Aaron Goes to Quail Con
Every year at Labor Day, Quail Con in Ohio takes place. Aaron makes the trek to be an event speaker. This year, he was so popular, he received loads of follow up questions. He shares about his experience and the follow ups.
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Carey: 0:00
Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Nerds Podcast. I'm Kerry Blackman, and I'm here with my co host for the show, Jennifer Bryant. And we're here to help you figure out how to raise the healthiest, happiest, and highest quality birds possible.
Jennifer: 0:24
Hello, Poultry Nerds. We are here again with Aaron Guidroz from Guidroz's Family Farms. Welcome, Aaron.
Carey: 0:32
Hello.
Jennifer: 0:33
And he has given a speech on maybe how to make a few dollars with quail. So we are going to ask him a bunch of questions and he's going to explain to us how we can be profitable with our quail.
Aaron: 0:46
Yeah. How
Jennifer: 0:46
you doing?
Aaron: 0:48
It's it's actually cool in the south today.
Jennifer: 0:51
Yes.
Carey: 0:53
I was very happy about that this morning. Yeah.
Jennifer: 0:57
So tell us about your farm and how you make a profit with your quail.
Aaron: 1:01
So my farm is in South Louisiana. We are very hot in the summer, short winters. And years ago, my wife and I decided we wanted to start raising a bunch of animals for self sufficiency. We were young teenagers at the time. 15, 20 years ago, a long time ago
Jennifer: 1:25
yesterday.
Aaron: 1:26
Yeah. Yesterday. Yeah. So we always raised since we got married, we always raised meat for profit, primarily chickens and quail and rabbits, and we drifted towards the, it was costing us a ton of money and feed and weren't really looking to sell anything. But we were just surviving. We were putting our money into our own feed and using our own meat to put food on the table. Then right around when we started selling before COVID, it's like 2018, 2019. We would start to sell and just help supplement the feed costs. Because feed costs was outrageous. It's worse now. I thought it was bad in 2018. I look at it now, wish I could pay 2018 prices. Then I had this little little pandemic called COVID that came around. And that's where it really took off for us. Cause we stayed small scale. I would say then people were just reaching out. People want to get closer to the food, so we always had a small garden, few animals probably 50 quail, 100 quail cycle back and forth just a few just a few. We like to eat in the South, recommending one, one and a half quail per person for a meal that's a warm up, that's like the ratio for an appetizer.
Jennifer: 2:57
Yeah,
Aaron: 2:59
I'm eating the 1st 2 that's cooked while waiting for the rest of them to be done. So we, we found that the main for poultry quail. And rabbits and vegetables during that time. And people were just looking for knowledge. And we spent a lot of time educating people, a lot of time selling our products, but also educating the people how to be more self sufficient with that stuff. And I'm a dreamer. I'm a big dreamer. I'll lay down in bed at night and that's when the light bulb goes on. And, my wife, she's trying to go to sleep and I'm like, writing down things trying to talk to her and she's just telling me he just, just let's talk about in the morning, but I won't feel the same way in the morning. So I'm like, what if. You could stop working and we could just form full time. And she was like, that won't be possible. She said, we're not even paying for the feed right now. So I said I'll get us there. So we branched out more into coyotes. I backed off of the chickens and the rabbits and the other stuff and kind of focused on the quail and developing good breeding programs, sourcing some new stock to expand and had a lot of trials and errors, a lot of errors with it. But I got to the point where we were paying for the feed and I said, we're ready. You could quit your job and she's no, we're not there yet. We've got to do it consistently. So I made probably the worst mistake anyone can make getting into coil is I expanded to be like, I'm talking about like way to be you went from 100 to 1000. Yeah, basically. So I'm like, what am I going to do with all these things? I have way too many. What am I do now? We're back to paying for feed. We're still selling. And then I just looked at different ways to sell what I had already had the quail. What do I do with it? I'm feeding these things. We can't eat all of them regardless of how much I like to eat them. We can only put so much in the freezer. We can only eat so much so I started sat down started writing down different ways where I can't sell them because if you're gonna sell just a hatching egg you probably won't be so profitable because it's seasonal it goes up and down and I mean It's just, to me, that's not the biggest part of profit on the quail. So like in my, I'll give you a reference and just use that as a reference. In my area, we sell a live, like breeding age quail laying for 5 a piece. That's when adult goes forward. It's the market. I play around with it. I'll go up to six here and there. I'll go down to four in bulk, but that five is mine. So what I started doing is When I butcher, I'll save different parts of the quail, I'll save the feet, make jewelry, feathers, make jewelry with it. Helps add to the, your profit. For quail specifically, I found, especially here lately, the last 12 to 18 months, my biggest money maker is quail and making dog treats with quail. So I'll take that 5 quail. That I'm selling for an adult, cut the wings off, cut the feet off, and I'll dehydrate those. I skin the bird, take the innards out, grind the entire quail and make quail jerky for dog treats. I'll take the skull and I'll put them in with my darkling beetles and the darkling beetles clear the skull, sell the skulls online for different crafting and oddity stuffs whatever to do with it. I don't say with quail skull, it's a profit. Like I'll sell them for 50 cents a piece. want to pay for. Yeah, 0. 50 a piece. I'm going to feed it to the pigs if I don't. So it's 0. 50 just like the wings I'll get I'll sell them for cheap, but I sell them in bulk. Like 2. 50 a pair. Would throw them to the pigs anyway. It's, so I took that 5 quail and I turned it into about 11. 50 quail with a little work involved, but. What else are you going to do with your time if you're a farmer? All farmers have spare time, right?
