Chickens vs Quail: Which is the Best Bird to Raise?

Are you thinking about raising birds for eggs or meat? Well, you have two options: chickens or quail. Chickens and quail are both popular poultry birds. They are easy to raise and take care of, but there are some differences between them. In this article, we will compare the pros and cons of raising chickens and quail, so you can decide which bird is the best for you.

pros and cons of raising chickens

What are Chickens?

Chickens are domestic birds that have been bred for thousands of years. They are popular for their meat and eggs. Chickens come in different breeds, colors, and sizes. They are social birds that love to be around other chickens. Chickens are easy to raise and care for, but they require more space than quail.

Pros of Raising Chickens:

  • Eggs: Chickens lay larger eggs than quail. They can lay up to 300 eggs per year. Chicken eggs are also easier to handle and sell.
  • Meat: Chickens are larger than quail, so they provide more meat.
  • Companionship: Chickens are social birds that love to be around other chickens. They are fun to watch and can be great pets.
  • Pest Control: Chickens love to eat insects, so they can help control pests in your yard or garden.
Chickens come in different breeds, colors, and sizes.

Cons of Raising Chickens:

  • Space: Chickens require more space than quail. You need at least 2 square feet of space per chicken in the coop and 8 to 10 square feet of outdoor space per chicken.
  • Noise: Roosters can be noisy, especially in the early morning. If you have close neighbors, they may not appreciate the noise.
  • Mess: Chickens can be messy. They scratch the ground to look for food, which can make a mess in your yard or garden.
Quail are smaller than chickens

What are Quail?

Quail are small game birds that are native to America, Asia, Europe, and Africa. They are popular for their meat and eggs. Quail are smaller than chickens, so they require less space. They are also quieter than chickens and are less likely to make a mess in your yard or garden.

Pros of Raising Quail:

  • Eggs: Quail lay smaller eggs than chickens, but they lay more eggs. Quail can lay up to 300 eggs per year, and their eggs are considered a delicacy in some countries.
  • Meat: Quail are smaller than chickens, but they provide more meat per pound than chickens.
  • Space: Quail require less space than chickens. You only need 1 square foot of space per quail in the coop and 2 to 3 square feet of outdoor space per quail.
  • Quiet: Quail are quieter than chickens. They are less likely to disturb your neighbors.

Cons of Raising Quail:

  • Fragile: Quail are fragile birds. They can get scared easily and can be prone to injuries.
  • Flighty: Quail are more flighty than chickens. They are not as social as chickens and may not be as friendly.
  • Temperature Sensitivity: Quail are sensitive to temperature changes. They need a warm, dry environment to thrive.
If you are looking for a fun and social pet that can also provide you with eggs and meat

Which bird is the best for you?

Now that you know the pros and cons of raising chickens and quail, you can decide which bird is the best for you. If you have a large yard or farm and want larger eggs and more meat, chickens may be the best choice for you. If you have limited space, want more eggs, and a quieter bird, quails may be the best choice for you.

Another thing to consider is the reason why you want to raise birds. If you are looking for a fun and social pet that can also provide you with eggs and meat, chickens may be the best option. If you want a bird that requires less space and is easier to care for, quail may be the better choice.

Final Thoughts

Raising chickens and quail can be a fun and rewarding experience. Both birds are easy to care for and provide eggs and meat. However, there are some differences between them that you need to consider before making a decision. 

Chickens require more space and can be noisier and messier, but they lay larger eggs and are more social. Quail require less space and are quieter, but they are more flighty and fragile.

Ultimately, the best bird for you depends on your individual needs and preferences. Consider the pros and cons of each bird and decide which one is the best fit for you. Whether you choose to raise chickens or quail, you will enjoy the benefits of fresh eggs and delicious meat.

In summary, chickens and quail are both great options for raising birds. Chickens are larger and more social, while quail require less space and are quieter. When deciding which bird to raise, consider your space, needs, and preferences. With the right care and attention, both chickens and quail can provide you with fresh eggs and meat for years to come. Happy homesteading!

