Last week I visited Texas Quail Farms in Lockhart for the Statesman.
Quail is a recent trend in restaurants and lots of Austin chefs get their quail from this place. Texas Quail Farms owners Todd Smith and Scott Holder pride themselves in not having an organic product.
The location where I met reporter Addie Broyles and multimedia guru Tina Phan was a hatchery for the quail. Somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 eggs are hatched every week there, and we got to watch while the newly hatched chicks were counted. Holder brought his neighbor Daphne Maiorka, 6, and her mother, Michelle, along for the experience.
I was able to get a quick (very quick) peak in to where the adult quails are stored while they lay eggs. This is the only part of the process where the birds are caged. Holder said it’s to prevent harmful bacteria from compromising the eggs. For example, if an egg was on the ground and happened to get a hairline fracture, bacteria from the ground could seep in to the shell, causing that chick not to hatch.
After the chicks are counted, they’re taken to another location, so we didn’t get to see many of the adult birds.
A second building in the facility where we visited served as a processing plant. We saw quail being de-boned and packaged to be shipped to customers.
That second shot is a worker rolling bacon around a quail breast. If you haven’t tried it, you should! Delicious!
That finished our tour, so there was just one more thing to do. Get a shot of the owners.
I was really hoping to get them in the room with the adult quails, but they preferred not to do that. Actually, I was really hoping that the whole thing would be more like what most people think as a traditional farm, but, as you can see, that wasn’t the case.
Still, fuzzy baby chicks wasn’t a bad way to start out my day.
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