Jennifer: 7:30
Oh yeah, we're not doing anything.
Aaron: 7:32
Yeah. Just that there's so many different avenues of profiting with quail other than selling live birds and selling eggs. And Anybody, excuse me, anybody who's ever shipped an egg knows the pain of you collecting eggs. You're checking eggs for defects, weighing eggs, you're loading eggs in foam shippers if you ship them properly.
Jennifer: 8:01
Yes.
Aaron: 8:01
A lot of time involved and you're really not profiting very much off of a single egg. That's assuming you sell every egg.
Carey: 8:10
True. They don't take into consideration the ones that you wind up tossing to the pigs because they sit there too long or, whatever takes them away. Yeah.
Jennifer: 8:23
Yeah, you have to have other outlets. You can't just depend on hatching eggs or selling live adult birds. It won't work.
Aaron: 8:32
On a small scale. If you have 25, 30 quail and you're going to hatch, 50 at a time, your local area, you probably couldn't do well selling those small groups. But once you cross a hundred mark they'll eat your profit with feeding.
Jennifer: 8:47
You and I both deal in the thousands probably, right?
Aaron: 8:50
Yeah.
Jennifer: 8:51
Yeah. We both deal in the thousands. Yeah. So hatching eggs is probably what I'm known for, but that is really, at this point, probably not even the bulk of my businesS. I'm with you.
Aaron: 9:03
I debate every now and then of getting out of hatching eggs and I'll be honest and tell you the only reason I still do hatching eggs is the interaction with people. I truly enjoy hearing everyone's success stories and watching them, start out from an egg, especially with young ones and that, that's kinda, that's a good driving force for me is hearing those stories and seeing those experiences. I get excited when, Facebook groups, that, it's hatch day, their first hatch and everybody's so excited. Like it's not even my eggs and I'm still excited for them. I locked down 1200 eggs last night and I was still excited to candle them and I'll still get excited when it's time to move them from the incubator to the brooder.
Jennifer: 9:48
Yeah. They're still cute after. I don't even know how many we've hatched at this point, but they're still cute and I still like to watch them.
Carey: 9:56
The little sound the little chirp. Yesterday I went down to go Into my chicken yard and feed my chickens, which I know we're talking about quail, but I hear an abnormal chirp. I didn't even realize I had a broody hen in this other pen. I guess she was sneaking and sitting, but she had about six or seven of them pop out from underneath her when they heard me. That sound though, I think that's how you get victimized when you go to a tractor supply. Is you walk in the door and you hear, ch. And it's that little chirping sound and it's just come get me, take me home.
Aaron: 10:29
It's amazing. And like to me, quail are only really cute when they are first hatched or they're in the pot.
Jennifer: 10:38
Aww, you're such a man. I was moving Celadons today, and I was looking at them, and some of them have just the prettiest shaped heads. I pretty much like the Rosettas, those are my favorite. And their heads just seem so dainty to me, so I always like moving them. Because their face is just pretty.
Aaron: 11:00
I enjoy sorting birds, and the quail, really for me is It's great because I like projects and, I like to track things and it's a fast turnaround, like a breeding project, faster than a chicken,
Jennifer: 11:17
Being a nerd is what you're saying.
