Coturnix Quail are granivores, which means in the wild they consume mostly grains and seeds. They do eat some bugs and greens, but it is their preference for grain that makes them easy to feed. The only catch is their small beaks mean the seeds & grains they consume must be tiny, too. Here I’ll share my covey’s favorite homemade quail scratch feed recipe that I use as a treat:
Please note that quail scratch is a treat, meant to be less than 10% of your quail’s food intake. While it is not intended to be a complete feed for confined birds, scroll down for a recipe that CAN suffice as a short-term (3 day) emergency feed for your quail.
Coturnix Quail Homemade Scratch & Feed Recipe
This blend uses 5 natural, wholesome ingredients that quail love! Everything you need can be found at the grocery store, except for the dried meal worms which can come from Amazon or a local feed store.
Quail Scratch Ingredients:
White millet, quinoa, whole wheat berries, sesame seed, and dried meal worms are the 5 basic ingredients. If you cannot find white millet by itself, you can use a finch mix bird seed that contains mostly millet, which is what we used in our blend (since I wanted my ingredients to come from one grocery store run!) I purchase my dried meal worms in bulk from Amazon and store them in a 15 pound Vittles Vault container to keep them dry and fresh. (Afflinks)
Quail Scratch + Feed Recipe
The blend is simple! Below is the recipe given in parts so you can make as much or as little as you would like. I used 1 Tablespoon as my “part” measurement in the image above:
1 part white millet (or finch wild bird seed that is primarily white millet)
1 part uncooked quinoa
1 part whole wheat berries
1/2 part sesame seed
1/2 part dried meal worms
High Fat & High Protein Scratch Treat
If you follow the recipe above, it makes a very high fat scratch with an estimated nutritional profile of 15.21% protein and 12.42% fat. Each bird can have 1/8th of a tsp (a small pinch) as an occasional treat. The sesame seeds are what make this scratch too high in fat to be used as a feed.
Calculating Nutritional Values of Quail Feed Recipes
If you need to calculate the nutritional value of your quail scratch & feed recipe blends, this chart containing average protein and fat percents can help you determine what your covey is getting. Coturnix quail laying hens need 18-22% protein, 2.5% fat (minimum), 5% fat (maximum) and 2.5% calcium.
Emergency Quail Feed Recipe
We already know that Coturnix quail coveys love this whole grain mix. Here are recipes you can use for a short-term emergency quail feed. WARNING: these blends do NOT have the correct percent of calcium nor essential nutrients to be a long-term feed for quail and all are too low in protein and too high in fat. It is only intended to keep a covey from starving. It will not keep hens healthy and laying if fed for longer than a few days.
Quail Feed Recipe #1:
3 parts White Millet (can use finch wild bird food that is mostly white millet)
1 part uncooked Quinoa
1/2 Part Dried Meal Worms
Recipe #1 has an estimated 15.82% protein and 7.82% fat. This is too low in protein and much too high in fat for long-term feeding.
Quail Feed Recipe #2:
2 parts Whole Wheat Berries
2 parts White Millet
1 part uncooked Quinoa
1/4 part Dried Meal Worms
Recipe #2 has an estimated 15% protein and 5.41% fat. This is too low in protein and a little too high in fat for quail laying hens.
It is my suggestion that if you need to feed emergency grain mixtures, you also give your covey a handful of common 3-leaf clover or white clover hand-picked from an unsprayed, chemical-free yard every day as a way to provide calcium, minerals, and some additional protein.
Enjoy the Quail Scratch Feed Recipe!
I hope these mixes give you a great way to interact with your covey and offer them an occasional treat! I have found the scratch blend to be useful in the winter when I want to ensure the birds are well fed for warmth. You may notice that celadon hens lay eggs that are more richly blue or green colored when there is a temporary increase in fat in her diet. This is expected but is an indication her dietary fat intake is too high and she should not be fed high fat foods for too long.
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Great Depression Quail Keeping & Feeding
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No Waste Quail Feeders that WORK!
Breeding “Easter Egger” Colored Egg Laying Quail
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Tay,
Thanks so much for these recipes for quail scratch grains. We recently lost 18 out of 20 birds from my daughter’s (13) quail covey, (a 4-H project) to rats… turns out the cages I built were not rat proof. Thankfully, we were left with an Italian rooster and a silver hen (normal egg color). I ended up bringing them back into the house and they are enjoying life in the travel cage/grow out cage I built from florescent light grid and zip ties to fit a seed starting tray drip pan. I made a scratch mix out of what I had on hand (some millet that was in the pantry a couple years, quinoa, teff seed I’d inherited a couple years ago from my brother when he moved and some quick oats.) Low and behold, Silver Belle finally started laying at 14 weeks old (grew these birds out slower on 20% chick feed because they stank so bad on game bird starter (next time we’ll try waterfowl starter at 22%). First few eggs were 3 days apart, by when we upped the amount of scratch they were getting she started laying daily, she just laid her 6th egg tonight (and received 3 eggs from a friend’s flock). Planning to set a dozen in a small incubator on Monday morning, to hatch chicks and get some more raised up for the covey before winter sets in.
Having trouble finding millet locally, so I picked up some parakeet mix at the Walmart last weekend, looks like it’s about 1/2 millet, knowing my mix would run out this morning. They got that for their bedtime snack tonight and she laid her egg about 2hours earlier tonight, don’t know if it’s the feed or her cycle?
Anyway, just wanted to say, thanks so much for your feed recipes. The chicken feed blends were also helpful. We had 5 broodies at once most of the summer and they still weren’t back to laying 6 weeks after hatching and having their chicks taken away (more losses to small predators.) and human raised. Only one of the five is now not laying after a week on layer feed mixed with home blended scratch. The lady not laying is an F3-4 Dark Olive Silkie X who’s molting hard right now.
Do you have any Flock Block recipes? Thinking ahead to the hard winters up here in South Dakota, these work great in severe cold and blizzards that may have us trapped in the house for several days at a time and having to shovel our way to the coop (an all day chore.) Another question, can poultry eat coconut flour? (Mom had some that was getting stale.)
Hi Rebecca!
I’m so sorry to hear about the sudden huge quail losses but it sounds like you have done incredibly well with saving that breeding pair and moving quickly to re-establish your covey. Italian crossed with Silver will produce some pretty babies! I have had much lower smell on Kalmbach Non-GMO 20% Flock Maker crumbles for my adult quail but the babies still get Purina 30% game bird starter for the first 2-4 weeks until the bag is used up and yes, poops are stinky on it.
I have noticed the same thing about offering homemade scratch to both my chickens and quail then seeing an almost immediate increase in laying. It seems the new foods encourage the birds to eat more and they get a rush of different nutrients and trace minerals, which almost always causes more eggs to be laid (if they are laying at the time). There is so much online insistence that domestic birds should only be fed commercial feed but I’m convinced they actually need that 10% “treats” portion of their diet to be whole foods that are frequently rotated. Commercial companies seem to be skimping on the bio-available quality of ingredients and our flocks and coveys are suffering without a bit of help from us in the form of whole seeds, sprouts, and real veggies.
A flock block recipe is on my current to-do list since I just set aside some pastured bacon grease to experiment with and winter will be here before we know it! Chickens CAN eat coconut in moderation, which includes coconut flour, but the flour would be hard for them to eat in powdered form. It would be better if moistened with water, yogurt, or milk to create a mash or maybe even added to a flock block. I’ll get to work on that recipe!