Making your kids involved in taking care of your quail birds is fun. They can have first-hand eggs-perience in feeding them and harvesting their eggs and be more aware of the consequences of their actions.
But aside from these, do you ever wonder what raising quails can teach children?
Today, we’ll help you see the opportunities offered by the unseen sides of raising quails and share the following:
- lessons children can learn from raising quails
- benefits of raising these poultry birds
- and the answer to various questions about these birds
This article will help you determine if raising quails with your children is practical for you.
If you’re a new poultry keeper or homesteader looking for more reasons to invest in quails, you’ll highly benefit from this discussion.
So, let’s fly right into it.
What Raising Quails Can Teach Children
Quails are dual-purpose birds. They can provide you with meat and eggs that you can put on the table or sell for extra cash.
But aside from these apparent benefits, raising these birds can also teach your child several skills and cultivate beautiful qualities.
Here are what raising quails can teach children.
1. Raising Quail Teaches Them to be Responsible
Whether you’re keeping your quails as pets or for poultry farming, it’ll always come with lots of responsibility.
And sharing that with your child can help them be responsible and accountable for their actions.
The task you can give to your children will depend on their maturity but at a young age; you can teach them to do chores like:
- feeding quails with the best feed
- giving fresh water
- cleaning their food and water troughs
- changing their beddings in their nest box
- gathering eggs every day
- giving chicken treats
And as they grow older, you can also teach them how to incubate fertile eggs, deep clean the coop, and inspect quails for injuries.
It might seem a lot, but as time goes by, it will become naturally part of their routine and hopefully teach them to be responsible and hardworking.
2. It Can Help Hem Learn How to Interact
Another skill that kids can learn from raising quails is interacting. At first, they might do it with their pets, but you can help them apply it in socializing with other people with your guidance.
It’s also a great way to get your child to have time off their gadgets and perform daily chores with quails.
Children enjoy picking, holding, hugging pets, and playing with them. And even if quails are tiny birds who can’t converse, your kids might still talk to them.
3. These Birds Can Help Alleviate Anxiety and Stress
Raising quails won’t just teach them how to socialize. It also helps them emotionally.
Quails like Coturnix quail breed variants are usually friendly and make a safe pet for your kids.
They may be small to hug and hold, but they can help relieve your kid’s stress and anxiety when they’re playing with them.
They can also voice their opinions and feelings while talking to birds because these creatures won’t judge them.
And when your kids realize that their quails depend on them for survival and protection, it can help boost their self-esteem and sense of responsibility.
4. Raising Baby Quails Will Teach Them to Be Gentle
Whether you’re incubating fertile eggs, growing baby quails, or raising full-grown quails, this is a beautiful opportunity for your child to learn the value of gentleness.
Fertile eggs have delicate embryos growing inside, and jostling or dropping them might cause injury to the source.
Show your child how to handle viable eggs properly, and then let them hold them under your supervision.
Since baby chicks are so tiny, you must train young children to sit still when handling them. Teach your kids how to pick up and hold baby chicks and adult chickens correctly.
It’s crucial to keep an eye on small children to ensure they don’t drop or damage a chick. But kids are usually fast learners.
So, it won’t take long before they learn the importance of being gentle.
5. Children Will Learn How to Make Money
Raising quails is also an opportunity to teach your kids how to make hard-earned money. You can guide them in harvesting eggs and looking for chances of selling them and the adult ones for extra cash.
Kids will have to reach out to their family, friends, neighbors, or your nearest store to sell the eggs. And this is where your kid’s social skills come into handy.
Your kids can also learn how to charge their customers and how much change to give with your guidance.
They might get too excited after earning money, too. So, you’ll have to make sure you keep enough money to cover the overhead cost before rewarding them.
This way, your kids will learn to work hard and be wise in their finances even at a young age.
6. Keeping Quails Can Teach Kids About Hygiene
It is critical to wash your hands before and after touching fertile eggs to prevent the spread of bacteria.
Since eggs are porous, handling one without washing your hands increases the chances of the egg becoming contaminated.
Salmonella and other diseases that can be transmitted to humans can infect quails. That’s why it’s crucial to teach your child to wash their hands before and after handling chicken eggs.
It can help instill in them the value of hygiene and avoid the transmission of diseases.
This is also essential when kids gather eggs in the hen house or do other everyday activities with the chickens.
You have to ensure that they correctly wash their hands using soap and water. It would also help if you’d get them to sing the alphabet song twice while scrubbing their tiny hands.
This way, you can make sure they ultimately get rid of the dirt and stay healthy around the poultry.
7. Your Kids Will Learn How to Be Compassionate
Kids that are so involved in raising their pet quails since it’s born will see and recognize when it’s thirsty, hungry, or uncomfortable.
And when they see that their baby quails need something, they’ll be motivated to provide for their needs.
For example, when they notice there’s no water in the trough and the birds seem thirsty, they’ll willingly refill it for their pets.
So, by keeping your children involved in raising these birds, your kids will learn to be empathetic and compassionate towards their animals.
They’d also form strong bonds with their quails, just as how they would with cats or dogs.
And those are wonderful traits that can help them be better people as they grow up.
8. It Will Help Your Kids Learn to be Patient
The incubation process can be long because it takes 17 to 18 days for Japanese or Coturnix quails to hatch, while Bobwhite quails will take around 23 days.
Of course, it’s not easy to wait for almost a month for the quail eggs to hatch.