Aaron: 11:19
Yeah, pretty much. It's fun and it keeps you involved because everything's moving so fast compared to chickens or turkeys or, geese and stuff. This is. It says moving at light speed, your breeding program. So that's what gets me, keeps me involved with quail, like for colors. Cause if I probably have just jumbo browns, if it was just for me. Jumbo browns and jumbo whites. I like my whites.
Jennifer: 11:49
So what are some of the questions that you got after your last big speaking engagement that you did about this?
Aaron: 11:56
So I've had numerous questions and One of the probably most important ones would be, where do I start? And for different people, it's a different starting point. What is your background? Cause, it's fancy. It's flashy seeing, big farms like Bryant's Roost, being successful. And so people want to thrive on that. And they want to experience that. Always say, start small, like you could, your profit will be small, but your cost will be small and never fall in the trap of making a loan to get started.
Jennifer: 12:39
No, don't do that.
Aaron: 12:40
Start small. Start what you can.
Carey: 12:43
I did. I loan. Okay. So anytime I use my American Express to buy Jack, I call it loaning myself money. But that's how I, that's how I got my first incubator or my big incubator. And that's how I got my first two racks, but they paid for them. Those chicks that came out of that incubator and it paid for a pretty quick And a lot of interest.
Aaron: 13:09
That would be considered investing in yourself I'm talking like I had one person that reached out that They were getting out of coil and they had made a 25, 000 loan to buy equipment. Oh Did they buy the whole barn and everything? They bought a bunch of cages, the born incubators, and they were going to just, real ambitious. They were just going to do it. And they, it didn't work. And they sold a hatching eggs. You've got a sale. Oh, absolutely. Because the rent man comes due on the 1st, every month, so if you're having a rough month, you're like, with the times coming in the South, I'll still ship eggs during the winter, but like north of Tennessee, I'm not going to ship eggs, just if it's frozen, I'm not going to do it.
Jennifer: 14:05
Let me catch my breath after what you just said. But if you've been in this for more than, I don't know, say, 2 years, you're going to see people do that in January, February, March, maybe even April where they want to come in and take over and make these big farms and. No, that's, I'm not going to say it can't work, but it's the hardest probably way to do it.
Carey: 14:32
If you're getting started in January, February, March, you're like six months too late.
Jennifer: 14:38
Yeah.
Aaron: 14:39
Yeah. And I find in my area, it's more in the January, February, March starters, it's, they're looking for live birds. They want adults. They want
Jennifer: 14:49
adults at hatching egg prices.
Carey: 14:52
Yeah. Oh, you have adults, you have layers. I give you$2
Jennifer: 14:58
I know, right?
Carey: 14:59
It, it ain't more than that. I don't feed cheap feed, sorry. Yeah.
Jennifer: 15:03
Yeah.
Aaron: 15:04
And feed costs I imagine is, will be going up soon again.
Jennifer: 15:09
Oh, yeah. Because a lot of the crops have been lost. Yeah. Yeah. But also keep in mind that you're, you are paying for your hatching egg when you order them, but you're also paying for the farmers. infrastructure and winterizing and breeding time and there's so much more behind that hatching egg, but that's I don't know what 10 percent of the process. Maybe the egg is
Carey: 15:33
well, there's 1 person apparently took a 25, 000 loan to get to that hatching egg. That's what all goes into it. Not that much. So that was excessive.
Aaron: 15:46
I don't know. And so right now we get into government grant application season, I call it. So you'll start seeing advertisements for that. And they make it sound pretty, they put a pretty label of a grant on it and it's just. A loan. It's an ag loan.
Jennifer: 16:04
Okay.
Aaron: 16:05
You still have to pay it back. My first, once I, like, when I formed my actual business, my first year, I put every dollar that I made from profit and I just put it aside and I paid for all the expenses out of pocket. That way I could give my company a chance to survive and that was my nest egg for my company. And, cause As wild and free as I may seem. I like stability and I'm, I really don't know just well to change. That's why I like animals because they just, a quail is just going to quail. A chicken is just going to chicken. This over the past few months, I downsized on chickens drastically. I have white American breasts and silkies and that is it.
Jennifer: 16:55
It seems that is a pattern that's going around because I'm moving my coachings on out of here. Did you get
Aaron: 17:01
rid of your emates? I don't have the emu's. They don't.
Jennifer: 17:06
Those are pets.
Aaron: 17:07
Yeah, those are pets. Alright, so
Jennifer: 17:11
that's a pattern. We're moving the Cochins on out and the American Breasts have come in. Yeah.
