Quirky Quail Acres

Today I'm talking with Caitlyn at Quirky Quail Acres. Content Seeds Collective https://www.homesteadliving.com/subscribe/ref/41/ https://homesteadliving.com/the-old-fashioned-on-purpose-planner/ref/41/ www.patreon.com/atinyhomestead If you'd like to support me in growing this podcast, like, share, subscribe or leave a comment. Or just buy me a coffee https://buymeacoffee.com/lewismaryes 00:00 If you're a homesteader who wants to get paid for your content without living on social media, check out SteelSpoonFarm.com. Founder Jen Kibler teaches you how to build a real blog or your email list and use Pinterest for sustainable marketing. Inside her coaching group, Content Seeds Collective, you'll get weekly live coaching, a private community, and access to her Root Seller Resource Library full of tutorials and templates. Join today for just $37 a month and start building a business that doesn't depend on the algorithm. 00:26 A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Seals Spoon Farm. You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Caitlin at Quirky Quail Acres in North Mankato, Minnesota. Good afternoon, Caitlin. How are you? Hi there. I'm well. How are you? I'm good, except I can't get through an introduction without stumbling all over myself today. I don't know what's going on. 00:57 Um, so I would normally ask about the weather because that's the question I ask on every single podcast episode, but you're only half an hour away from me. So I'm guessing it's sunny outside. Yep. Sunny and feeling balmy compared to yesterday. No doubt. Yesterday was terrible. I mean, it was pretty, but it was cold. Yeah, it hurt. It hurt, especially after tank top weather last weekend. Yeah. 01:24 Yeah, that was really nice. And I knew it was fall, spring, but I was like, I will take it. It's a good reprieve. All right. So tell me a little bit about yourself and what you do. OK, so I again, I'm Caitlin and I am a mom and I work full time and we have our little farm here just outside of North Mankato, Minnesota. We 01:53 He are kind of jack of all trades sort of farm. We raise quail and we raise chickens and we have an orchard and we have a very large garden. Hopefully this year we'll also have a greenhouse. We also tap all of our own maple trees and we make maple syrup. And we also have, we. 02:20 We volunteer at a nearby shelter. So we have three rescue dogs. Um, it's just chaos all the time. It sounds amazing to me. Well, we're right there with you on the big garden and we have 20 apple trees. We have one huge wild plum tree. have some Alden plum trees. We have peach trees. have rhubarb. 02:48 We do have a greenhouse. have chickens, we have a dog and we have five barn cats. So there's a lot of overlap there between you and I. 02:59 I freaking love it. Yeah, no, I wouldn't choose anything different. um I'm so passionate about it. And it's I've never been one to like I don't want to go to the gym to exercise, but I want to be I want to be active all the time. I want to be I want to be moving and working. And I like I like the hard work and I like feeling accomplished at the end of the day. Absolutely. 03:26 So the reason that I asked you to be on the podcast, I have a little tiny ulterior motive and I don't usually. My husband and I have been talking about maybe getting a few quail and seeing how they do. And I'm guessing you know a lot about quail. So can you tell me all about quail today? Yeah, absolutely. So we, we raise Coturnix quail because A, they are the largest variety that 03:56 and that you can own really. um You don't need a special permit like you do for other species of quail because they are considered a domesticated species. uh Whereas for like, bobwhite, you would need a game permit. And also they don't lay as many eggs. um They are smaller birds, so they're not really good meat birds. Generally people raise 04:23 Bob White for dog training and stuff. we're not, again, our dogs are, they're pound dogs there. They'd be useless for that. um Anyway, and Coturnix quail lay about 300 eggs a year. um We don't raise exclusively jumbo because we like to go for a good mix of colors in our birds too, just because it's, you know, it's nice to have a pretty bird that you're raising also. So we 04:53 focus more on um egg and feathering color genetics, but they are highly productive. are their eggs are so nutritious when you compare them side by side with like an equal weight of a chicken egg. The nutritional profile is just phenomenal because they are heavier in the yolk. So then they have all of that additional um 05:22 nutrition to go with that. We find them very, very easy to raise. They were kind of our poultry introductory species. My husband had been wanting to raise birds for some time and I was kind, I ...