The quail kid - cracking the egg market aged 12

Hamish Sturgeon is just like his quails, busy, chatty and well, let's be upfront, just plain cute.

But he's very much the professional egg farmer, turning a tidy little profit selling his quail eggs at Coromandel town's farmers' market in the summertime.

"My mum said, if I do it, I have to protect them. I have to care for them. I have to feed them, water them, do all the food for them. So that's what I do."

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The youngest of five siblings, Hamish has a three-tiered coop and a movable pen in his family's yard for his 29 birds. They are Japanese quails and come in several different earthy shades without the signature quirky head feathers of the Californian variety.

"If you're lucky enough, you could just hear the male crow. Hear that? It's quite cool."

Hamish exudes confidence with a wide smile and a firm handshake, when he greets Country Life at the gate to his Coromandel home overlooking the bay.

And his infectious enthusiasm and marketing skills no doubt win over a few shoppers.

He sometimes takes the quails to the market to show them off and encourage people to buy the diminutive eggs which he packages up in trays of a dozen.

"They have three times the protein of chicken eggs - delicious!

"They taste like chicken eggs, but a little bit more flavour - beautiful!"

Hamish's "store buddy", the much older Giovanni Vico, sells gluten free bread alongside Hamish at the market and they work in tandem to sell the bread and the eggs.

"Last week, we just scrambled some up and put them on the focaccia toast."

"We are a mega team," Giovanni said.

"It's fantastic, a young kid ... looking after animals, and at the same time making a little bit of money out of it. He's a little genius my friend over there."

Hamish was introduced to keeping quails by his aunt nearly two years ago and he has since soaked up the information needed on how to care for them, describing them as "amazing creatures".

"It just slowly came to me. I've got to learn about what I have.

"My Auntie said ... they really like sand. So, I got some sand, and they really do like sand. They really do. They just go in the sand, and they just turn into little fluff balls, flicking sand everywhere."

He has learnt their laying rate coincides with the amount of sun they get.

"But then slowly in the winter they stop because there's not enough sunlight."

Only a couple of the birds have names including "Motherclucker" and "Dobby". Dobby nearly came to an unfortunate end with the family dog, but has since been nursed back to health by Hamish.

Hamish takes Country Life on a tour of the little farm and puts a tray of sand in one of the cages as a dust bath. Spotting a clutch of eggs, he quickly scoops them up.

"They just lay anywhere ... the females are bred to not care about their eggs or not be broody. Cool fact!"

When the quails are laying Hamish manages to take 10 to 11 dozen eggs to market each Saturday, packaged up and displayed alongside his brightly illustrated sign bearing the name "Daily Quails Eggs est. 2024" and the tagline "One small step for Hamish, one giant step for quails."

He is saving the profits he makes after paying for the stall and other outgoings like feed.

While Giovanni jokes about expanding into the hundreds of quails, Hamish is keen to keep the venture small and manageable, although he might add another three-tiered coop.

"Actually, having quails is quite fun. You've got to have responsibility to take care of them. And if you don't, they'll die. But if you do, you have a little bit of a reward."

Postscript: Hamish recently turned 13 and has been surprised to see the quails laying through the winter.