Aaron: 17:16
Yeah, I got rid of my turkeys. All of them.
Jennifer: 17:19
Oh, no. They're the fun.
Aaron: 17:22
Yeah. I added a few things. I won't release it here, but I added a few things. Some smaller birds, but I did add more.
Jennifer: 17:30
Do you still have rabbits? You mentioned rabbits.
Aaron: 17:32
Yeah. So I went from 95 rabbits, roughly, give or take, and then I completely got rid of them. And this spring I added five more rabbits.
Jennifer: 17:42
Gotcha. When I started in quail, I actually started with rabbit cages that I found on Craigslist, and just to see if it was something that I was going to quail are very different from pretty much anything else. They are 100 percent reliant on you. It's not like throwing a cow out in the field, and It took me about, I don't know, 20 minutes to decide that quail were for me. And it took me about 45 seconds to decide rabbits were not for me. I didn't like rabbits one bit from the beginning. Didn't like them. Don't like to eat them. Don't want anything to do with them. But quail, it was a pretty much an instantaneous thing. And so we kept the rabbit cages long enough for me to decide. What kind of cages that I wanted to go with. And those are going to be dependent on your setup. My setup is 100 percent inside, enclosed in a climate control barn. At this point. So it wouldn't be suitable for somebody who wanted to keep quail outside. But the other thing is rabbit cages are really easy to buy and sell on Craigslist. Used. Incredibly easy to buy and sell on Craigslist.
Aaron: 19:01
Yeah, definitely. Like I've built so my first one, I use the rabbit hutch because my wife always raised rabbits and I use the rabbit hutch for my first quail and I was like, I think I'll build one. And of course I built it wrong and
Jennifer: 19:19
I
Aaron: 19:20
just lived with it and built another one and built another one and just improved on my design. Over the years, and then I had stumbled across the attorney's corner video on on Terry's cage. When I saw those oil pans, I was like, thi this is gonna change my life, because I was, use
Jennifer: 19:43
them,
Aaron: 19:43
I was like doing cardboard under it and like I would just throw the whole cardboard away and it was wasteful and I was like, man, if they had something like, and I never thought about it, that changed my life when I seen that.
Jennifer: 19:56
I have my youngest son works at one of the big name auto chains suppliers. So every time, every year when he comes in for Thanksgiving, I make him make a trip to the local store and stock up for the year. Cause they do rest through, they're not. indestructible. Yeah. So yeah you might get a year out of them, but for the price, it's fine.
Aaron: 20:20
I find coating them with like Rhino lining will extend it to three or four years.
Jennifer: 20:25
Oh, nifty. Then he'll be buying me one of those, some of that, while he's at the store this year.
Aaron: 20:30
Yeah, you get in the spray can or the gallon can any kind of bed liner. Protected. I have mostly Wynola ranch cages now, a ton of them. I have a bunch I've got to assemble.
Jennifer: 20:42
Can you still scrape it with a putty knife?
Aaron: 20:44
Yeah.
Jennifer: 20:45
Okay, because I just buy plastic, put knives because it seems like you lose'em all the time. I don't know what happens to'em. It's like I lose
Aaron: 20:53
put knives and feed scoopers daily. Where? Like where do they go?
Jennifer: 20:59
I don't lose feed scoopers. They're too expensive. But I lose put knives,
Aaron: 21:04
listen I feed scoopers, put knives and butterfly nets I buy in bulk.
Jennifer: 21:11
Yeah. You can't have quail without butterfly nets.
Aaron: 21:14
Yeah.
Jennifer: 21:14
The feed scoopers I hang up now all my feet is kept on like one of those trolleys. Like you see a dollar general literally because mine came from dollar general. And I just hang them over the end horizontals on the uprights. They just hang there, but I will tell you, do you remember when we were kids and you went to pizza hut and they had the hard plastic pictures. Yeah. Okay. Those handles on those pictures are not closed at the bottom. So they hang on stuff too. Just like the feed scoops. So I go through a lot of those.
Carey: 21:47
I find a place where I can get some of those. Cause last time I was at your place, I saw that and I was like. I could get that in the small little tray in the front of the coil cages and then I could do the waitress does when she wants to put ice in the cup. I turn it sideways and put it in the trough out for the chickens.
Jennifer: 22:06
Yeah, we're always scouring the clearance sections at Kroger's or whatever. Looking for that kind of stuff. We're not looking for anything for the house. We're looking for stuff for the barn.