BREAKING: European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government

A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any vegetable seeds that have not been “tested, approved and accepted” by a new EU bureaucracy named the “EU Plant Variety Agency.” It’s called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.

plant seeds

The draft text of the law, which has already been amended several times due to a huge backlash from gardeners, is viewable here.

Ancient Grains Prepper Seeds

Stock up on heirloom seeds now

“This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers, and small-scale market farmers,” said Ben Gabel, vegetable breeder and director of The Real Seed Catalogue. “Home gardeners have really different needs – for example they grow by hand, not machine, and can’t or don’t want to use such powerful chemical sprays. There’s no way to register the varieties suitable for home use as they don’t meet the strict criteria of the Plant Variety Agency, which is only concerned about approving the sort of seed used by industrial farmers.”

save your seeds

Virtually all plants, vegetable seeds and gardeners to eventually be registered by government

All governments are, of course, infatuated with the idea of registering everybody and everything. Under Title IV of the proposed EU law:

Title IV Registration of varieties in national and Union registers
The varieties, in order to be made available on the market throughout the Union, shall be included in a national register or in the Union register via direct application procedure to the CVPO.

Gardeners must also pay fees to the EU bureaucracy for the registration of their seeds. From the proposed law text:

The competent authorities and the CPVO should charge fees for the processing of
applications, the formal and technical examinations including audits, variety denomination, and the maintenance of the varieties for each year for the duration of
the registration.

While this law may initially only be targeted at commercial gardeners, it sets a precedent to sooner or later go after home gardeners and require them to abide by the same insane regulations.

Government bureaucracy gone insane

“This is an instance of bureaucracy out of control,” says Ben Gabel. “All this new law does is create a whole new raft of EU civil servants being paid to move mountains of papers round all day, while killing off the seed supply to home gardeners and interfering with the right of farmers to grow what they want. It also very worrying that they have given themselves the power to regulate and licence any plant species of any sort at all in the future – not just agricultural plants, but grasses, mosses, flowers, anything at all – without having to bring it back to the Council for a vote.”

As a hint of the level of insane bureaucracy that gardeners and vegetable growers will be subject to under this EU law, check out this language from the proposed EU law:

Specific provisions are set out on the registration in the Union variety register and with regard to the possibility for the applicant to launch an appeal against a CPVO decision. Such provisions are not laid down for the registration in the national variety
registers, because they are subject to national administrative procedures. A new obligation for each national variety examination centre to be audited by the CPVO will be introduced with the aim to ensure the quality and harmonisation of the variety registration process in the Union. The examination centre of the professional operators will be audited and approved by the national competent authorities. In case of direct application to the CPVO it will audit and approve the examination centres it uses for variety examination.

Such language is, of course, Orwellian bureaucratic speak that means only one thing: All gardeners should prepare to be subjected to total government insanity over seeds, vegetables and home gardens.

RealSeeds.co.uk warns about any attempt to actually try to understand the law by reading it:

You cannot just read the first 5 pages or so that are an ‘executive summary’, and think you know what this law is about. The executive summary is NOT what will become the law. It is the actual Articles themselves that become law, the Summary has no legal standing and is just tacked on as an aid to the public and legislators, it is supposed to give background information and set the proposed legislation in context so people know what is going on and why.

The problem with this law has always been that the Summary says lots of nice fluffy things about preserving biodiversity, simplifying legislation, making things easier etc – things we all would love – but the Articles of the law actually do completely the opposite. And the Summary is not what becomes the law.

For example, the Summary of drafts 1, 2 & 3 talked about making things easier for ‘Amateur’ varieties. But the entire class of Amateur vegetables – which we have spent 5 years working with DEFRA to register – was actually abolished entirely in the Articles right from the start. Yet the Summary , and press releases based on it, still talked about how it will help preserve Amateur varieties! The Summary is completely bogus. Do not base your views of the law on it!

So, be warned. By all means, read it yourself. But you have the ignore the Summary as that is not the Law, and does not reflect what is in the Law.

As you might suspect, this move is the “final solution” of Monsanto, DuPont and other seed-domination corporations who have long admitted their goal is the complete domination of all seeds and crops grown on the planet. By criminalizing the private growing of vegetables — thereby turning gardeners into criminals — EU bureaucrats can finally hand over full control of the food supply to powerful corporations like Monsanto.

