Finding ways to raise your own food in a small suburban space or even in the city is tough. You need animals that are small enough to go unnoticed in a backyard or even in a garage and not many fit that description. Also, many people don’t want to spend tons of money to have cages to keep the animals in that they may not decide to keep long term.
One of our centerpiece animals on our little backyard homestead is Coturnix quail. These animals are great for small spaces because you can build hutches that can house them in a garage or even (in our case) a greenhouse. We only keep our quail in our miniature greenhouse during the winter months because it keeps them protected from the weather, wind, and also allows us to easily discard of their waste and repurpose it as composted nutrients to help us grow our plants in the spring.
We thought about ways that we could help you guys with a simple, cheap, and low commitment quail hutch and that you could build yourself. The beauty of this design is that it allows you to use mostly standard products with very little cutting or measuring. Also, if you decide that quail aren’t for you, the metal rack we use can be sprayed down with a garden hose or pressure washer and can be reused for a variety of purposes in your garage or you could even make it a grow house for indoor food in the winter. We’ll talk more about that in a future post, but for now let’s get started on this quail hutch build.
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We recorded a video to show you a bit about how we raise our quail. They are in “quail tractors” for 3 seasons out of the year where they can scratch, peck, and express their “quailness” to copy a similar term from Joel Salatin. In this video we share with you some insights on how we created our tractors but we also show you the full build of our indoor hutch beginning at the 5:19 mark. We created chapters in the video to help you watch the parts that are of most interest to you.
As promised, we also have a list of materials and a cut sheet that we’re providing to make things easier.
Please drop us a comment on the video, give us a thumbs up on it, and drop us a comment on YouTube or here on our website, we’d love to get to know you! We hope this build helps you get started on your journey to be more self-sufficient and provide more of your own food.
Materials
Wire rack
Zip Ties
(1) Roll Poultry Netting
(3) ½” PVC pipes
(12) ½” PVC Elbows
(2) 2×4
(2) Furring Strips
Screws 2 ½”
Screws 1 ¼”
(1) Roll ½” Hardware Cloth
Staples
(6) Baking Pans
Shower Curtain Rings (Locks)
Cut Sheet
3 Doors:
(6) 47” PVC Pipes
(6) 10” PVC Pipes
3 Inserts:
(3) 2x2x47”
(3) 2x2x45”
(3) 2x2x15”
(6) 2x2x13 ¾”
(3) Furring Strips 47” with 1”x1” cutouts on either end
Happy Homesteading!
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