Carey: 22:16
Is what it is.
Jennifer: 22:18
So your biggest question after the fact was, how do you get started? And the answer is small.
Aaron: 22:23
Yeah start small source from source stock from a reputable breeder, and that'll save you a year of work minimum, I do also recommend if you're going to go self sufficiency route, Go local. If not fine, this is my phone was ringing, find someone close to you. If you're looking just for self sufficiency, if you want a good breeding stock and you want to develop a good brand and reach out to someone that's reputable and face Facebook doesn't tell many lies. Most of it's not true, but it doesn't tell many lies. If you. Put somebody's name out there and ask about them, you'll get answers, definitely check on that. Cause you have to start from somewhere. And if you start from somebody who's knowledgeable, who can assist you, it'll save a lot of pain.
Jennifer: 23:14
Yes.
Aaron: 23:15
Especially going into winter time right now. So if you're considering going now, brooding in the winter time can be hard depending your location. Yeah. You got to be prepared for that, especially if you've never done it before. It's, in the summertime, then it's too hot. You have and here in the South, you have probably eight weeks of perfect, conditions to raise animals. And it's usually spread across the entire year, those eight weeks.
Jennifer: 23:44
I agree.
Aaron: 23:45
And another big thing I had gotten asked was how do you market your stuff? How do you advertise? That's a good one. And that, that one is a really good one. And there's multiple answers for it. What. What are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to market your stuff locally? Are you trying to mark your market your stuff across the country? Definitely across the country MPI P to be able to ship across state lines AI for certain states I don't remember the states off the top of my head for AI Because I fought AI for the while I'm like, I don't need that because I have to pay for it MPI P in Louisiana is free So I'm like AI I have to pay for it. I'm not doing it So now I've got an AI, so now I don't have to, I don't even pay attention, which states require it. I
Jennifer: 24:39
have it here in Tennessee. It's all one thing.
Aaron: 24:41
If you want to stay local and you're looking for different avenues to sell your quail locally without having to ship farmers markets and be a top one, and you can't tell me your area doesn't have a farmer's market because if they don't, then start one.
Jennifer: 24:55
Is
Aaron: 24:57
that
Jennifer: 24:57
where you started with farmers markets?
Aaron: 24:59
I started locally. I live in a very small area, so everybody knows everybody. People are like, hey, go to this guy. He has chickens and coil and rabbits. And one person would tell another person, and then I would do farmers markets. And I would every now and then I would show my face at animal swaps. And it's like that stuff, very profitable even like an animal swap in your area. I would definitely research biosecurity before I would venture off into that. So you have farmers markets, cause most people raising quail or growing vegetables and they're doing other things. They have. Some people even have those chickens. Diversify you want to meet what your customers demands are. You don't want to just, let's say you just, you love jumbo Browns and that's all you're going to raise. What if the people you're trying to sell to don't love Jumbo Browns as much as you? You're not gonna sell them.
Jennifer: 26:01
No.
Aaron: 26:01
Get it get a feel and I have one person that I'm doing foreign business coaching with right now and he just loves Jumbo Whites. You can't talk him out of anything other than Jumbo Whites. He has Jumbo Whites and white American breasts and that is the meat birds of his life.
Jennifer: 26:16
Okay.
Aaron: 26:18
And I was like Ricky, not everybody likes jumbo whites. Are you selling just for meat? He's nope, not selling meat. I'm selling pet birds and selling birds for people for self sufficiency. I said, you might want to change that. So I got them with pansies and some pearls and Egyptians. And so now he's selling a ton of quail. People are like. They're looking in his brooder box. He brings around to sell chicks out of and they, the jumbo whites every day. When he comes back from selling him, he has jumbo whites in the brooder box, no other colors, and you just find out what your customer base is looking for and just meet that domain and it's the best way. You can sell more that way. My favorite bird to listen to is the Northern Bobwhite. I don't even sell them. That's my favorite bird to listen to. I like my Jumbo Browns to eat. And for some reason, I like the Pansies to look at. Only as chicks though. And look, I don't like anything with a Routine in it.
Jennifer: 27:29
Oh no, come on.
Aaron: 27:30
No, personally, I don't like them, but I don't like the
Carey: 27:35
red color.
Jennifer: 27:36
That's my biggest seller.
Carey: 27:38
And being from Louisiana they don't like that crimson red down there.
