Quail!

While we are sheltering in Arizona William has the idea that as long as we probably will not be able to travel internationally for at least a year, and even then we won’t know if we will want to go through whatever is required to do so, we might as well start a quail farm. At first I teased him that we could be like Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert in the 1930’s movie The Egg and I. But I start to get more than a little worried when a I find him searching for low-cost farms/ranches in various States and watching YouTube videos about ranching quail.

William and our son James started discussing quail ranching over the telephone a couple of weeks before we arrive in Colorado Springs. Now that we are here James announces that he has found a guy raising quail on the outskirts of the city and that he has arranged for a visit.  There is no way that I’m staying home. God only knows what the two of them might do, they could come back and tell me they bought the farm!

It turns our that the quail guy has built an addition onto his garage in the suburbs for growing the quail. He is quite the character and the backyard and garage are strewn with various projects at differing stages of completion. He shows us the birds and explains his approach. We talk with him for perhaps 30 minutes, buy 3 dozen quail eggs and thank him for his time.

​Saturday morning’s breakfast is a quail-egg scramble.   It takes two and one-half to three quail eggs to equal a large chicken egg.  James makes the whole three dozen, carefully cracking the small eggs. The scramble is very good, with a higher yolk ratio than with chicken eggs.