Not to count my eggs before they hatch, but I have just put 36 Button Quail eggs into the incubator. These cute and tiny little eggs were shipped to me from P & L Gamebirds, along with three dozen Coturnix Quail eggs, which are to hopefully refresh the genetics in my line. I used to think Coturnix eggs were small, but Buttons are about the size of Cadbury Mini Eggs. I can just imagine how adorable the newborn chicks will be.

Button Quail eggs compared to Coturnix Quail egg

It’s always a toss-up with shipped eggs, you never know what kind of hatch to expect, so I’ll be happy if any hatch at all. A 50% hatch rate would be considered excellent, but 25% or less is more likely. Two of the Button eggs were broken on arrival, you can see the broken spot on one of them in the top photo, bottom right corner. I was going to toss them to the dog, as I would normally do with broken eggs, but since I have nothing to lose I decided to try to fix them. I took a beeswax candle and dripped a small amount of wax just so it covered the broken areas completely. We’ll find out the results in about 16 days!

Repaired eggs

Since I was incubating anyway, I filled up all the leftover slots with Coturnix quail eggs from my own birds. These cute little guys sell out so fast I figured I might as well. It was nice to see that my own eggs were consistently larger than the ones I received in the mail. Must be doing something right!