Aaron: 27:42
I'm actually an Alabama fan.
Carey: 27:45
I understand that, but your neighbors won't.
Aaron: 27:49
Yeah, I have a LSU sign planted in my front yard for my neighbor.
Jennifer: 27:53
Yeah. So start small and find out what you can sell locally and where you can sell. Now, I started on Craigslist I haven't been on Craigslist in a long time. It's hit and miss I think now, but that's where I started.
Aaron: 28:09
See, we don't really have Craigslist available to us in our area because we're so rural. So like I tried to look up that route. I even for a little while selling hatching eggs on eBay.
Jennifer: 28:23
Yep.
Aaron: 28:23
When I started looking at all the fees and stuff, that's when I made my website and I got asked about my website, like in my website, it's not fancy. And I said I'm not a web designer. I am a quail farmer.
Jennifer: 28:39
I'd say that is what
Aaron: 28:39
it is. I'm sure I could do a little bit of research and I watched some YouTube videos and understand how to use Wix better and probably make my website a little bit more flashier. That won't change my quail, So I just invest my time into my product and I like the website because you could just go on the website. You can look at it. If you don't want to buy it, you just keep on scrolling.
Jennifer: 29:04
Let me interject here for just a 2nd. If you didn't know that you can put hatching eggs on eBay that you can, but we are not allowed as sellers to tell you to go to our website. Yeah, we do that with. Subliminable. marketing. So look at our profile pictures. So my profile picture is actually my logo and it actually says briansroos. com on it because the eBay computer doesn't see that.
Carey: 29:36
And it fits perfect in that circle.
Jennifer: 29:38
It does. And then people will message me off of eBay and I'm like, just look at the profile picture because What you're paying for 36 Pharaoh eggs on eBay is 15 percent higher than what you would pay on my website because that's just eBay's fees. Yeah. Yeah. So just, look at those and see if you can't look between the lines at what we're trying to tell you.
Aaron: 30:03
And that's what got me away from the eBay selling is I lost that customer interaction and 99. 9 percent of the time. I really do enjoy the customer interaction. You always, you're always going to get a few, I'm very fortunate that I haven't run across too many disgruntled customers, but I really, I do I'm a sucker for, someone needing eggs for their kids, for a hatching project. I'm sending eggs, yeah. As mean as I am, I'm still nice.
Jennifer: 30:38
Yep. So what other common questions did you get?
Aaron: 30:43
Hang on one second. I'm in the middle of something.
Jennifer: 30:46
Alright,
Aaron: 30:48
I'm back now.
Jennifer: 30:49
Okay, so what other questions did you get from people?
Aaron: 30:52
One of them was actually a small one, where the, who do I recommend? I did recommend Brian's Roots.
Jennifer: 31:00
No, but thank you.
Aaron: 31:02
I'm a, one of my big hitting points on my speech was, You get people to get in and they are looking for to take over the world. And it's you don't need to do that. Just find your SL slice of the pie and be happy with it. What number is your happy number? And, I'm at my happy number, I enjoy doing it. And I also enjoy helping out friends and recommending friends and. It's fun for me. I work full time. This is my hobby and I love it. So it's I recommend people all the time. I enjoy that. I enjoy the friendships formed with Raising Quill, but anyway, enough about me. Another,
Jennifer: 31:47
the point was to talk about you and what you really,
Carey: 31:50
oh man, yeah, we wanted to find out. How? How was Quail Con?
