Whether you’re thinking of keeping quail for meat or eggs, you need to calculate how much food to buy to keep them growing and laying.
Fully grown coturnix quail eat 1,5 oz (40 g) of feed per day, while jumbo varieties eat 2 oz (55 g) daily. A covey of 20 adult birds eats 1.8 lbs (800 g) per day. Baby quail eat considerably less, but their appetite grows very fast. It takes approximately 4.4 lbs (2 kg) of food to raise a quail to butchering weight.
Let’s dive into those numbers a bit further, so you can understand how much you will spend feeding your quail.
The first month: from baby to fully feathered
The first month of the quail’s life is a fascinating period because of the rapid change. When the quail hatches, it barely weighs a few grams, and it multiplies its weight 20-30 times in just a few weeks. This incredible change is supported by the nutrition they receive.
Learn how to raise your own quail and have an unlimited supply of eggs and meat.
When I bought my first batch of quail eggs for incubation, I thought they were birds of very limited appetite since they were so small. I was surprised to notice that my initial 25kg (55lbs) of starter feed, which cost me $25 only lasted a little over a month with a covey of 37 birds.
If you do the math, it turns out that each bird just shy of 1.5 lbs (680g) of feed in the first month, or an average of 0.8oz (23g) per day. This amount is an average, of course. Day-old baby quail eat a few grams per day.
When they hatched, I ground up one lb (450g) of starter feed, which lasted almost four days for all 37 birds, which means that each baby quail ate about 3g per day. By day five, there was a noticeable increase in food intake, and towards the end of the first month, I fed them over 2.6lbs (1.2kg) of food per day, which is an average of over 1.1oz (32g).
In total, they averaged 0.8oz of food per day in the first month, and the average weight of a quail by the end of the first month was 6.7oz (190g).
With a bag of 55lbs of feed for $25, feeding each quail in the first month costs approximately $0.67.
Second month: reaching maturity
Regular coturnix quail eat 1.5oz (42g) of food per day on average, while jumbo coturnix quail eat 2oz (56g) per day, which means 45oz (1275g) or 60oz (1700g) of feed per month respectively.
The good news is that in this period you can transition from starter feed to grower feed or layer feed, both of which are cheaper: a 55lbs (25kg) bag of layer feed costs me $22.
In terms of feed cost in the second month, regular quail costs around $1.12 per bird, and jumbo quail costs around $1.5 per bird.
Feeding your quail in the second month is exciting because you bring them to full maturity. Cotrnix quail are fully grown by ten weeks, but they don’t grow significantly after week 8. This is also considered their butchering age.
Roosters are usually harvested at this point for their meat, and you can decide whether you want to keep the hens to provide you with eggs or you want to consume them for a delicious meal.
Although you don’t notice as much change daily in the second month, they still put on a lot of extra weight within these four weeks. You feel their breasts getting meatier. This is where they put on the most weight. In fact, some people only harvest the meat from the breast because they have so little meat elsewhere.
Let’s summarize everything in a neat table to get a better glimpse.
Weight and cost of feeding quail in the first month.
| Number of REGULAR quail | Food intake month 1 (oz) | Food intake month 1 (lb) | Food intake month 1 (kg) | Cost per month |
| 1 | 24 oz | 1.5 lb | 0.7 kg | $0.58 |
| 5 | 120 oz | 7.5 lb | 3.4 kg | $2.83 |
| 10 | 240 oz | 15.0 lb | 6.8 kg | $5.67 |
| 20 | 480 oz | 30.0 lb | 13.6 kg | $11.33 |
| 50 | 1200 oz | 75.0 lb | 34.0 kg | $28.33 |
| 100 | 2400 oz | 150.0 lb | 68.0 kg | $56.67 |
| Number of JUMBO quail | Food intake month 1 (oz) | Food intake month 1 (lb) | Food intake month 1 (kg) | Cost per month |
| 1 | 30 oz | 1.9 lb | 0.9 kg | $0.75 |
| 5 | 150 oz | 9.4 lb | 4.3 kg | $3.58 |
| 10 | 300 oz | 18.8 lb | 8.5 kg | $7.08 |
| 20 | 600 oz | 37.5 lb | 17.0 kg | $14.17 |
| 50 | 1500 oz | 93.8 lb | 42.5 kg | $35.42 |
| 100 | 3000 oz | 187.5 lb | 85.1 kg | $70.92 |
Weight and cost of feeding quail in the second month.