Most heirloom seeds to be criminalized

Nearly all varieties of heirloom vegetable seeds will be criminalized under this proposed EU law. This means the act of saving seeds from one generation to the next — a cornerstone of sustainable living — will become a criminal act.

In addition, as Gabel explains, this law “…effectively kills off development of home-garden seeds in the EU.”

This is the ultimate wish of all governments, of course: To criminalize any act of self-reliance and make the population completely dependent on monopolistic corporations for their very survival. This is true both in the USA and the EU. This is what governments do: They seize control, one sector at a time, year after year, until you are living as nothing more than a total slave under a globalist dictatorial regime.

An online petition has already been started on this issue and has garnered nearly 25,000 signatures so far.

NOAH’S ARK and 240 other organizations from 40 European countries have also initiated an “open letter” appealing to Brussels bureaucrats to stop the insanity. Click here for a translated version of their petition.

I saw this coming

By the way, I am on the record predicting this exact scenario. Read Chapter Three of my fiction book, “Freedom Chronicles 2026.” (Read it FREE, online.) It depicts a seed smuggler living in a time when seeds are criminalized and people earn a living as professional seed smugglers.

In my book, a woman uses a specially-crafted breast prosthesis to smuggle seeds to “underground gardeners” in full defiance of laws crafted by Monsanto. A vast underground network of grassroots gardeners and scientists manage to put together a “seed weapon” to destroy GMOs and take back the food supply from evil corporations.

Mark my words: Seeds are about to become contraband. Anyone who grows their own food is about to be targeted as a criminal. The governments of the world, conspiring with corporations like Monsanto, do not want any individual to be able to grow their own food.

This is about total domination of the food supply and the criminalizing of gardeners. And this is what big government always does after centralizing sufficient power. All governments inherently seek total control over the lives of everyone, and if you don’t set boundaries and limits for government (i.e. the Bill of Rights), it eventually runs roughshod over all freedoms and liberties, including the freedom to grow your own food.

Additional sources:
http://open-seeds.org/bad-seed-law/
http://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlaw.html

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040214_seeds_european_commission_registration.html#ixzz2SoEzRpHN

 

 

DIY Chicken Watering Hole (and Other Critters Too)

Easy Fill Chicken Waterer

We keep our chickens in big cages to keep them safe from predators and so we have an easy time finding the eggs. One of the biggest hassles of this is filling the waterers inside the cages, especially after it rains. I decided there had to be a better way. Here it is and it doesn’t cost a lot.
The parts list is:
1 5 gallon bucket with lid
1 new oil pan
And some 1.5″ PVC pipe, some fittings, PVC primer and cement, some gasket material, and a valveI started by using a hole saw to cut a hole in the top of the bucket for the pipe to fit through.

You can see that the hole ended up a little bigger than the pipe but I’ll take care of that.

Here is the label from the gasket material I used. It comes in sheets. This kind came from Lowe’s but I’m sure you can get some at any hardware store.I used some snips to cut the gasket into squares and to cut holes into the squares. These were my first cuts, so to speak. I had to enlarge them a little to fit around the pipe perfectly.

Here are the fittings I used. Put a gasket over the long threaded piece on the left, then put it through the hole. Put the other gasket over the fitting on the inside of the lid, then install the nut on the inside and tighten it up.

Here it is with the gasket on the upper fitting. It looks a little sloppy but I don’t think the chickens will care.

After you tighten up these fittings you need to make sure that the pipes and fittings fit together. Here is what it looks like.

Then I used the PVC primer and cement to make the connections permanent. You probably don’t want to cement the valve on at this point because you will want to put the pipe through the side of your cage. If you have the valve cemented on you will have to cut a big hole in the side of your cage and then repair it. You might want to assemble this in your chicken cage to make sure you have the height and angle of the fittings correct before you use the cement. Here is the primer and cement I used.

Next, I used a drill with a 3/16″ bit to drill four holes in the bucket about a 1/2″ above the bottom.

Here is the assembly placed into the oil pan.

