Recent content by brewer12345

My coturnix are in kind of typical pens with a wire bottom and a slide out poop collection board. I put in several small cardboard boxes with straw to give them spots to hunker down in the cold weather and hide out from each other as necessary. I have had reasonable success with them over the...

So I cleaned out the cage thoroughly, sprayed everything down with isopropyl alcohol, and medicated the affected feet with Neosporin. As I worked on the cage I discovered that there was a line of exposed wire ends that may have been poking their feet. I installed some pieces of wood to keep...

Yes, they are on wire. I will have to examine the pen closely and see if I can find anything that is poking them. While I am at it I will hose down the floor with isopropyl alcohol. But what do I do for the birds that are already infected?

It seems like I have a bumblefoot epidemic in one of my pens and I don't know what to do about it. I have tried reading stuff aimed at keepers of ducks and chickens, but a lot of it is dated (like back to last year when you could buy antibiotics at the feed store) and a bunch of it sounds...

Definitely not from head bonking. Of course of the two whites I pulled to the hospital cage, one of them started crowing last night. Never again will I keep Texas A&Ms, too hard to reliably sex.

*sigh* Well, I am now down to 1 rooster in the main pen, a big monster that is just shy of 300 grams. Things are already calmer in the pen. I also pulled the two hens that are really beaten up (badly bloodied heads, one may have lost an eye) and put them in a hospital pen (dog transport...

And now a rooster too. I noticed a bloody headed hen on Monday and thought it was one of the 3 roosters in the pen. We went away for a couple days and now there are two hens in bad shape and even what I thought was the culprit rooster has some blood on his head. The pen has 3 roosters and 16...

Floor space appears adequate (possibly on the small side), but that height would concern me. There is a significant risk they could jump and brain themselves. Better to have a 12 to 15 inch ceiling.

My new batch of quail hit 6 weeks today and I need to start sexing them. There are 37 birds in this lot and they are all running around one pen. The 15 browns were easy to sex (although only 5 were hens). The problem is the A&Ms. There are so many birds in the pen that I have no idea who is...

I'd expect them to start laying in the next 2 weeks. No worries.

These guys are so small that anything other than shears is tough to use. A razor sharp knife is a good thing, but be careful not to cut yourself. A friend raised a few meat chickens along with his layers this spring and when he was ready to process them he made a loop out of string and nailed...

I use a pair of game or kitchen shears. It might be worth buying new ones or having them sharpened. When dealing with quail or doves (when I am hunting and knock one of the latter down but they are still alive), I try to make a clean cut. It the cut wasn't quite right or the shears are duller...

So after our first poor experience with locally hatched coturnix chicks (lots of losses, mostly small birds, etc.), we ordered eggs from an out of state hatchery and incubated them ourselves. Of the 39 birds we kept (hatched more than expected so we sold some), we ended up with 16 pharaohs and...

We are still at 1 egg a day the last 4 days. What is odd is that the 4 eggs have two very different color patterns, so I wonder if two girls are taking turns laying. Do hens have specific color patterns, or is it just random?

I think if you put the eggs inside a backpack or something similar and maybe wrap them in a blanket they should be fine. Mine were shipped from PA to CO in early March without problems. I left mine pointy end down for 24 hours before setting them up in the incubator because that is what I read...