| Number of REGULAR quail | Food intake month 2 (oz) | Food intake month 2 (lb) | Food intake month 1 (kg) | Cost per month |
| 1 | 45 oz | 2.8 lb | 1.3 kg | $0.95 |
| 5 | 225 oz | 14.1 lb | 6.4 kg | $4.69 |
| 10 | 450 oz | 28.1 lb | 12.8 kg | $9.39 |
| 20 | 900 oz | 56.3 lb | 25.5 kg | $18.70 |
| 50 | 2250 oz | 140.6 lb | 63.8 kg | $46.79 |
| 100 | 4500 oz | 281.3 lb | 127.6 kg | $93.57 |
| Number of JUMBO quail | Food intake month 2 (oz) | Food intake month 2 (lb) | Food intake month 1 (kg) | Cost per month |
| 1 | 60 oz | 3.8 lb | 1.7 kg | $1.25 |
| 5 | 300 oz | 18.8 lb | 8.5 kg | $6.23 |
| 10 | 600 oz | 37.5 lb | 17.0 kg | $12.47 |
| 20 | 1200 oz | 75.0 lb | 34.0 kg | $24.93 |
| 50 | 3000 oz | 187.5 lb | 85.1 kg | $62.41 |
| 100 | 6000 oz | 375.0 lb | 170.1 kg | $124.74 |
Total weight and cost of feeding quail in the first two months to full maturity.
| Number of REGULAR quail | Food intake month 1 (oz) | Food intake month 1 (lb) | Food intake month 1 (kg) | Cost per month |
| 1 | 69 oz | 4.3 lb | 2.0 kg | $1.54 |
| 5 | 345 oz | 21.6 lb | 9.8 kg | $7.53 |
| 10 | 690 oz | 43.1 lb | 19.6 kg | $15.05 |
| 20 | 1380 oz | 86.3 lb | 39.1 kg | $30.03 |
| 50 | 3450 oz | 215.6 lb | 97.8 kg | $75.12 |
| 100 | 6900 oz | 431.3 lb | 195.6 kg | $150.24 |
| Number of JUMBO quail | Food intake month 1 (oz) | Food intake month 1 (lb) | Food intake month 1 (kg) | Cost per month |
| 1 | 90 oz | 5.6 lb | 2.6 kg | $2.00 |
| 5 | 450 oz | 28.1 lb | 12.8 kg | $9.82 |
| 10 | 900 oz | 56.3 lb | 25.5 kg | $19.55 |
| 20 | 1800 oz | 112.5 lb | 51.0 kg | $39.10 |
| 50 | 4500 oz | 281.3 lb | 127.6 kg | $97.82 |
| 100 | 9000 oz | 562.5 lb | 255.2 kg | $195.66 |
Pro-tip for new breeders
If you breed quail for the first time, use the above tables to get a good idea of how much food you’re going to need for a few weeks. Store up sufficient food for at least a week, but preferably two weeks ahead.
Your supplier may be low on stock at certain times, and you don’t want to find yourself in a situation of not being able to get food in time.
If, for some reason, you run out of quail feed, you may use grains, pasta, rice, some vegetables to feed your quail for some time. Even though quail don’t eat as many things as chickens do, but a hungry quail is not as picky as a well-fed one.
How many quail should you get?
If you’re still trying to figure out how many quail you’re going to need to cover your egg and meat needs, I wrote another helpful article, where I go into detail how to calculate your initial batch of birds. You can find the article here.
Happy quailing!