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And a funny post in which I indulge my anthropomorphization of my birds... I do love how silly my favorites are - Pudding reminds me of a proper Victorian schoolmarm, very severe and haughty. No one messes with her. Mousse is a softer lady, more timid and sweet compared to Pudding - though they...

I wish the juveniles would find their feet already. Then I could make real decisions as to whom to keep vs whom to get rid of - the roos would finally be obvious with their crowing and mating, the hens would start showing their true personalities... We're thinking to keep some chunky hens who...

Flan has decided to become broody again, seemingly at random. Sigh. Dang hen. It's so hot right now that we could honestly just incubate the eggs outside and probably get a good hatch if it wasn't for the night-time drop in temp. She's the one who gets to come inside and greet the new chicks...

I still love and appreciate Tidbit. He has two flaws: One, he's not a very big male. He's not especially runty, but he's probably on the smaller end of average. Two, he sounds like a chain-smoking velociraptor when he crows. It's not even 'Co-turn-NIX' it's like 'CRUHH-REEHHH.' Luckily, he...

A few of the juveniles are crowing now. They're 6 weeks old, having mostly hatched on April 1st. I know that statistically I have 15 males, but unfortunately we've only found 5 so far, so somewhere in my main and auxiliary cages we have 10 more boys. This is a problem. We also have 30 chicks...

Tiramisu is inside with us while we try to see if we can keep him as a house bird. He was being kept alone today in the bachelor cage (which is a large dog crate divided in half with wire) in the bottom half because he was tormenting the juvenile males. So far he's just been stressed out, but...

Also, 30 new chicks! Most do seem like Tidbit's as we have a lot of darker or gray chicks. Honestly, I think I feel the same way about Tidbit as others do about their good chicken roos. He's just such a good boy. Tiramisu, on the other hand, had to join the bachelor cage. He's already...

Update on the birds we gave to my MIL. She loves them and they seem reasonably healthy in her care, though their beaks were pretty overgrown. We put in a couple of rocks for them to be able to file their beaks down and recommended she feed crushed egg shell as well as oyster shell since she's...

This morning we have quail eggs hatching, so we'll have to prep the brooder soon. 35 eggs made it to pipping! I think Tidbit is the sire for most of these, but we'll know soon. Also saw Tidbit mate with Pudding this morning. A lot of roos will...loom? over a hen if they're interested in mating...

Ugh. Just a short update: Our 31 chicks are now (mostly) 4 weeks old, so we've had to separate them out of the grow out cage since it's like...8 sq ft. There's now ~15 in the grow out, ~20 in the main cage, and ~5 in the bachelor bin (a large plastic dog crate that we separated into upper and...

...And then I proceeded to not write about one of the reasons I think quail roos have a social role. Goodness. It's mostly the fact that quail hens sing an egg song after laying an egg. Thinking about it, I can't imagine a single good reason for a quail hen to advertise that she's laid an egg...

I've been re-reading Shadrach's articles about roosters and it's been making me think about my quail roos. I know my covey isn't kept in a perfectly natural environment, but I've definitely noticed some interesting behaviors from my roos. I've written a post talking about my theories, but I'll...

I realized I haven't really updated on a couple of things, so noting them now: We gave my MIL a small flock of five - a roo and four hens. They've warmed up to her and now approach her for treats - interesting because I chose birds that I didn't want for breeding, which is to say she got all...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/quail-double-yolk-egg-topsy-warning-pictures.1618190/

All of our other quail are doing well. I've had to separate Tiramisu as he's been increasingly aggressive, especially towards Tidbit. He's been separated in an adjoining cage for about a week and Tidbit has noticeably gained weight, so I'm debating giving Tiramisu another trial or culling him in...

We ended up culling the deformed chick. It wasn't eating despite both my husband and my best efforts - I even checked its crop in case it was eating when we weren't looking. It mostly was walking in circles and crying as it couldn't find its way back under the brooder without assistance. Be...

It's been actual hell because I've been on night shift for the past week or so and we hatched out 33 chicks from our 60 eggs from Thieving Otter Farms. One pipped and apparently gave up, one drowned because of my own stupidity (thought nothing could reasonably drown in the tiny amount of water)...

I love our current roos, and tbh they're sort of the reason we finally culled our excess roos. I think I was holding onto them because 1) fear that I'll lose out on a valuable bird and 2) I just don't like culling. But it's hard to experience a really friendly, sweet roo and then tolerate roos...

Okay, time for a general update. We've culled the excess males and Cream, who just never fully recovered. I think it's likely MG :/ I'm not willing to cull the rest of my flock, and while I don't have plans to sell birds/hatching eggs I'm kind of upset at the loss of that potential option. It...

My last update was like...2 months ago. To be honest, I've just been busy with work. Quail are all well, we finished out our last hatches and have been raising the babies. I'll have to update with all new quail introductions, haha. But for now, I'm still alive and keeping quail. I'm still...