Here is the assembly in the corner of the cage.

Here is the valve I used. It will keep bugs and vermin out of the water tank and it creates a vacuum that keeps all the water from pouring out.

I used a tie wrap to hold the pipe to the side of the cage and used wire to hold the bucket steady.

To fill it just turn on the garden hose, open the valve and pour water in. The pipe is big enough to let the air out while you are filling it. When you get it full just close the valve and you are done.The total cost was about $15 and now I don’t have to get my feet muddy when it rains.

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Plant Now: Winter Sowing

Sowing The Seeds Of Love

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BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I start my summer garden in January, using a neat trick called “Winter-Sowing.” Winter-sowing is an outdoor method of seed germination (invented by Trudi Davidoff) which requires just two things: miniature greenhouses (made from recycled milk jugs) and Mother Nature. You can winter-sow your way to a beautiful garden, too…for pennies. Here’s how:

Make a Greenhouse. You can make a greenhouse from any container you like, so long as light can penetrate its walls. Like other winter-sowers, I use recyclables, including gallon-size milk- or water- jugs, and 2-Litre soda-pop bottles. With jugs and bottles, use a pen-knife to cut around the middle, almost all the way through. The uncut half-inch or so will serve as a hinge.

Next, punch out drainage holes in the bottom. A Phillips screwdriver, heated over a flame at the stove, will facilitate the hole-punching job. Punch out also a few holes along the top portion of the container. These extra holes increase air-ventilation. Ventilation, of course, is the key to preventing excess heat from building up in the greenhouse, and baking the seeds to death. If there is a cap on your jug or bottle, remove it. 

Select the Right Soil. It is essential to use a soil mix that drains well, and has a light, fluffy consistency. Pour the soil, preferably to a depth of 3 to 4 inches, into the bottom half of your container. Then moisten the soil thoroughly and let it drain.

Sow the Seeds . Sow your seeds on the soil surface, and then cover them with more soil, when necessary, to achieve the proper planting depth. Gently pat the mix down, so that seeds and soil make good contact. Then replace the lid, and secure it with a strip of duct tape, as illustrated.

If you live in a cold climate, as I do, plant your perennial and hardy annual seeds first. Should these sprout during a weird warm-spell in winter, they will not be harmed. Wait until March to plant your tender annuals. More details here: What Seeds Are Best For Prepping.

Remember to Label! For each sowing, indicate with a permanent marker (or a paint-pen) the seed variety and date sown. Do not omit this step, for there is nothing worse than finding, in spring, dozens of miniature greenhouses brimming with seedlings, and not knowing what they are!

Bring the Greenhouse Outdoors. Your greenhouse, once planted and labeled, is ready to brave the outdoor elements. Select a location that is safe from strong wind, but where sun, rain and snow will be freely admitted. My assorted greenhouses go on the patio table, out of the reach of Lily the Beagle who would otherwise knock them over. For further protection from tipping, I place them in a large plastic box, with drainage holes melted in the bottom.

Relax. Now sit back and let Mother Nature do her thing. As the weather chills and warms, your seeds will freeze and thaw. These natural actions loosen the seed-coatings. This is why advance soaking or nicking of hard-shelled seeds, such as Morning Glories and Sweet Peas, is not necessary when you winter-sow.

At the first kiss of spring, but while nights are still freezing, seedlings will begin to emerge. Now is the time to check for water. Open the tops, and if the soil appears dry, moisten thoroughly but gently, so as not to disturb tender root systems. Then close the tops again. On warm, sunny days, I open the tops for hours at a time, and let the seedlings enjoy the fresh spring air. The tops, of course, are closed at dusk.

I can’t tell you how advantageous winter-sowing can be. Last year I produced an entire garden’s-worth of perennials this way (far too many, in fact), without the need for light-systems, heating devices, or fancy seed-starting kits. And, unlike windowsill-germinated seedlings, which more often than not are frail and spindly, winter-sown seeds grow up to be strong, sturdy plants, completely prepared for glorious careers in the open garden.

If I were you, I’d give winter-sowing a try. Honestly, it’s the easiest, most cost-effective way to achieve a beautiful garden.

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