My First Quail

ChrisandraO said:

Ive had my quail for 3(almost haha) weeks now and I love them :3 I am having trouble telling genders haha. probably because i have two whites (heard they are next to impossible to tell until they crow or lay. one which crows all the time haha) and both of my speckled pretty much look the same to me. XD I think they are both females but im not sure haha. sorry for the bad picture as well.

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Cute quail, mine are 4 or 5 weeks now!!! Found out that they LOVE dandelion (is it ok for them to eat???) and they devour it! I thought coturnix quail didn't perch... I have caught my chick sitting on a high branch 2 times!!??!!

My eggs from James Marie hatched in Monday. I ended up with 30 birds out of 50 eggs. I'm happy with that! I made a couple mistakes so I'm not surprised. The thing that did surprise me is that when I candled them on day 14, about 15 eggs had no growth at all in them. Completely glowing. Could have not been fertilized??? Of the eggs that did have growth, only four did not hatch.l

clawstar said:

Cute quail, mine are 4 or 5 weeks now!!! Found out that they LOVE dandelion (is it ok for them to eat???) and they devour it!
I thought coturnix quail didn't perch... I have caught my chick sitting on a high branch 2 times!!??!!

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Dandelion is great food for birds. It's high in vitamins A, C and calcium.

Little-Farmer said:

My eggs from James Marie hatched in Monday. I ended up with 30 birds out of 50 eggs. I'm happy with that! I made a couple mistakes so I'm not surprised. The thing that did surprise me is that when I candled them on day 14, about 15 eggs had no growth at all in them. Completely glowing. Could have not been fertilized??? Of the eggs that did have growth, only four did not hatch.l

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Common for shipped eggs. They probably were fertilized but either never developed or were early quitters. The vibrations and jostling that happens during shipping is very hard on fragile embryos. Usually you can expect half the eggs to fail on shipped eggs so yours did better than average.

I was trimming the beak on my golden [scissorbeak..poor thing] and she jerked as I was cutting and cut too much... she started bleeding... a lot [for her size anyway..]. I tried to look up what to do, but nothing came up. we have some of that veterinary powder, but it didn't seem to help.

She's been isolated with some water. the handling was stressing her, and seeming to only make things worse.

this happened about an hour and a half, maybe two hours ago. She's still standing, occasionally going to sleep. I can't tell if she's still bleeding or not.[I assume not, since bleeding over the course of two hours, she would surely be gone...?] I'm checking on her often.

If anyone has any advice on what do do, please share... or if leaving her be is the best thing right now.

I planned on just letting her be in the isolation box with just water, and if she's still with me in the morning, I'll give her some food, but keep here there another couple days so she can recover...

let me know if I should do anything different.

Edit: I've given her some moistened food, in case she wants to eat.
it's been a good few hours and she seems to be doing alright.

You can also use corn starch or even flour to stop bleeding. Just pack it on well til the bleeding stops.

You may need to feed her soft food for a while until the beak grows back. It will be very sensitive for a while and she may have trouble picking up food. You can dampen her quail feed. Not mushy, but not dry either. Just wet enough that it sticks together so she can sort of wolf it in.

After she seems ok you can use Blu-kote on the exposed skin so the others don't see her wound. It will help to keep infection down and hide the skin.

Good luck and keep us posted!

The quail that I clipped her beak too short on is fine, she made a full recovery. Then a few days later, she somehow cracked the top of her beak, it bled a little, but not much. the following day, the piece broke off and she's going about her business. Okay I guess...?

But now one of my other hens has bumblefoot. I soaked it in warm water [didn't have any epsom salt tonight...apparently someone used it all, but will be picking some up soon] tried to clean it up, then rubbed some antibiotic ointment on it[checked the ingredients to see if it was okay for use]. She's walking fine, despite a scab and swelling on her foot. I wasn't able to get anything out of it this time, but will try again when I have epsom salt. I do keep them on wire and clean the tray regularly [regularly being about twice a week for 6 birds], but she's been moved to the isolation bin and put on pine bedding.

Is this a common problem, or am I just having bad luck?

How do I fix bumblefoot? One of my Jumbo browns has it and has to hobble around on one leg..

crazymax02 said:

How do I fix bumblefoot? One of my Jumbo browns has it and has to hobble around on one leg..

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Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. Unlike chickens that have large pads, it is difficult if not impossible to do surgery on the pads to remove the infection.

Digging out the infection is one option. The other is to get the bird off wire and keep the bird on soft bedding and putting neosporin on the area. Keep them like this for several weeks until it heals.

If the infection is bad enough, the bird won't survive. I have done many surgeries on chicken foot pads, never on a quail. Most oral antibiotics don't work well on these types of infections. The antibiotic needs to come into contact with the infection.

The hen that had bumblefoot was doing fine for a time, the swelling was going down and the feet were healing, but when I went to check on them this morning, she was lethargic, barely able to stand. I have my doubts that she's going to make it out of this, but I don't know what's caused it. Could the infection have spread despite the swelling having gone down? or did something else possibly happen?


Edit: she just passed