The girls were getting along fine before and now the bloody head again. This time I grabbed the rooster and immediately quarantined him. It wasn’t bad but she had definitely been abused. The very next day after doing all this culling and rearranging of hens, I went out to feed and water them and found another hen with a slightly bloody head. However, these 12 were slated for dinner and leftovers and they got an extra day in the frig. Once that process is complete, I usually package them and then freeze them in packages of four birds. There are enzymes produced in that first 24 hours or so that help tenderize the meat. We processed all of the culled birds immediately and I had them in cold water overnight.
Now there were 12 in the cull group and each cage had 1 rooster and 5 hens. I snagged one of the hens at random and added her to the cull group. That left six hens and a rooster in the left penthouse. I needed five hens to be moved to the lower cage on the left. After closer inspection it became clear that I had misidentified one of the hens as a rooster. The only problem was that I kept getting 11 eggs from there. In the penthouse on the left side was supposed to be 2 roosters and 10 hens. It made sense that these hens had been raised together and would therefore live in relative harmony together with their new rooster friend. We took the five extra hens without a rooster buddy from the penthouse right side and put them in the lower cage with the lone rooster on the right. On the right side is where the rooster in quarantine came from so there was only one rooster there now and 10 hens. In the penthouse was an interesting situation in that there were originally 10 hens and 2 roosters on each side – or so we thought. The end result is two cages on the bottom, one left and one right, that have a rooster and no hens. We took that last hen and added her to the group to be culled. The other four hens from that cage were in quarantine. The cage on the bottom left had only one hen and a rooster in it. With my new experience, I realized I could not add another hen to the cage because she would just get beat up by the others as they vied for dominance and so we simply took all of the remaining hens out of there. All of the groups have 1 rooster to 5 hens.
In the lower cage on the right, we were missing a hen, the white one. Originally, there were five hens and one rooster in the bottom cages. We ended up reducing our quail population by 12 birds – well actually 13 but I will get to the additional bird in a moment.
However, we have to face facts and only keep what we need. The eggs they lay are so cute and beautifully colored. When you live the homestead life, there are certain choices that need to be made that are not always easy. Culling Hensīefore I get on to the pickled quail eggs, I need to talk a little bit more about culling the hens. The more eggs we get from our quail, the less eggs we have to purchase elsewhere. Getting 30 eggs at a time was a giant blessing. Then one day in late March, they all started laying again as if on cue. Who knew that we would be so successful in getting them to lay throughout the winter? Last year we had zero, zip, nada for eggs throughout the entire winter. So, they were slated for culling.Īn additional blessing and/or problem was we were getting 29 or 30 eggs every day. The only problem is that we couldn’t put them back in their various cages lest the same thing happen all over again. Each and every one of them healed up just fine. We rescued a bunch of them and put them in quarantine away from the others. Last time I talked about our beautiful Japanese Coturnix quail we were having issues with hens getting beat up really bad. On to the quail updates on the homestead. I don’t know a release date, but I’m eagerly anticipating its release. I believe filming is scheduled to be completed in February 2021. A second season is currently in the works. It’s still great watching for Christmas time IMO. The story so far is about Jesus’ adult life, not his birth.
PICKLED QUAIL EGGS SERIES
Scott and I have been watching the YouTube series called “The Chosen”. I appreciate you all so much and I’m so excited to share with you what’s going on at the farm this week. I want to take a minute and say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. And so much more to talk about, especially the creamery roof. Ten jars of pickled quail eggs that have been completed. Many changes since the last time I talked about them. Let’s get back to the quail and pickled quail eggs.
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