Anyone raising quail? (guess it's official.. I am)

[kcult]

Thread back from the dead... I just got a ship notice for my eggs for the spring.

Last year I finished up by harvesting all the birds. I didn't have enough to have a self sustaining flock and the expense/work of feeding them all winter with them not producing anything was more than just eating them and then restarting with fresh commercial eggs.

I'm doing all bobwhite quail this time as they're easier to 'feather sex' (ie the boys and girls have different coloration that's easy to distinguish) vs 'vent sex' (requires flipping them over and figuring out what the plumbing is). This way I can ensure I've got the right mix of males to females and to prevent fighting.

Update?

I was gifted six quail. Out of the six, three were males. I gave two of the males to a coworker to use to try to train a lab puppy. Of the remainder, one female died. Not sure what the cause was. So, I only have the male and two females.

I bought a small incubator, put 12 eggs in. Before lockdown (I think that's what it's called), I candeled them. Ten of the 12 were fertilized. Of those 10, eight hatched. At the end of this week, they'll be two weeks old.

I don't know, yet, which are males, and which are females. I'm also undecided on how to proceed with them, meaning, do I build an enclosure just for them, or toss them in the 8x10 with the three other grown quail.

I have nine more eggs in the incubator. They've been in since the 4th.

 

[Jayne]

Update?

This batch has been a disaster. Of the 50, over 40 hatched, but a lot of the chicks died early and I have 7 'cripples' with really bad splay leg that we've been unable to fix or even worse deformities. I think I've got 18 healthy birds out of it the batch, but some of those are really tiny, probably half the size of other birds.

No idea what went wrong here.

 

[kcult]

This batch has been a disaster. Of the 50, over 40 hatched, but a lot of the chicks died early and I have 7 'cripples' with really bad splay leg that we've been unable to fix or even worse deformities. I think I've got 18 healthy birds out of it the batch, but some of those are really tiny, probably half the size of other birds.

No idea what went wrong here.

Dang. Hate that.

Of the eight I hatched, one had that splay leg mess. Luckily, I was not working and looked it up. I tried the tying the legs together trick, but didn't have suitable material, so I just held it in my hand, cupped, forcing him to push against my hands. I did that for five to 10 minutes every hour for about three hours and it fixed him right up. This was April 29th.

I can't even tell which bird he is now.

 

[Jayne]

I tried the tying the legs together trick, but didn't have suitable material,

We used little strips of vet wrap, seems to have done the trick when there was any hope of it working. Two have a leg sticking directly out behind them. They'll never be able to be on wire in a regular coop with the other birds, they'll have to live their lives on shavings in the special handi-capible cage until they're large enough to process.