Make a Plan Monday, are quail a good investment and working on some new recipes.

I think one of the things that had thrown me off course during this Covid pandemic is that I didnt have a pandemic plan. I am a planner. I have meals planned, I have started Christmas shopping and planning the gifts I need to make, I plan my meals each week, I have lists of things I need but want to catch on sale. I think you get the picture.

Mondays have always been my favorite days for planning. I decide what we will eat for the week, I start my list for what we need at the grocery for the next week. I look at any appointments we have and any disruptions we have to our schedules so I can plan for them.

My hubby would go back to work and my son to class on Mondays and I would have a quiet, with the exception of our crazy dogs, house to myself. Then my hubbys hours were cut and the boys classes went to online and my Mondays were ruined. Okay I am being a bit dramatic there. Luckily my husband is back at his normal work hours and the jury is still out on whether my son will finish his last year of college online or in class. So I dont know when I will have those Just Me Mondays again and thats okay. I have learned to plan around them.

Proverbs 21:5 MSG Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you farther behind.

Having much more time at home really makes one think about things and one of the things that we think about around here is our little urban farm. Like we live on 1/8 of an acre in a less than 11,000 sq ft house. Our garage is almost bigger than our house. You add those two things to the sq footage of 1/8 acre and you see its not that big at all. We already have designated garden area, a chicken coop and rabbit hutches and an empty pigeon loft. OMG we have an empty pigeon loft! Thanks to some very sly and hungry hawks we lost the few racing pigeon that we had.

We started reading, watching Youtube videos about raising quail. We found someone who had some for sale and was  willing to meet us somewhere to pick up all the while practicing social distancing. We ordered 32 but he said one kept jumping into the box so we bought 33.

Being the planners that we are we started keeping track of how much these birds cost us total. We paid $66 for the birds and then another $140 in feed and other supplies. So around $200 is what we have invested up to this point.

We got our chicks on March 29, 2020

We got out first egg on May 9. The quail were barely 6 weeks old when they started laying eggs. We have since gotten over 800 quail eggs. This is just from 19 hens.

These girls average 16 eggs each day. It takes 5 quail eggs to equal one chicken egg. I will post some of my favorite things to do with quail eggs besides sale them later.

Can you see the green band on his leg? Thats how we tell the makes from the females. When they started crowing we took a few days and would pull out the ones that crowed and put them in a cage. Once the coop got really quiet we knew there were no males in there. If you have too many males with too few females they are too busy fighting over the females that you do not get fertile eggs. Fertile eggs is what one needs to raise chicks to eat. We only needed to keep 4 males so the extra 8 I sold along with 10 dozen eggs.

Since then I have sold lots of eggs and 37 chicks. I have met new people, some who were just wanting to try quail eggs for the first time, some would are trying to start their own quail raising and are hatching the eggs themselves and a few very experienced quail people who have helped us in learning more about these amazing birds. Last weekend we actually started turning a profit with our quail. We have sold $260 worth of quail and eggs so are $60 ahead. That does not include not having to purchase eggs from the store since we have such an abundance in the backyard. All of this in 3 1/2 months.

Even though the pandemic has thrown us for a loop it gave us the time to expand our farm. We have added a few more things towards being more self sustaining, met new people, made a little money and are still learning something new every day. Things like newly hatched baby chicks are very fast and when you open the incubator and just jump out and take off running like maniacs.

Tomorrow I will tell you a little about these guys and gals. They are called Delewares, they are super soft and sweet and we will not see any profits from them until next spring.

In my always have a plan bag I love a good deal. I was able to grab some sliced salami from the Walmart Deli markdown area. I divide it up into single servings and pop in the freezer until we need it. I got 5 serving from this $2.21 package. I also scores some Josephs Lavish Bread which I use alot for low carb wraps and crackers. With some onions, cucumber and tomatoes from the garden I was able to make my hubby a yummy healthy wrap for lunch for around $1.10. The only thing its missing is black olives which he does not like. 

When your cat wakes up the dogs because he wants them to go outside with him at 3:30 in the morning and you can not go back to sleep you get up and start experimenting with bread recipes and make your hubby a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. We both agreed this bread needs a little tweaking and I hope to have the perfect recipe for tomorrows sausage egg and cheese sandwich.