Raise Button Quail: From Incubating Eggs, Brooding Chicks, and Laying Adults

That first batch of button Quail that we had laid and then incubated ourselves, just hatched. We had 9 in the incubator, 9 eggs, and 8 hatched, so very happy with that hatch rate. Here they are just running around having a good old time, And yeah, they're very cute. These are just one day old and they're so tiny. They're like the size of your finger and they weigh like almost nothing. Awesome pets. So we've had button, Quail. We first got them from eBay.

We got 15 eggs, only 2 hatched. apparently, when you ship them, the hatch rate is a lot less. We bought a little $25 incubator and been using that. So we had 2) survive and they started laying eggs. They lay one a day after 8 weeks, and here they are just hatching. So that's the incubator, and when we came home after a night of camping we found these guys all hatched and ready to get into their brooder. So yeah, they say to keep them in the incubator after they hatch for about 24 hours to dry out things like that. That'll keep them warm.

Yeah, so there's already some eggs in there. So the plan is we have 2 incubators. The second incubator here with 10 eggs in it. This is an automatic turner incubator. So those have been in there for 10 days. So probably in about 9 days that will hatch. So these guys just hatched after 19 days that incubator down there.

How to Incubate a Button-Quail

So we're going to try to see if we can introduce them to their parents and see what happens. So here we go. Really that we could just introduce the button-quail chick and have the adults take care of them, but our experiment didn't work out so well. The male was very scared of the chick just running away, running away, and then the female started pecking out the chick kind of aggressively. So we just got them out of there and went to plan B, just setting up a brooder and placing them all in there. There I put a heat pad on the underside of the cage and then I put down a painter's tarp–this is what we usually do–and then put down some paper towels to give them sometraction with their little feet. Here is a 3D printed water I made just so that they wouldn't drown. A lot of other water is not that big, but I do have one that I do like for the little guys too. I'll link to it in the description.

There was a chick grow the chick starter feed that we use. We crush it up a little more when they're tiny to one day, two year old chicks. I also put some mealworms in there for extra protein, and the adults love the mealworms. That's their favorite little treats. I just had a little cap and just put the feed in there and then that little tunnel there just to give them a little privacy. Here are some thermometers and humidity detectors. There's really the thermometers that I wanted to make sure that they're getting that 90 to 95 degree heat with the heat lamp, and I don't want the whole cage to be hot so they can retreat in certain areas. It's been quite a cool journey raising these button-quail, just seeing the kids go from chick to adult to after eight weeks, this button-quail will start lying eggs if they're female. But yeah, they mature in eight weeks, just two months, which is kind of crazy.

And the things we've learned along the way that they will lay eggs like these. Eight eggs were laid in eight different days, but the eighth egg hatches the same exact time as the first egg that was laid, and it's a process they activate soon as they feel like the temperature of their mother sitting on them consistently. That's when the mother hand gets broody. In this case we're not allowing her to sit on them. We're placing them in an incubator. But the same thing, they get activated soon as we put them in the incubator, and then 19 days later they hatch. So we learn all these cool things and we see the whole life cycle process. We raised these adults that laid these eggs from a chick. We incubated them.

So from an egg we raised them and just seeing the kids do that whole process. And actually we're trying to start a business with Valen. He's trying to care for these animals. We help them a lot because he's only seven, but he's trying to sell these fertilized eggs for $3 apiece, And then these chicks are $10 apiece and hopefully have a little sustainable business because they should. You know, ideal, they still lay one a day. So from just a male and a female adult, button-quail. You know we should have 365 chicks by the end of the year, which is kind of crazy to think about. The chicks did not hatch, I believe it's just. It had a crack in it.

So I think it should be hollow. Let me see, I'm going to crack right now. Well, now it just seems like the embryo never formed. Maybe it wasn't fertilized or something. You can see the yolk. No, I don't think we'll eat this one because it hasn't refrigerated and it's been cooking for the last time. All right. So those just hatched. So we're going to put.

I made this cardboard insert. I like it better. These are made for chicken eggs. So this was there. That's the temperature probe. Put this guy in and I made these holes so they exited in there a little better. The animals gathering the eggs.