But seeing adorable, tiny chicks pop out from an eggshell is so unique, and it makes the long wait worth it. And it can teach your children the value of patience.
In this fast-paced world where most people want instant gratification, it would be wonderful if your kids grow to be patient and kind people, right?
9. The Life Cycle of Quail Birds
Seeing how the quail eggs hatch into tiny chicks and transform into an adult over time is just a sight to behold.
And it’s an excellent opportunity to tell them the science behind their development from fertile eggs into laying quails.
You can get your kids to help you when incubating eggs so they can be familiar with how they develop over time and grow into hens capable of reproducing another life.
10. It Can Educate Your Kids About Reproduction
Speaking of reproduction, your kids will eventually witness your quails mating if you have male quails.
It can reasonably be a complex topic to discuss with your young child. But if you think they’re at the right age to know and understand, it’s also an excellent opportunity to explain the process and importance of reproduction.
If you want your quails to lay eggs, males and mating are unnecessary, but you can still teach them how quails reproduce if appropriate for their age.
11. Your Kids Where Learn About Our Food Sources
Most children have no idea where their food originates and believe it comes from the local grocery shop.
A child who owns quails that produce food that they eat has a much deeper awareness of where food comes from than any of their peers.
Children who look after quails know that their hens provide eggs and meat to eat.
And it’ll help to instill a sense of reality in your kid’s mind that foods don’t just magically appear in the grocery store.
Children gradually realize the fruits of their labor in caring for their hens. And they are rewarded by having food on their tables.
What are the Benefits of Raising Quails?
Now that we’ve talked about what raising quails can teach children, do you still have second thoughts in adding them to your flock?
Whether you raise these birds for eggs or as a pet, you’ll enjoy lots of benefits from them. They include the following:
1. Quails are easy to raise in urban areas
If you reside in a city, one of the most significant benefits of growing quail is that cities and towns that don’t allow hens may make exceptions for quail or leave them out entirely.
Quails don’t want crow; instead, they make soft chirps and coos that leave no trace of their existence.
And they’re considerably less likely to irritate your neighbors than a 4:30 a.m. rooster wake-up call.
Since Coturnix quails can fly high and escape, you can’t allow them to free-range like chickens. So, they won’t disturb neighbors as much as chickens.
2. They mature more quickly than chickens
Breeds like Coturnix quails mature and start laying eggs at age 6 to 8 weeks, and they only take 17 days to incubate.
Therefore, they mature faster than chickens which take seven months to mature. That’s a vast difference worth considering.
3. Quails produce eggs almost every day
Raising quail for eggs won’t disappoint you because these birds lay eggs every day.
They may be smaller than chicken eggs since three quail eggs equate to 1 chicken egg, but they’re nutritious and can be used in different recipes.
4. These birds don’t need much room
Each quail only needs at least 1 square foot of space. It’s the ideal area conducive to a peaceful home and will reduce the chance of behavioral issues among them.
So, if you have limited space in your backyard, these birds will suit you.
5. Quails are hardy creatures
What many homesteaders like about quails is that they’re disease-resistant as long as you keep the quail coop clean and they’re not too crowded in a space.
Coccidiosis and quail diseases are usually transported by mature. That’s why we recommend elevating your coop and cleaning it frequently.
These birds are also cold-hardy. Usually, they don’t need heat lamps during winter if there’s enough covering and insulation in their coop.
However, expect that their egg production will slow down during this season when there’s less daylight.
Commonly Asked Questions About Quails
Are quails easier to raise than chickens?
Yes, quails are also easy to raise because they consume less space and quail feed.
They only need 1 square foot of space per bird, and they don’t crow and annoy neighbors, making them ideal for urban areas.
What are the disadvantages of quail?
One of the disadvantages of raising quail is that their droppings have high ammonia content.
That’s why they can be smelly, and their manure can be home to different bacteria and cause coccidiosis and other diseases.
Can you keep quails and chickens together?
You can raise quails alongside chickens. However, they need a separate coop section and aviary. This way, the birds won’t intermingle, and aggressive chickens won’t bully quails.
Furthermore, the chickens can free-range, but most quail owners don’t let their quails do so to prevent them from escaping. So, it only makes sense to provide separate sections for each of them.
How many quail should I start with?
This can vary depending on the purpose of why you’re raising quails. If you’re looking to start poultry farming as a new poultry keeper, it’s best to start with 40 to 50 quails.
The recommended ratio in an individual cage is three females per single male quail.
Are quails worth keeping?
We can say that domesticated quails are worth keeping and raising because of their delicious eggs, tender meat, and manageable size.
These birds are easy to maintain, and even new poultry keepers can raise them successfully.
Are quails winter hardy?
Quails are cold hardy birds that can survive even in harsh winters as long as there’s a winter cover available.
Raising Quails Can Teach Children Summary
Many homesteaders and poultry keepers find raising quail birds enjoyable.
It offers a chance for you to bond with your kids and a chance to teach them important lessons they’d treasure for life.
There is so much to learn from this eggs-perience. But what raising quails can teach children the most is the sense of responsibility, the value of patience, and hard work.
They can also learn how to harvest, sell and make hard-earned make money and practice good hygiene all the time.
On top of that, talking and playing with quails can help alleviate your kid’s stress and anxiety and help them interact with others.
You can also use it as a chance to teach them about the science of quail’s life in a fun way.
READ NEXT: The Ultimate Guide to Raising Quail