Aaron: 31:56
Quail Con was excellent. I got there the Wednesday and it's like I didn't stop. I landed. I flew up there. We landed and my feet hit the ground. I don't think I stopped until I landed back in New Orleans. It was extremely busy. It was fun. I met so many wonderful faces. I think it was, they had more new people at this one. Compared to ever before, except for the first one. And it was amazing. You got to sit there. We actually, Thursday morning, we butchered a quail for the quail dinner. So my wife got this, my wife and my eight year old got the butcher quail with us for the quail dinner. I didn't usually cook for the quail dinner. I didn't cook this year because I was speaking right at the time that. They were, the cooking needed to start on the Saturday, so I didn't get to cook. I really, I enjoy cooking. It was a great experience. They have I definitely recommend everyone to try going at least one time. You get tour de Cueva, which I didn't even go in there this year. I was just so busy. It just, you get to meet so many people and everyone's a stranger when they walk in the gates there. And they leave just friends. So I like the people watch. I was sitting down in the chair, taking a break, writing down some notes. Had a guy to walk by and they have a raffle. They could win prizes that are donated and got, had a guy to pull out some raffle tickets out of his pocket and a lot of cash fell on the ground in the grass and I was getting ready to get up to grab it and some other guy just walks from across and he grabs and he goes hunt the guy down and give him his money back. What city in the United States you expect to see that happening? In today's age, you don't, someone's just gonna pocket it. They're gonna let him walk a good distance and pocket the money. And we parked in the parking lot, which is the field and I didn't lock my car or, you don't have to worry about none of that stuff there. It's just the same kind of people as we are. It's. It's really fun. I will say one year I'll end up camping with the campers there. They got people to sleep in tents, sleep in their cars, drive in RVs. I'm a little spoiled to air conditioning, I'll be honest. And showers. But it's a good experience. I probably wish they would have an additional day. Just because like I was there Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, the event was Saturday and Sunday and Monday morning I got on the plane and drove home. It was definitely fun. There's a little biosecurity valve naturally because you're going into the quail barn. You're sanitizing your feet and you're not allowed acting next to the quail, but just to walk in there and hear, I think it's somewhere around 9, 000 birds just going at it, one rooster crows and then they just, they all start. They
Jennifer: 34:56
do. I was
Aaron: 34:57
going to say, it'll be totally quiet in there until one. Yeah, one starts. So like people that never really been around that, because there was a ton of people there that, they left with their first quail. So it was, it's a good experience to see that kind of stuff. You can buy eggs there too, and then come home with eggs, birds, or anything alive.
Jennifer: 35:23
Oh wow.
Aaron: 35:24
Had one vendor that was selling 3D printed dragons. It's just, I don't know. Okay. My 8 year old, I think he bought them all. Actually left, so we packed super light to travel and I left with a bunch of clothes in the hotel room that way I had room for his dragons in the bag. And it's so funny because for the raffle, they donated a dragon to be raffled off. He bought all the dragons and he won the dragon in the raffle.
Jennifer: 35:58
Oh wow, he was happy.
Aaron: 36:00
Yeah, he was super happy because he was very happy.
Jennifer: 36:05
Any other advice for anybody wanting to get started on making money with quail?
Aaron: 36:10
It's probably one that you see asked at least daily on Facebook.
Jennifer: 36:15
Okay.
Aaron: 36:17
What do I sell my quail for? What should be my price?
Carey: 36:20
I wish, you know what, if I had a dollar for every time I've seen that question, I would not have a job. Yeah.
Jennifer: 36:30
I told somebody the other day, because I rarely answer those questions, but my answer was 0 to 25, because it just, it depends on who you are, what you have, what specialty there are, dead, live, what size, there's such a range there.
Aaron: 36:51
Yeah, and I always answer that question with another question, and it is, what is your cost?
Carey: 36:59
And people like that's what kills me is people don't think about that. When I, people ask me, they say why are you trying to sell me a chicken for 35? The chickens this age and it costs that much to feed it. So I thought that was a good price. Why does it cost so much to feed it? And so there was a time in my life where I actually had the patients where I would calculate the math out for them. But now it's, that's usually the conversation ender.
Jennifer: 37:33
So I do see a running theme because most of the larger breeders, we all know each other and a running theme between us is. This is what it costs. And if you don't want to pay it, we have other outlets or we'll just eat it. We don't have to sell them because, I have a multitude of outlets for them and I'm backlogged and have been backlogged pretty much all of 2024. I'm a probably about 600 birds behind right now on order. It is what it is.
Aaron: 38:06
Yeah, and it's like the whole pricing thing. I just, I sent him an Excel spreadsheet. This is, if he costs you this much, this is how much it costs you for an egg. This is how much it costs you in electricity. And then you go from there.
Jennifer: 38:24
And you won't always make a profit. Profit is in a lot of different ways. Profit is you put some of that in your freezer. You fed your dogs with some of it. You ate it for breakfast in the source of eggs. You fed your pigs. If you're gonna use every bit of it, you've got to account for all of that stuff, too.
Aaron: 38:43
Yeah, and you can't get a unrealistic expectation of that you're gonna get rich in, especially in the first year doing this. I don't know anybody who's ever gotten rich off of quail farming, just absolutely rich and just Hey, I'm going to retire quail farming. That just, that doesn't happen. A lot of people think it's possible and it may be, but I don't think you're going to be living this high, fancy lifestyle and being a quail farmer.
