them in a separate, we brood them in the basement for the first week or so when we want to keep a close eye on them. And then we move them out to the barn and they're in a hutch situation where we can keep the heat lamps on them and keep them separate until they are grown out enough for us to tell who's a boy, who's a girl. And then the girls and any boys we want to keep get.
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tossed in with the cubby. And on the Hutch's, how tall do they have to be? Because you mentioned that they're very good at unliving themselves. how tall do they need to be? Yes, that's a really good question. this is, it's so specific. This is one of the very specific things when it comes to quail. You do not want any height that is between 18 inches floor to ceiling or six feet floor to ceiling.
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So you can have them in a hutch that is no taller than 18 inches, Florida ceiling, or in our aviary, we have eight foot ceilings because um quail cannot control their flight. They get startled at their own shadows. They get startled at absolutely everything. um One time I had an extra nesting pad and I was like, oh, maybe they'll like this. I put that in their aviary. They did not lay for two weeks because that was such a disturbance to them.
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terrified them, they wouldn't do it. So they are very flighty and they go straight up. So if they flush and there is a ceiling at say two, three, four feet above their head, they will hit the ceiling and break their necks. So it's really important. That is the one most important thing with raising quail. The other thing being their feed, which I'll touch on in a second, but
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that height is very specific. So I would say 15 to 18 inches floor to ceiling for a hutch. Okay. Cool. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. And then I would say the only, the one other really important thing I would say with quail is their feed requirements are a little bit, well, they're quite a bit different than um other poultry. They require a higher.
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protein. So they do need be started on a 30 % game bird feed. We get ours, we source ours locally here in Minnesota from a mill down in Mabel. And then we use Chick Starter for them in their adult life because that's at that 21 % and that keeps them a lot healthier. um We
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don't use a layer feed because of the roosters. So we provide calcium separately. We actually use uh a reptile enclosure substrate that's calcium based because they're so small. can't handle the crushed oyster shells and we're not going to try to grind it up in a food processor.
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But so that is another distinction to be aware of is that they do have different nutritional needs. So you can't start them on a regular chick starter, a regular adult layer feed. They do best when they have that higher level of protein. Okay, good to know. Thank you. Hold on one second.
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I was gonna cough and I didn't want to cough in your ear. uh So we're looking at a little bit of of fundage for the outlay to start this but once we get started it would be okay. Yes, yes and they're they're so self-sufficient like you can just keep going you can just keep taking your own eggs especially because they lay so many.
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that it doesn't feel like you're cutting into anything to save a few to toss in the incubator. um And you just keep going. There's never a point where I feel like we have to invest anymore in new birds. We do like to. Every so often, we will buy some hatching eggs from outside to just add genetics back into our covey to keep things fresh.
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But you can go several generations before that's even a concern. And certainly we have more than the average person keeping some for their family would have. Yeah. Cool. Oh, my God, Caitlin. I was really hoping that you were going to be a quail expert lady. And you are. I'm so thrilled that I got to talk to you because this whole weekend, every other sentence was I was thinking about the quail question.
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I'm like, oh my God, we're obsessed. Okay. And I just, needed somebody who does it because you know things that Google doesn't know. Trial and error. And I do, I'm glad to info dump about our uh quail anytime. Yeah. And I was like, am I being like, I don't know, terrible? Am I a terrible person asking you when you're only half an hour away? But
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But people aren't necessarily gonna drive from Jordan down to Mankato to get your quail eggs. No, absolutely not. And we don't expect them to at all. And again, you know, we know we're not even the only ones in the Mankato area. And I think that's great. And I think that's fine. And, yeah, definitely not a concern on our front. Good. I just I always worry because usually people who are in
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agriculture because quails agriculture. They're pretty good about no, you should try it if you want to try it. Absolutely. But there's always one person somewhere that's like, oh, they're going to be competition. That's not cool. Not not not my vibe at all. Yes. And I didn't say anything to my husband about this and he's going to listen to this episode because it's full of information he wants. I'm going say it anyway. He was talking about ducks and I was like,
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It wouldn't be fair to get ducks. And he's like, why? I said, because we have no running water on our property. There's no creek, there's no pond, there's nothing. And ducks like to swim. Quail don't care. They don't want to swim. Nope, they don't at all. They just want to... We have some... I bought some totes, some like decorative storage totes.
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Those are flipped upside down inside their aviary. You can cut some evergreen boughs down and create little hidey holes for them. They don't even want to roost. They just want to run around on the ground and hang out and eat. How do they handle the really cold weather in Minnesota? They do fairly well. Again, ours are indoors, but they are in an unheated barn. know, they're...
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there have been times as you know this winter where it has been absolutely necessary to go out three times a day and give them some fresh water because freezing in 20 minutes. But aside from that, do well. I will say when we were having 40 below, we would lose one just from.
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shock to the system. were generally our older birds that we would lose one after got super, super dangerously cold. aside from that, they do really well. just huddle up together, fluff up their feathers, especially because they're on the ground um and they can kind of burrow down into the bedding. do great. Good to know. Thank you. uh
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And then the other question I have, because I didn't think I'd look it up or ask my husband if he knew, is are there wild quail in Minnesota? There are not wild quail in Minnesota. um We used to have a small population of Bob White quail in Minnesota, um but we do not have an extant population at this time of any species. OK. Hmm.
