Keeping Quail

	When I was a teenager I used to keep Quail and collect their eggs to pickle or to put on baked pizza. Quail eggs are beautiful and although they are fiddly to peel, they are the perfect size for pickling in glass jars. I used an incubator to hatch new chicks. You can imagine how cute a quail chick is if you know the size of their eggs. A few days after they hatch, before they get their feathers, they are covered in yellow fluff and you’d be hard pressed to find anything as adorable. We built them a 6 foot cage complete with a blackberry bush, grass, sand and stones but it wasn’t a good idea because they used to take off vertically and bang their heads on the roof (they are not very intelligent birds!). I think that parents should get their kids to have a pet of some kind even if it’s something very short term like a hamster. It teaches responsibility and gives first hand experience of the duty to feed, water and clean the pet. Most kids want a pet because it’s cute, but they need to learn that the cuteness wears off after a while but the duty to care can never wear off. As part of keeping quail my dad showed me how to slaughter poultry and my mum showed me how to pluck, gut and prepare poultry for cooking (It’s stuff like this which remind me I grew up in the countryside rather than London).

Quail vs Chicken