Iridescent Eggs was created from the idea of starting a savings account for my two young children.

I was working my way towards creating a small homestead, and becoming more self-sufficient, when I was presented with the opportunity to add chickens and quail to our backyard. They not only create a way to put food on the table, but offer an excellent chance to teach children responsibility.

Through this blog, I hope to share my experiences to help others along their path of creating a better life for themself. Whether that be to decrease dependency on the grocery stores, teach children the importance of caring for animals, or simply to add flare to the everyday life with a basket full of a delightful array of colored eggs.

Part 1 of Our Story:

Chicken math will seem like nothing when you fall victim to the quail math craze.

I’m not going to lie this time last year I had absolutely no idea what a quail was. I discovered these delightfully quirky birds completely by accident.

I was mid free fall into my chicken math craze trying to buy every shade of chicken eggs that I could possibly find when I saw a picture of the funky looking little birds that laid gorgeous blue eggs

And of course, I just had to look into them. To the absolute delight of my impatient little soul, I discovered these adorable looking little birds started laying at 6 weeks old. 6 weeks not 6 months.

And even better this lady was selling laying hens. I could have my first egg right now. 

At 30 bucks a pop I curbed my irrational egg obsession and bought only four. But because of course that was not enough I then bought 15 2-week-old quail.

Immediately upon a rival I fell in love and ordered 15 more 2-week-old quail.

Before I even got my first egg I was completely hooked and down the rabbit hole I went.

24 eggs from here. Another 30 from there.

Now I want Jumbo coturnix quail, so it’s 50 eggs here. A hundred eggs from there.

But they both had a little bit of a weight so 150 eggs from here. Oh, there’s an auction going on, so I definitely have to get those 60 quail eggs.

Oh my gosh what a steal on this auction. Another 240 eggs.

Then of course when my quail started laying, they were laying the most beautiful little eggs I have ever seen.

 This one is just way too pretty not to hatch, and because I need to hatch these eggs I might as well collect some more eggs and hatch those too.

But man, now I have too many eggs for this incubator, so I have to get another incubator. 

What do you know I still dont have enough room for all those eggs, so I really have to get this cabinet incubator I found for half off on facebook.

Well now that I have such a huge incubator it would be a shame and a waste of power if I didn’t add more eggs to it

I needed some more jumbos and celadons anyway.

Ah, my husband really should be nominated for Saint Hood.

Part 2 of Our Story:

I guess I should admit that a quail obsession isn’t my only issue. I was already deep in the trenches of chicken math before that spark burst into the quail inferno. 

That’s right, I fell victim to chicken math too.

Not only did I buy and hatch about 1000 quail, but I also purchased around 90 day-old chicks and incubated over 170 chicken eggs.

A definite decrease from my quail egg numbers but same Z because it takes four quail eggs to equal a chicken egg right?

Oops, I should probably be downplaying my addiction not making it sound worse.

Anyway it was about a year ago when I discovered that there are more than just white and brown chicken eggs.

And since I’m addicted to a variety of color and wanted to see them all, I just had to start an Instagram account for further investigation.

Me the technologically impaired individual who avoided social media was now spending hours ogling chicken eggs. Chicken eggs every shade under the sun.

I was truly enthralled. I felt like the rat in Charlotte’s Web singing his song about all the delicious food after a fair.

There were speckles and purples and pinks and mustards and crazy colors of green. I wanted them all.

Then, as the adrenaline raced through my veins, I began to notice the delightful smorgasbord of feather types as well.

So I got white ones and red ones and black ones and blue ones and even some with puffy heads. 

Well let’s just say chicken eggs and day old chicks are much more expensive than quail eggs so my orders came to a screeching halt far sooner than I would’ve liked.

Oh well, onward with the love of quail.

Part 3 of Our Story:

Quail chicks might be a third of the size of chickens but they’re twice as addictive. They lure you into their adorable clutches then wreak havoc in your life like the tiny wrecking balls they are.

So here I was, tumbling down an Alice in Wonderland style rabbit hole, utterly delighted by the endless eggs and tiny balls of fluff, yet frantically checking on the five different brooders throughout the day when a realization hit me. 

Where was I going to put them all?

To be honest I hadn’t really done the math on how many eggs I ordered, and my husband and I weren’t building at a rate that could keep up with the rapid growth of the tiny tornados.

Yet, we were determined to outpace the little buggers. We buckled down and spent every free moment drilling in screws and stapling hardware cloth to wood.

It was an utter relief to fit the last nesting box roof into place the day before I had to move my fully feathered two-week quail outside.

A breath of fresh air to not have to be cutting plywood under the insuffiecient lighting of our front porch.

Well, for all of a couple days that is.

You see, I ran into a couple of issues that were blindingly obvious with 20/20 vision. An order of 100 juvenille quail fell through (which meant I had to keep them) and 150 quail from a late egg delivery were closing in on 2 weeks of age.

Not only that, but 64 chicken eggs were nearing lockdown, and the brooder space was needed.

Right at the time that my husband was promoted at work and was spending more time in the office.

Well, I wanted an aviary anyway. Round two of sprint to the finish began.