Quail Chicks/Hatching Eggs FAQs + Terms

Can your chicks be sexed at hatch?

No, our quail chicks cannot be sexed male or female at hatch. They are sold straight run, meaning there is a 50% chance of them being male or female. There are a few color variations of Coturnix quail that you can feather sex upon maturity, but all of our quail and your resulting offspring are a mix. This means until they approach maturity and you can vent sex them or listen for the first rooster crow, you will not be able to tell which ones are male and which ones are female.

Need some guidance on vent sexing and identifying a male quail crowing? Feel free to reach out.

When will chicks and eggs be available?

Our season usually runs from February through August, at the discretion of how well our quail are producing and how our first test hatches turn out. Updates will be made on Instagram, the Facebook farm page, and here on the website as we approach each season.

*2023 season: as of February, the season is open and we still have VERY limited availability for chick reservations and hatching eggs throughout each month*

How do I order chicks and/or eggs?

The best way to order chicks right now is by emailing us. This allows us to keep close tabs on our reservation list and ensure nobody gets forgotten! Feel free to email us, DM us on Instagram or Facebook if you have questions before purchasing. Sometimes we will have flash sales over on Facebook or Instagram as we have extras available, and in that case, it is a first come first served basis, pending payment to Venmo or cash in certain instances.

A deposit is required in order to reserve chicks and hatching eggs. It can be any amount you are comfortable with, typically ranging from $10 to half of your total.

Have a timeframe in mind on when you’d like to receive your chicks/eggs, and we will do our best to accommodate you in the order in which we received orders. Flexibility on your end is important when working with these live animals, since we cannot perfectly predict egg production or hatch rates. Though we can get pretty close based on previous season’s information and notes! 🙂

How many chicks/hatching eggs should I order?

Since your chicks are coming to you straight run, we recommend ordering twice as many as the layers you want to end up with. For example, if you are hoping to end up with 6 females, we recommend ordering 12 chicks, knowing that statistically speaking, half of them will likely be males. Though, we have had a customer come back and tell us that they got a miraculous 100% female ratio one time! On the other end of the spectrum, we’ve had hatches turn out to be 9 males to 1 female before, so just know that it is out of everyone’s control.

How much do they cost?

Please refer to our price sheet below:

Where is your farm located and where do I pick up my order?

Our farm is located in the cute little farm community of Otis Orchards, WA. While we would love to host visitors and let you meet the flock, due to biosecurity reasons we do not allow on-farm visits or pickup. Our pickup location is just down the street at the Otis Orchards library.

What incubator do you recommend?

We personally use two different incubators to hatch quail here on our farm. Our trusty go-to is the Incuview All-in-One. The other is a Farm Innovators 4250 with the quail turners. The Incuview is good-to-go as is for both chickens and quail, the Farm Innovators you have to purchase the quail egg turners separately.

Do you sell any adult female or male quail?

In the beginning of each season, we take inventory of our covey in regards to male to female ratios, temperament, overall health and body confirmation. At that point, we might have some extra males (or rarely, females) that do not make the cut for breeding but will make good backyard pets. We will not have any extra adults again until the end of the season, usually in August or later. We will often just post them as we have them available on our farm page on Facebook, so be sure to follow along there for the most up-to-date availability.

Do you give a refund if one of my chicks dies/some eggs do not hatch?

Due to the vast amount of factors that are out of our hands once the chicks and eggs pass from our hands to yours, we do NOT offer refunds if a chick perishes or if some of your eggs do not hatch. Handling of the eggs from pickup to home, temperature fluctuations in your incubator, brooder conditions, etc. We are always happy to troubleshoot issues with you, but by purchasing live eggs and chicks, you are agreeing to the fact that there is risk involved in regards to outcomes. Check out our guides about hatching chicken eggs, quail eggs, brooding quail and brooding chicks for our best advice!

What do you feed your quail covey?

We feed our quail a locally grown and milled grain mix that is corn, soy, and GMO free. During the winter months when they take a break from laying and they begin molting, they get an 18% protein mix, similar to what you would feed broiler chickens. As laying season approaches, we mix that with a lower protein, higher calcium layer feed from the same source. As chicks, they get a different feed that is higher in protein. We use Purina Gamebird Starter crumble.

Why do you only sell quail chicks at a week old?

