There's quite a lot of topics about quail on Permies already, but I recently had a chance to compare the two types. I first saw them in this
video which you probably know already:
...and it looked like a lovely alternative to
chickens in a small suburban garden.
Around here, people seem to grow two types: the Japanese quail, which looks almost identical as the wild bird (unless it's some colour variety), and broiler quails - a few breeds/types of them. They're kept either in small wire cages or in garden aviaries (in which case they're more like ornamental birds).
I visited a breeder who had both types, in wire cages. This is how his Japanese quail looked:
Males and females together, and they all looked rather young.
He had two varieties of broiler quail - these were all red:
And he actually said that they would be better for a garden aviary! Their feathers looked nice, unlike broiler
chickens which have poor feathers and look miserable most of their (short) life. These red broiler quails even seemed to have more bone than the Japanese, which maybe means that they're more sturdy? Look at the legs and beaks.
Also, the broilers seemed a little less spooky and I liked their overall look, but I would worry about their long time health... They would be butchered anyway, but I'd like to potentially be able to keep them for more than one year.
Then I compared the carcasses and eggs:
I'm not sure if we didn't mix the eggs while collecting them. And maybe the Japanese carcass is with broiler eggs instead of the other way around. But anyway, the difference between the eggs was almost unnoticeable. I tried to weigh them but looks like my kitchen scale is not very precise, it was showing different results every time. When looking at more than 20 eggs, you can see that the broiler eggs are maybe slightly bigger on average, but it's really a tiny difference. The breeder said that the Japanese quails lay more eggs.
Now they will be cooked!
The broiler has more meat and more fat. It's not the red quail from the photo above; I have the carcass broiler from another breeder. The Japanese is smaller of course.
I recently compared broiler
chicken to Green-legged Partridge and the latter had less meat, but the taste of it was much better. We'll see if there is any difference here...
For now, I really like the red broiler quail, it seems a little less wild and more sturdy, and it looks pretty.
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