Covey Chronicles

[scyllarus]

Ugh. So, bigger update: the holidays have been actual hell in caring for quail chicks and our losses have been pretty bad, probably 50% or so. My husband and I were also sick for the past few days - turns out chicks don't seem to be able to take care of themselves for more than 6-8 hours. I'm not sure why - we find them dead under the heater, so I presume they might have dehydrated despite water and food being available. I've taken to putting food and water in smaller containers under the heater, which seems to help, but we haven't been able to keep it up with being sick. It's also been frustrating since we've managed to have a godawful staggered hatch, so we've been too busy/sick to make and keep up with two brooders. Lessons learned - we were working on grow out pens and such, but life really got in the way.

I've also finally been able to do some research on what my hen Cream is suffering from. I presume the whole flock is carrying something like mycoplasma :/ I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point. On one hand - these are backyard birds, and I've seen numbers suggesting a majority of backyard flocks are infected. On the other - do I feel reasonable about giving or selling the eggs and birds from this flock? I don't know. The meat and eggs should be fine, and tbh I'm inclined just to treat as needed since most animals are carriers for something or another.

 

[scyllarus]

Ugh. So much work piled up over the past two weeks while we've been away/sick. I'm finding that baby quail are...well, fragile. I guess that's obvious, but we were so attentive during our first hatch that they all survived. I'm finding that there's not really a "fuss too much" with baby quail, they seem to really thrive on being checked on and handled every...four or so hours I think human infants are less needy! Otherwise, they seem to forget how to eat/drink and just...die, probably from dehydration.

Anyway. We have three in our new brooder (pictures later, but it's a very nifty little box thanks to the Husband) and more on the way. It'll be our last hatch for now - I'm going to give myself a bit of a break while we figure out some future plans.

 

[scyllarus]

New bachelor pad. We've been throwing around names - Coturnix Condo (not specific enough), The Roost (quail can't even perch)...it's a extra large dog crate that we've turned into a two-story situation for now. We might separate the halves later and make them each an enclosure, but for now it's easier to leave it as is.

New teens in the grow-out cage. Having it attached to the adults' cage has been really lovely for smoothly transitioning them when they're old enough to join the adults.

And update on our first hatch: I believe we had eight, three turned out to be roos, four are hens, and one is...probably a hen. She (?) hasn't started crowing or anything, but she's just kind of small and slender - usually a sign that points more towards roo.

Update on Cream: she's been recovering nicely ever since being isolated from the others. I'm not sure why she needed it - she wasn't being bullied, there's plenty of food and water available - but she was obviously still ill. We'll keep observing her and she'll probably go in with the rest in a few days.

 

[scyllarus]

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 slowly aiming for friendly, fluffy-faced birds, but I'm definitely hitting a wall with culling my flock. Most of them have names, and even the ones who don't I recognize by sight. Luckily, we're still working on getting quail to other people, so the birds can just be rehomed for now.

 

[scyllarus]

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 is what it is.

Cream's organs were...weird. She had a very hard gizzard and areas where her intestines were bloated with gas. We didn't get pictures, but it's made me decide to cull sick birds faster. We do have three that are symptomatic - two are very mild and I keep second-guessing whether they're ill, and one is clearly sick with a swollen orbital sinus. I'm giving them some time, but we'll be culling them with the next batch if they don't fully resolve.

Which, speaking of next batch - we've just gotten a batch of hatching eggs from Thieving Otter Farms! Fingers crossed for these babies, I'm hoping for some very friendly birds. I'm probably going to need room for about 15 birds and we really only have room for like...5 more, tops. Luckily, at least 5 are going to my mother in law as pets, and we have a friend who has some of our flock already and could take more.

And finally, the flock itself:
Current hens:
Old: Pudding, Mousse, Flan, Cookie, Butterscotch, Blondie, Brownie
New: Toffee, Cinnamon, Debbie, and several still unnamed - an English white with black patches, an English white with pharaoh spots, a rosetta with white patches, a scarlet, a more dilute pharoah/brown...I feel like I'm missing at least one, haha. We also have the three sick hens who are kept in a separate cage, for a total of 18 hens.

Current roos:
Tidbit, Tiramisu, and an unnamed Italian. All of them live in the main cage with the hens.

 

[scyllarus]

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 that harass the hens or fight with other roos.

Right now we have Tidbit, who loves to...tidbit. He rarely eats any treats I give him, preferring to tidbit for the hens - interestingly I've never seen him try to mate a hen who took his tidbit? He mates with the hens at other times, though. We also have Tiramisu, who's a little more selfish about his tidbitting but will tidbit regularly for the ladies. The last male I may be giving away as he's just not as friendly or sweet, but he's been very gentle with the girls.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that they're all very...efficient? About their mating? The ladies never run away screaming, which has been unfortunately common with our other roos. It being springtime helps, I'm sure, but I've tried the other roos and it's been a lot less pleasant.

I've decided on friendliness and fluffy cheeks as my gradual development goals for this flock. The hens I'm keeping are all birds who are willing to eat from my hands or let me touch them. Our two main roos happily approach me to beg for tidbitting treats. It's just been such a difference to have a flock that will approach you - I'll probably start giving away all birds (to family and friends who aren't likely to sell them, due to the MG issue) who aren't willing to be fed treats or handled.

I know a lot of quail keepers who, for some ungodly reason, have read this far are probably smacking their foreheads at how long it took me to come to this. I think it's just that I hadn't experienced truly friendly birds before, and now that I have a happy flock with friendly roos, I can't really go back.

 

[scyllarus]

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), and one has several deformities (crossbeak and no eyes + possibly no ears). My husband wants to see if we can raise the deformed chick as a pet - personally I think it's going to pass, but at least right now it seems healthy. We also had a couple of splay-legged chicks and a couple with curled toes, all of which have responded well to splinting/taping. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with the final result because all of our other hatches have been absolute garbage - like a 20% hatch rate sort of garbage. It might be me being bad at incubating, or it might be my incubators (iirc a mannapro rite 360 and a brinsea maxi 24), or it might be my egg sources? I'm looking forwards to setting eggs from my hens once these chicks are older...and once we have somewhere to send the extra birds we have.

I love the quail, but ngl I'm excited to move to somewhere chicken-friendly. They seem rather more personable, more like a dog than a fish tank. I like both and have kept both - so I think when we get more settled, we'll build an aviary for the quail and also get chickens.

 

[scyllarus]

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 warned: some pictures of the deformed chick below.

 

[scyllarus]

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 favor of using a roo from the new batch.

 

[scyllarus]

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