- Jul 28, 2017
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Good morning,
Looking to the seasoned quail raisers for some advice.
I'm looking to purchase some jumbo coturnix day-old chicks in the next couple of weeks. Will be starting with about 40-50 to get a nice size flock started for next spring and will be culling all but a handful of the roos. Only problem is I want to raise them organically and the local feedstore only has organic feed available that tops out at 19% protein and apparently don't have any leads on sourcing organic game bird food. I'd prefer to stay away from ordering organic game bird online. I've asked them what they can do about ordering fish meal. There is an organic feed store about an hour away I plan to call and see what they have available/can do.
If that goes through I'm planning on farming crickets to make up for the protein shortfall in the feed. I figure I'll have to feed crickets daily or some type of insect daily. I'll be raising mealworms in addition. I also have a red wiggler farm that I can use too and could expand to some more tubs. My question is how many chick bite-sized(1/8-1/4 inch) crickets per day per chick would be a good number to make sure they get plenty of protein to grow as they should?
Looking up crude protein% for dry weight crickets falls around 58%.
What other considerations should I be making? What are my blind spots? Is this a bad idea, if so, why?
Thanks for reading.
Looking to the seasoned quail raisers for some advice.
I'm looking to purchase some jumbo coturnix day-old chicks in the next couple of weeks. Will be starting with about 40-50 to get a nice size flock started for next spring and will be culling all but a handful of the roos. Only problem is I want to raise them organically and the local feedstore only has organic feed available that tops out at 19% protein and apparently don't have any leads on sourcing organic game bird food. I'd prefer to stay away from ordering organic game bird online. I've asked them what they can do about ordering fish meal. There is an organic feed store about an hour away I plan to call and see what they have available/can do.
If that goes through I'm planning on farming crickets to make up for the protein shortfall in the feed. I figure I'll have to feed crickets daily or some type of insect daily. I'll be raising mealworms in addition. I also have a red wiggler farm that I can use too and could expand to some more tubs. My question is how many chick bite-sized(1/8-1/4 inch) crickets per day per chick would be a good number to make sure they get plenty of protein to grow as they should?
Looking up crude protein% for dry weight crickets falls around 58%.
What other considerations should I be making? What are my blind spots? Is this a bad idea, if so, why?
Thanks for reading.