How much space do you need to raise Quail

Quail do not need a lot of space to be happy and thrive. Typically, 2 quail per square foot is all you need to raise healthy quail. It's important to make sure you have your male to female ratio appropriate also to reduce over breeding or aggressive behavior. 1 male to every 4-6 hens can help prevent over breeding and too many roosters becoming aggressive fighting for the attention of one of the ladies. If you are planning on hatching your eggs, make sure you have a few good hatches behind you before you adjust for fertility and adding another male or changing the ratio. I have found that 1-6 works well for our covey but if we find our fertility rates and hatching percentages drop, I will either swap out the rooster for another one as he may just not be the best fit. We raise Bob White and Coturnix but keep them separate because we have found that the Bob White quail and Coturnix do not get along very well. We do have some next to each other but they are separated so they cannot actually co-mingle. If you start noticing the hens missing a lot of their feathers on the back of their head, this is an indicator of 1) An aggressive rooster/hen or 2) over breeding. It's important to make sure you watch for their behaviors to determine what's going on to keep all your birds happy. There are many options for pens/cages/aviaries for quail and it really comes down to your preference. You can find a lot of different options on YouTube how to build your own setup or where to purchase pre-made cages. Quail will do just fine outside, even here in the cold NE Ohio weather, we have kept quail outside all year long. You just want to make sure in the colder winter months that you give the quail somewhere to get away from the wind and harsh elements, but they will do just fine. We raise a lot of our quail inside the garage, which ventilation is super important if you raise your birds inside due to dust and feathers going EVERYWHERE. Our cages are set up to hold 1140 quail along 1 side of our garage, although we don't always max out the # of birds we can keep in that space. We think that having roll out cages for our laying hens works well for us while others prefer a different type of environment. As we expand, we may build an aviary for some of them in the future but for our small farm, the cages seem to work best.