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Did people shoot them? Did they migrate? Do you know what happened to the quail? Yeah, they seem to be migrating to... Well, okay, so here's... I'll go on another tangent. I actually work for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever also. That's my full-time job. I have a lot of information on this specific topic too.
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Most of it is because of our habitat loss. So the degradation of our native tall grass prairies has been what has diminished quail populations across the entire United States and has condensed them to very small pockets around the country. uh And it's generally where they can find the best cover. So because we don't have the proper
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ecosystems for them to thrive in. They've just left. Well, they got to go where they want to be, just like humans do. Okay. And then the last thing I want to bring up, because I saw it on your Facebook page and I was very impressed, was your post about chickens and what the definitions are for free range and cage free and all that. Because I am going to share that on my page. Perfect. Yes. That was...
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something, I was looking for sturdier egg flats um for storing our eggs before we packaged them. And I ended up on the site of a company that makes products for conventional farm setups. And I just was struck by this is best case scenario. The pictures they're sharing on their website are.
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best case scenario. This is them saying, look at how humane this is. And it was just like shoulder to shoulder room full of chickens with no room to move. And that's cage free. And so I just think that people are going to the grocery store and they're spending extra money for these labels that do, that don't mean a whole lot. They do not mean that these birds are living in more humane conditions. If they were more humane conditions, they wouldn't be de-beaked so that they don't.
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tear each other apart out stress. Even with free range, they just have to technically have access to the outdoors and two square feet per bird indoors. They do not have any minimum space outdoors. So it could be, you know, a teeny tiny run that only five of them can fit in at a time. But that meets the legal definition of free range. And that's what people are paying several extra dollars at the store for, is to have this label that doesn't actually mean those chickens are treated well.
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And so I just thought it was worth pointing out because I don't think a lot of people understand that. And I know that some people will hear that we don't free range ours and think that that's awful and abusive, but we do have 15, 20 square feet per bird, as opposed to one to two square feet per bird. keep constant enrichment. is exclusively for their safety because we are positioned
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along the river, m surrounded by woods. We have eagles, hawks, um raccoons, opossum, coyotes, foxes. We have red foxes, gray foxes. We have other people's barn cats. We have just so many things around all of the time. uh Plus I am doing breeding. so just from a biosecurity standpoint, we also have lots of wild turkeys that can bring disease. And um so for us, it's just
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it just is a safer thing for them. But we do our best to make sure they have the maximum amount of space. They have the best nutrition they can. They have constant uh enrichment that's very, important to us, constant interaction. They're well loved. um And that's just
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I just think that people should be aware that if they're already paying extra at the grocery store for these labels, then they maybe shouldn't be turning their nose up at the fact that farm fresh eggs might cost a dollar or two more because they are far exceeding those minimum legal expectations for a label to be slapped on an egg carton at the store. Absolutely. And we sell our eggs.
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at our farm stand and I am so thankful to our customers who just swing in the driveway, park, go in, buy their eggs, leave their money in the bin and go home with really yummy eggs at $5 a dozen. Yes, and it's, mean, we're not making a big profit margin out of the $5 a dozen. It's very little really, but it feels good.
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It feels good to know that we're taking really, really good care of our birds. They are not de-beaked. They are well-loved. They get to go out and sit in a lawn chair with them, and they'll all climb up on my lap and get scratches. um we, again, we source our feed locally. We feed our birds on a certified organic diet. So we get a locally grown, locally milled certified organic diet um that we go straight to the mill for. We actually just picked some up a couple of days ago.
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Um, and it's just, I can say they, taste better. They, the, the birds are not stressed. And I feel like you can tell that when you're, when you're eating the eggs. Um, and I think that it's, it's worth the, it's, it's the $5 farm fresh eggs from birds that are well-loved is worth more than the $7 free range.
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eggs at the store. Yes. And as we all learned during COVID supply chains go down. if you want to be smart, get to know your local growers and producers and buy from them. Yes. And that's very much part of my motivation for, what we're doing here is not, not just self-sufficiency, but having the skills and the means.
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to provide support for my community because I think community care is so important. And I think that people need to be able to oh make community. They need to be able to help one another. And this is what I feel like I can do to be part of that no matter what else is happening in the greater scope of things. The only thing that has been keeping me sane in 2026 is the fact that we have chickens.
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that lay really good eggs and we get to sell them to people who want them. Yes. It's amazing. It has been a very, very long 2026 in Minnesota for us folk who live here. Yes, it has been. I can't it's only been two months. I can't believe that February is almost over.
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What the heck, it all went by at the speed of really cold molasses, but also in the blink of an eye. And I don't know how that works. Time is just weird. All right, Caitlin, thank you so much. Like if I was standing in front of you, I would hug you. For all the information you just dumped, because I really needed to learn about quail so I can give my husband some answers. Absolutely, I'm so happy to share. Where can people find you? We are on...
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Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We are just quirky quail acres on all of those. Did I say quirky quail farms or did I say... No, I believe you said quirky quail acres. I talked to so many people. I never know if I say the right thing. Pretty sure you did. If you didn't, I missed it. All right. It's quirky quail acres. If I said farm at the beginning, I might have, who knows. um I really appreciate your time.
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And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Have a great day. It's so pretty. Get outside and have some fun if you can. You as well. Thank you so much. All right. Bye. Bye.