Quail

[Jonsey]

So even in that run, they won't go inside at night on their own?

Nope. They are really stupid. Infact, the first night we did not have the extra layer of small gauge wire on there. They settled down in the corners and went to sleep. In the morning I found that the raccoons had eaten most of them right through the chicken wire, so we had to reinforce, and I also started shutting them in at night. They literally just sat there and let themselves get eaten. The little house worked great for cold weather too. They stayed pretty warm in there.

[Irving]

Haha, amazing they are not extinct!

[Jonsey]

No kidding! Maybe the wild ones hide in the bushes. They are pretty good at sitting still, but you would think predators would smell them.

[GilpinGuy]

I wonder what you ended up feeding them. I found it a little more challenging to make my own food for them since they require so much protein. But they fit into the neighborhood better than my chickens did.

I feed them Mannna Pro gamebird/showbird starter. 24% protein. I have just found a source for organic feed closer to home, but I haven't seen a price yet. Most of the organic feed I've seen is rather expensive.

[GilpinGuy]

Haha, amazing they are not extinct!

The ridiculously fast reproduction rate is one defense. Hatched to mature in about 6 weeks? Amazing, really.


Edit: I originally wrote 90 days for some reason. It's about 6 weeks.

[Jonsey]

I feed them Mannna Pro gamebird/showbird starter. 24% protein. I have just found a source for organic feed closer to home, but I haven't seen a price yet. Most of the organic feed I've seen is rather expensive.

Agreed on the amazing reproductive time.

I use Manna Pro for my rabbits. It seems high quality. I think I used Ag Land for my quail and it worked well too.

The cost for the organic stuff just blew me away so I started experimenting with little bulk bags of grain from the health food store. My mixture varried, but I put things in there like millet, red lentils, oats, and so forth. I soaked them overnight to soften them.( I added kefir later but that is kinda a long story)They continued laying when I did this, but the babies did not grow as big on this diet. If I did it again, I would probably try sprouting the mixture to get more food out of It. All this is pretty time consuming but I had fun with it.

Also, I have to say, nice job on the watering system. I have been thinking about setting something like that up but haven't got around to it yet. It looks very convenient.

Thanks for sharing your quail story.

[Irving]

Is there any chance that you can rename your blog to Quail of a Tale?

Got a quail of a tale to tell you lads,
a quail of a tale or two
Bout the swquakin chicks, and birds I've loved
on nights like this with the moon above
A quail of a tale and it's all true
I swear by my tattoo

Also, get a quail tattoo.

[GilpinGuy]

Hmmmmmm. I don't think so....

Where the hell is that from?

[Irving]

Oh boy are you in for a treat! I'll just post the link so it doesn't distract from the thread.
It's from a Disney movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkjTGCrLvAU

[GilpinGuy]

A big, long overdo, TYVM for those who went through the blog to Amazon after my blatant plug. I know some of you did from the dates of orders.

I made a gigantic mistake with the flock last week. I still can't believe I did it. Here's the text from my post:

Man, this is a tough one to post. But the whole point of this blog is to help folks out who want to raise coturnix quail, and mistakes help us learn. This was a big one and it’s embarrassing. But I can assure you it won’t happen again.

So, about a week ago we were preparing to leave our place for 5 days to visit Jenny’s family to celebrate her birthday and the birth of her new niece. Time was short and I had a lot to do before leaving, including culling a bunch of quail and getting my neighbor squared away so he can watch over the flock when I was gone.

With maybe 4 hours of sleep the night before, I decided it was time to cull some of the older birds, plus most of the young males from the latest hatch, and get the younger birds into their laying cages. This is the standard rotation. I make enough room in the laying cages by culling the older quail and replace them with the younger birds. Routine stuff.

All went well and I got about 20 quail into the freezer. We went on our merry way to Iowa and had a great time. My neighbor took care of the quail just fine – all survived and looked healthy when I got home. It’s always a relief to get home to be sure the flock is ok.

After a few days I noticed that the young quail weren’t laying as well as they should be. In fact they were hardly laying at all. The older birds were laying great as usual. I checked the supplemental lighting timers and they were set correctly. I started thinking that maybe the younger quail were just stressed from being in new cages and having a stranger feed them for a few days…….then it hit me.

I was filling one of the feeders and noticed more than one male in the cage. I normally put 1 rooster and 5-6 hens in each cage. Did I miss-sex one and accidentally put 2 males in this cage?
Unfortunately, no. I accidentally culled the hens and kept all of the roosters from the last hatch. The first words that came out of my mouth cannot be repeated here. What a rookie mistake! I’m still kicking myself. Lack of sleep, in a rush, etc. Still no excuse for this.

At least they are all packaged nicely in the freezer, ready to be grilled, so they weren’t wasted or anything. But man, I cannot believe I did this!

Here is what males and females look like. The rooster is on the left and the hen is on the right.


Male quail (roosters) have the rust colored chest and little or no speckling. The females (hens) are speckled on their chest and have no rust coloring, or VERY little. With most of the quail I’ve raised this coloring and speckling is pretty darn obvious by the time they start laying (about 6 weeks).

I know what a my next post will be about: Sexing coturnix quail.