Every Day Is a Day

So we have two incubators and they lay an egg a day. So it takes 20 days to do a cycle. So the theory here is, every day is a day. So the theory here is every 10 days we, know, have chickens hatching orquail hatching, and then we have. We put 10 in here and then 10 in there. So, 10 days, that should hatch. We just have hatching here today. Pay attention, make sure they don't, make sure they don't run away.

So I need my brothers one more egg over here. So you got them all. So bring them over here. So for the first 15 days we want it, the fat end up and then we spin them five times a day. This is the manual one. The other one will spin them automatically. This one we got to do manually.

Egg Incubation – How to Rotate Eggs

We did used to mark them with pencil. What we really got to do is rotate it 180 degrees and you're okay. You kind of rotate it around its axis, but fat end up for the first (15 days) and then the last (three days) you stop turning. The last four days you stop turning and you lay them flat and then you stop turning and then we should hatch. Okay, that's it. Let's put the cover on and plug it in. Turn that around. I did get extra thermometers, which I want to pop in, And that just also. This also has humidity, because you want to keep the humidity right around 50% while they're incubator, and then you want to increase it to like 60% when they're the last four days getting ready to hatch. I just increased humidity by adding water, so this was in there while they're getting ready to hatch.

So this should bring it up to temperature, and I got to add some water in those water ducts to refill the water. I like to use this. turkey lager works pretty well. So just soak in some water because otherwise you're spilling all over the place and it's a very thin channel. Also, I added a sponge. I don't know if it's actually doing anything. I figure you can hold a little more water, a sponge, and I'll just fill it out. So I just filled the water and that should be good to go. I filled that probably every five days or so, and I just check on the humidity and check the temperature. You know you want that temperature to be right at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Okay, so Veil is going to demonstrate spinning the eggs. Very simple process. You got to run them at a little different angle. That makes it work. So we had a really good hatch rate with these guys. We only had nine eggs and eight of them hatched. So really good rate. The reason you turn the eggs is so the air sac within the egg doesn't get trapped or stuck in one place and the embryos can continue to breathe. So that's why you want to turn them.

We Did Five Times a Day, Just to Be Safe

We did five times a day. We've been doing like five times, just to be safe. Yeah, but we all seem to make really good pets, especially in small quantities. You know now that we have more. It might be a little more of a headache, but with two, you know we were just changing their cage once a week and that would just be rolling up the paper underlayment, and we were using, you know, aspen shavings as their bedding once they got older. Here's some footage of the chicks as they grown. You know our last two.

Here's some footage. You know this is probably like a week old. They start getting their feathers, they're coming in, and then here you can see they get a lot more feathers. This is probably like two weeks old. And then this is footage. You know, one time they escape from the cage because they'll start flying after a couple of days.

Incubating Eggs – Is It Possible?

So you need to put that. put them in the cage. Oh, here's some footage. When we first tried incubating the eggs, we had 10 of them on a plate and then, unfortunately, they all fell onto the floor. Everyone was crying and it was pretty sad. But we said, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So they cooked an omelette with these eggs–not really an omelette–but you can see these quarter-sized eggs that we feasted on–and they were tasty, tasted like eggs. Here's the kids trying them out, and they were. You can see Valen's eyes are poofy because he was crying because we wanted to have chicks and instead we had eggs.

But yeah, they were good. Anyway, yeah, definitely something, a cool, definitely experiment. I'd recommend you know, just getting a picking up a $25 incubator on Amazon, and you know, getting some fertilized eggs and seeing the whole process from beginning to end. It's quite amazing. So if you're interested, just send me a message and we can arrange something and Valen can sell you some. So it's part of his business. Thanks for watching guys, good luck, Godspeed. Don't forget to subscribe, comment, thanks.

Conclusion

The couple bought the Quail from eBay and incubated them in a $25 incubator. The eggs are incubated for 15 days before they are ready to hatch. "They mature in eight weeks, just two months, which is kind of crazy" Every 10 days we, know, have chickens hatching orquail hatching, and then we have. We put 10 in here and then 10 in there. So, 10 days, that should hatch. You know now that we have more. It might be a little more of a headache, but with two, you know we were just changing their cage once a week and that would just be rolling up the paper underlayment. "It's been quite a cool journey raising these button-quail, just seeing the kids go from chick to adult"