Snowflake quail behaving strange

[luludaxia]

I have a trio of snowflake quails in a cage. Last night I saw one female behaving strangely. She's running around very rapidly like crazy. They are always running around the cage but usually not as quickly and frenzy as she does. After several circles, she will stay at the corner, facing the wall, breathing rapidly as if exhausted. Some times she squats there. She also seem a bit lame. I took her out of the cage and put her in a smaller empty cage near the original one. She still does that, but do not seem lame anymore. She's doing that the whole day today but I don't think she has touched her food. She seems alert, eyes clear, no discharging from eyes or nostril, no fluffing of feathers or drooping wings. This morning she laid a soft egg, she's not laying for days before that. I'm not sure what happened to her, is it disease or a mental condition? I handfed her some water and food today.

 

[JaeG]

She sounds stressed quite honestly. Maybe try covering her cage on three sides, and the roof, just to make her feel a bit more secure and see if she calms down. Has she got oyster shell grit to eat? That should help with the soft shelled egg, though that can be a symptom of stress. I have no experience with snowflake quail (but they are so pretty). Maybe there's a predator of some kind that's worrying her? Hopefully someone else will come along with some more ideas about what to do.

 

[Binki]

I don't have experience with snowflake quail, but my girls sometimes pace before egg laying time (coturnix, about 5pm with sinister sweet sounding screeches to announce it sometimes LOL!!).

Just throwing this out there but maybe she's stressed because she can't find a suitable nesting site? It's spring and even though it still gets below freezing in Canada here I've noticed some of my quail already acting differently.

Two of my quail seem to have defective oviducts and only lay gross eggs sometimes, despite having the same nutrition and access to calcium as their cage friends who lay pretty eggs

Good thing they're adorable pets

The other quail seems to like the gross eggs so I rarely find them anymore LOL...

 

[luludaxia]

Thanks for your reply. She's okay now. I'm thinking of putting her back with others and give her a box in which she could nest.