Carey: 39:12
I know somebody that did a very large amount of business. in quail farming. And that person told me they were running about a 10 percent margin. So if you're getting the idea out there, fellas and ladies to get that 25, 000 loan, just let that 10 percent margin sink in before you go get it.
Jennifer: 39:37
And don't, and one thing we didn't mention one of the other breeders that we know, we all know she's selling manure to somebody who wants to compost it all. So every bit of it is sellable. I personally compost it for my own garden. Maybe one day I would have enough. To sell, but I don't foresee that in the next two to three years. That's a lot of
Aaron: 40:02
poo.
Jennifer: 40:03
Makes my veggies grow really well,
Aaron: 40:05
I sell like feed bags of quail manure here and there, but it might only be 20. In the spring or the fall. It's not me at the time. I compost everything for myself.
Jennifer: 40:16
Yeah,
Aaron: 40:17
basically. And I really don't want to sell it. I don't advertise. It's just more people that reach out and ask for it. And like you, I'm not selling rabbit manure that goes straight into the garden. If I had a way that I could put a conveyor from the rabbit cages to the garden and I wouldn't have to touch it. That would be even better.
Jennifer: 40:35
Move the pens over there. The cages.
Aaron: 40:38
So I am really crazy about it. My animals stay in the animal yard. The garden is the garden yard. A few weeks ago I moved my goats into the gardens cause we're redoing all the garden beds. I have the raised beds and. I'm redesigning, so we let everything go in the summertime, and I had poison ivy growing in the tomato bed, and I was like, I'm not going to weed all of this stuff, so I used cattle panels, I fenced in the garden area, and turned the goats loose.
Jennifer: 41:12
That's the
Aaron: 41:13
first time we had animals out of the animal yard and it gave me anxiety.
Carey: 41:18
In the winter time, you could put some chickens in a tractor and some rabbits in a tractor. And you wouldn't even have to spread it out at that point in the garden.
Aaron: 41:32
I wanted the emus to go out and play in the garden. And so I left the back gate open. The back gate from the animal yard goes into the garden area and the rest was all fenced in. They would not cross the gate. My animals have it nice and made in the animal yard.
Jennifer: 41:49
Now, we, in the spring, we wean the piglets and I put them in my breeder pens to rototill up to reseed it. They did a great job. They're really hard on fence that's meant for Birds not really meant for pigs so there was some repairs to do afterwards But they did a fantastic job, and I think we have all raised beds So I have put hog panels up around my raised beds now, and I'm gonna wean the next Set which are due in about a month or so I'm gonna put them in the garden to turn that over so yeah.
Aaron: 42:27
Yeah, it just, like for me, my animal yard, if you're passing in front of my house, you do not know I have animals. There's no sign of any animals around.
Jennifer: 42:38
And
Aaron: 42:40
you walk in, the fenced in area, and then you see animals everywhere. Looks like Jurassic Park
Jennifer: 42:48
sometimes. Yep. Any last words for any advice for anybody?
Aaron: 42:53
Just keep on quailing. Don't get discouraged. And you have to, and I find myself every now and then needing to get back to my roots and realize what I started doing it for. And every once in a while people just need to reset.
Jennifer: 43:10
Yeah, I did it this year
Carey: 43:12
too. I'm redoing the entire inside of my barn. And I am, I'm doing some resets too. All right. Aaron, I appreciate you coming on. Yep. Thanks for having me. How does everybody get in touch with you?
Aaron: 43:31
Facebook or my website.
Jennifer: 43:34
There you go. Ra family farm.com.
Aaron: 43:38
Dot com? Yes.
Jennifer: 43:39
Yep. All right. Cool.
Aaron: 43:40
Same thing on Facebook. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, find it somewhere and get you. I had some stranger I met at QuailCon. I'll bore you with one last story. Never met the man before. And I'll make sure I'll send him this. He's from Georgia. He's a Bulldog fan, but we became friends. And he asked me when I would start doing YouTube live streams. I said once I hit 500 subscribers, I'll consider it. So it is his mission to get me 500 subscribers. And I think I had 285 at the time. And I think I'm like 485 right now.
Jennifer: 44:19
Oh no, you're going to have to start
Aaron: 44:22
working. Yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah, so I might have to, Shannon, I might have to start preparing for live streams.
Jennifer: 44:33
All right. That sounds good.
Carey: 44:35
Sounds good. Yeah,
Aaron: 44:37
y'all have a good one.
