Quail Farm Business Plan, With a Projection

A quail farm business plan is a plan for a lot of small eggs. Coturnix quail start laying at about seven weeks and lay nearly an egg a day, so a flock can grow from a few incubator loads to hundreds of birds within a season, and the plan's real limit is how many eggs the farm can sell. A dozen quail eggs is a small sale, so the plan leans on what pays more: restaurants that buy by the flat, hobbyists who pay for hatching eggs, and pickled eggs that turn a surplus into a jar. In the example below, a quail farm in Arkansas grows to 450 layers and sells eggs at markets and to restaurants, hatching eggs and pickled quail eggs, and ends its first year about $19,400 ahead on $45,000 of sales, with the daily chores and the packing paid. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the rules, the first year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the farm in a paragraph: the birds, the flock size, who buys, the goals.
• Grow the flock with the sales: quail lay at seven weeks, so hatch your own.
• Cost a dozen from the feed up: collecting, washing and packing, the carton, the fees.
• Restaurants and hatching eggs pay more than a dozen at the market.
• Pickled eggs use a surplus, but they're an acidified food, with federal filing.
• Feeding and cleaning take an hour every day; that's a fixed cost.
• TaroStack keeps eggs by lay date, pickled eggs as batches with lots, and every order on one list. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Ozark Ridge Quail, a made-up quail farm near Fayetteville, Arkansas, I use in these examples, writes:

Ozark Ridge Quail keeps Coturnix quail in colony cages in a barn, hatches its own replacements, and sells fresh quail eggs at the farmers market and its farm stand, flats to restaurants in northwest Arkansas, hatching eggs shipped to backyard keepers, and pickled quail eggs.

Part 2: the rules

The federal egg safety rule's definition of a shell egg is the egg of the domesticated chicken (21 CFR 118.3), so its requirements for large egg farms don't reach quail eggs; your state's agriculture department may still have rules for selling them, so ask before the first carton. Pickled quail eggs are an acidified food: a commercial processor registers the facility with FDA and files a process for each product before selling it (21 CFR 108.25), working from a process a process authority has reviewed. What that letter is and how to get one is in process authority letter, and testing each batch's pH is in pH testing for acidified foods. This is general information, not legal advice.

Part 3: what a dozen costs

At full flock, 450 quail eat about 830 pounds of game bird feed a month at about 40 cents a pound and lay about 900 dozen eggs, so the feed in a dozen is about 37 cents.

Peeling is the cost in a pickled egg: a dozen tiny eggs take about ten minutes to peel. Hatching eggs are picked from the best birds, candled, and packed in foam to ship; the buyer pays the postage. The daily feeding and cleaning aren't in these costs; they're an hour a day whatever sells.

Part 4: customers and prices

At full speed the hatching eggs bring about $1,600 of the month's $4,800 of contribution from 80 dozen, about four times what a market dozen leaves; the market dozens bring about $1,400 and the restaurants about $1,000. The month's sales use about 830 of the 900 dozen the flock lays, and the pickled eggs are where a slow week's eggs go before they age. How a farm turns what it grows into products that keep is in value added products for farms.

Part 5: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,125 a month: barn space ($200), an hour a day of feeding and cleaning ($480), bedding ($60), heat and lights ($80), replacement birds averaged ($60), water ($30), market and farm stand fees ($100), insurance ($50), the website ($30), and software and card fees ($35). The flock starts at 150 birds and grows to 450 as sales do; sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it in month 11:

The year's sales are $45,026 and the profit $19,364, with the chores and the packing paid at $16 an hour. Cash dips to −$556 in month 2, so the plan keeps $2,000 of working cash. The projection counts feed with each dozen sold, which works because the flock grows with the sales; a farm that starts with 450 birds and few customers feeds birds whose eggs it can't sell.

Part 6: the startup budget

The incubator is how the flock grows: 150 starting birds become 450 through the farm's own hatches. At $19,400 a year, the $7,550 spent before working cash is earned back by month 9. How much stock to hold, eggs or anything else, is in how much inventory to keep on hand.

Get the template

Download the quail farm business plan workbook. Four sheets: your eggs, flats, hatching eggs and jars with price, variable cost and a month's volume at full speed; the first year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Nine hundred dozen eggs a month, collected every day, some for the market, some for restaurants, the best set aside for hatching, a slow week's surplus going to the pickling, and jars that each need a batch record. A notebook can't say how many dozen from Monday are still in the fridge, which restaurant got which day's eggs, or which batch of pickled eggs a jar came from.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps eggs by lay date, pickled eggs as batches with lots, and every order on one list.

Eggs by lay date. Each day's collection is received as a lot with its date, counted in the fridge on a phone, and orders are picked from the earliest dates first, so nothing ages past selling.

Pickled eggs as batches. Each jar is a recipe of eggs, brine, jar and label; each batch takes the eggs off stock, gives the jars a lot, and its batch record holds the pH reading against its limit and who signed it.

Restaurants on orders. Each restaurant's flats are a sales order for its delivery day, with one picking list, and the lots each restaurant got are recorded as it ships.

Counting, lots, recipes, batch records and sales orders are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is quail farming a good business?

It can be, on a small scale. In the example, a farm that grows to 450 layers ends its first year about $19,400 ahead on $45,000 of sales, with the chores and packing paid, and most of the money from hatching eggs and market dozens.

How much do quail eggs sell for?

In the example, $6 a dozen at the market, $11 for a flat of 30 to restaurants, and $25 a dozen for hatching eggs shipped to backyard keepers.

How many quail do you need to start a business?

In the example, 150 to start, grown to 450 layers with the farm's own incubator as customers come. At full flock they lay about 900 dozen eggs a month.

Do quail eggs fall under the FDA egg rule?

The federal egg safety rule defines a shell egg as the egg of the domesticated chicken, so quail eggs aren't covered by it. State rules may still apply.