Over the years, we have learned that quail chicks are notoriously fragile. We have learned the ins and outs of setting them up for the best outcome and the fewest fatalities. By keeping them for one week after they hatch, we can ensure that we are sending you home with the strongest, best quail chicks, and we can save you the heartache that the first week can often bring for new quail keepers. If you would like to try your hand at day-old chicks, please send us an email in conjunction with your order.

How many chicks/eggs can I order at once?

Since we are a small farm and our availability highly depends on how our birds are producing at any given time, we ask that you keep your hatching egg order to a maximum of 2 dozen, and your chick order to a maximum of 12. If your needs fall outside of these parameters, please send us an email and we can discuss it further.

How do I successfully hatch my quail eggs?

Lucky for you, we have a quail hatching guide in the works! Coming soon.

What feather colors are in your flock? And what color eggs can I expect?

We have a beautiful variety of feather colors in our flock. Right now we have the following feather colors: calico fee, falb fee, pharaoh, Tibetan, rosetta, brown, tuxedo. You can see detailed descriptions of these colors using this link: http://www.southwestgamebirds.com/genetics/

We also receive a fun variety of egg colors and patterns from our flock! They range from the ‘typical’ brown spotted eggs to ones that look like chocolate chip cookies. We also have many quail that carry the ‘celadon’ gene in our flock, so we get a lot of shades of blue in our egg cartons as well!

Talk to me about the Celadon gene?

The gene that contributes to coturnix quail laying blue eggs is a mutation called ‘celadon’. With careful breeding and note taking, it is such a cool addition to our flock and to be able to be passed along to you, our customers. With any breeding project, it is important to maintain genetic variability or else you run the risk of unwanted phenotypes (crooked spines, poor body conformation, unhealthy birds). In our flock, we keep roosters that we hatched out of blue eggs and breed them to a mix of hens that are partial carriers of the gene and ones that do not carry it. When selecting grow-outs to eventually replace our older hens, we are careful to choose only the best of the best in order to ensure their offspring continue to be the best of the best. This has helped to maintain a structurally sound bird, ones that result in neat feathering patterns as well as a good chance of your hens laying a shade of blue egg! Long story short, we like to say that we have a 75%ish celadon flock. 🙂

Will you refund my deposit if I change my mind?

When we make reservations, there are a lot of hours behind the scenes that are spent creating and tweaking the hatch schedule for the entire season. We also have a number of upfront costs in the start of each season that your deposits help cover. For this reason, deposits are non refundable. Thank you!

My eggs hatched and a chick has splayed legs, help!

Quail chicks can be notorious for developing splayed legs at hatch. This happens when they have a hard time getting their feet under them and their legs do the splits. Thankfully, this is usually both preventable and treatable. We have good success preventing this by lining the bottom of our incubator with shelf liner when we put our eggs in lockdown. We find that when moved to the brooder, for the first week it also helps to keep shelf liner down for them as well as a panel heater or a heat lamp. We’ve found that quail chicks can easily develop splayed legs by using the heat plates that we love so much for our chicken chicks. For more splay leg fixes, check out Youtube – it’s pretty cool how many ideas are out there!

My eggs hatched and some of them have curled toes, help!

Curled toes can be caused by a few different things, the primary one being fluctuations in your incubator during incubation. Unfortunately, sometimes those fluctuations are so subtle and difficult to catch. Be sure you are incubating your eggs in a well-insulated, draft-free room, and we always recommend putting at least two humidity/temperature gages in them throughout incubation. Curled toes can also be a result of vitamin deficiencies in both the chick and the mother hen that the egg came from. We keep detailed notes on each of our hens and are able to trace each egg to each bird. We do test hatches from each hen before offering chicks and eggs for the season in order to make sure that all looks well on our end. If your chick has curled toes, be sure to offer it plenty of warm water with electrolytes, and you can even offer a product like nutridrench to load it with plenty of vitamins.

My chick turned out to be a rooster, can I bring him back and exchange for a female?

Due to maintaining good biosecurity practices on our farm, we cannot allow birds from another location to come back to our farm. When purchasing chicks or eggs, you are purchasing straight run birds that have no guarantee at being female. We do not offer an exchange program if your birds turn out to be males. Luckily, most neighborhoods do not have ordinances against keeping female OR male quail in a residential area! Their crows sound like songbirds and your neighbors just might like having them around. 🙂 If you have more males than your flock can support, you can always reach out and ask for advice on what to do, though.