ABOUT ME
My name is Scott O’Brien and I live in the Midcoast Maine town of Jefferson. My main occupation for thirty-five years has been a lobster fisherman. I recently sold the business and have decided to expand my quail business of over twenty years and also have this new website designed to finally get with the program and catch up to modern times.
The internet in many ways has nearly ruined the quail world with the Facebook caliber of so-called bird breeders. There are so many fly-by-nighters these days who see the prices of these birds and just see dollar signs. Most come an go within a few years and leave a mess in their tracks of junk birds and people with buyer’s remorse. One hell of a lot of scammers out there too.
I’ve been focusing on the three rarest and most expensive species over the past decade and will continue, but also am expanding and getting back to some of the more common and less expensive species that are very popular with quail hobbyists and other breeders.
Unlike most sellers these days, I’m happy to help people with any tips and advice that I’ve learned over the years. Some of the others tell me that I’m stupid to do that because they say that it only creates competition. I don’t think of it that way. I look at it as just plain common courtesy and good business ethic. I treat people how I’d want to be treated.
I’m known as one of the few who doesn’t sell for outrageous prices but I am going to bump some of them up a bit just to finally catch up with the times and the rising costs of feed, and anything else that has to do with the business. Everything has gone up considerably in price, especially since covid hit.
I was recently talking with another old time breeder and we both said almost at the same time that some of these birds have been the same price for thirty years! It’s time to bump them up a bit. There are some out there though who sell them for outrageous prices. Most are bird brokers. They buy from breeders, common quail for say, $25 a pair, put them on their website for $90, and for nothing but an email and a PayPal transaction, skim a $65 profit. These parasites don’t even own their own farms or even raise a bird themselves.
Here I raise everything from egg to chick, to adult and it’s a full-time job with a lot of expense involved. I’m here to make a living but not to rob people. When you look my site over, you’ll see an actual farm with updated pictures and videos of everything that goes on around here. This isn’t one of those sites with the same one or two pictures for the past ten years with no farm tours. I like to keep things fresh and updated. I wasn’t able to do that often with my old website. I hope everyone enjoys this new one. I’m looking forward to it. A friend of mine who is a computer wizard is helping me with this. She designed the new logo and is setting up an online store. She’s enthusiastic about the business and will make a great website administrator. If you have any questions feel free to contact me anytime,
-Scott , a.k.a. The Mearns Madman!