Paneubert's Quail Aviary Adventure

[paneubert]

Other items of note. Another one died in the brooder last night. The "all white/silver/who knows what it would have been" one (still was yellow fluff as a baby). Major bummer. I don't want any to die, but if I had to choose....would not have been that one. I think it was the one you see right in the middle of the photo. Looking at the photo, it was smaller than the rest. I did have a staggered hatch, so maybe it was younger and just failed to thrive.

Also found another male hiding in my flock of ladies. Saw him mating. Haha. I suspected I had more than just the one dude.... So I zip tied his leg so I know which one he is. You would think it would be easy to tell the guys from the girls since the adults are mostly wild coloring. But I have a good number of ladies who are light colored or have male looking feathers on their chests. I am going to need to do a good amount of "beer sexing" with this recent hatch. As you can see from the photo, only a few might be wild colored. So sexing them is going to be a challenge...

 

[BaJa]

AWESOME, shows you have a heart for your animals. Can tell they're enjoying it. How many are in there? switch to different ideas often so they can explore new things, they love that!!!

 

[Binki]

Nice chicks, grats I see the one you're talking about, yeah he is smaller, might have just been pushed around too much and gave up ?

If I were to guess it would have been a mostly white quail, Texas A&M style

 

[paneubert]

Bigger they get, smellier they get. Another change of the puppy pee pads needed. Into the plastic bin again.

Found something odd. One of them has wry neck Seems to have developed recently. Which seems odd since I thought it was usually seen upon hatching. They were drinking vitamin and electrolyte water for their first 3 days, so it was not from a lack of supplements or anything like that. I am not going to cull him/her quite yet since I suppose it might correct itself randomly just like it showed up randomly.

 

[paneubert]

I am going to try to put these guys on fermented feed. I fed fermented when I started quail last Spring, but eventually got lazy and did not want to have to go out and give them fresh food each morning. I think I gave up around the onset of Fall/Winter. Haha. Too dark and cold and I already was needing to leave for work by 6:30 AM each morning. Way easier to have a 5 or 7 pound feeder with dry feed in it.

But let me tell you....these babies are way too messy. They have already emptied an entire chick feeder into their brooder. They will empty an entire quart feeder in less than a day. Looks like about 80% of it is on the floor. So I started two big pickle jars of fermented feed last night. I don't know how much they will eat, but I am hoping less than a jar per day so I can keep a 2 day rotation going where each jar sits for about 48 hours. We will see. I don't think I will do fermented when they are out in the aviary, but I think I will at least do it while they are in the brooder. Who knows. Maybe I will keep my ambition and continue fermented when they move outside.

Edit to add: The feed sure does swell up/absorb a lot. I knew it was about a 1 to 1 water to feed ratio, but man, it is surprising when you see it. I eyeballed so that there was about half a jar of dry feed, then filled it about 90% full of water. The feed sucked it all up and I got worried that I had too much feed in there. Topped them off so the water was right near the top and luckily it was enough to barely have a wet sheen on top after it was done absorbing. So yeah, it really does seem like using half feed and half water is the accurate calculation. When I made it last year, I was using a 3 gallon bucket and keeping it about half full. So I never really paid attention to my ratios. I just added water until it seemed right.

 

[paneubert]

SO..... filling to the 90% level was a bad choice...haha. Came home to some jars with liquid coming out of them. I had poked some holes in the lids since I know it needs to bubble and breathe. But I did not think it would somehow expand more than it did.... Gross. So now I need to do some cleaning. I think I am going to pull out my old 3 gallon bucket and use that. I will just make less than I used to.

 

[paneubert]

Ok, they stink. Haha. I booted them out to the aviary. They are all up in the smaller/new cage I built a while back. They DO NOT like wire. Haha. They were piling on each other trying to not have to stand on the wire. I put a chunk of plywood in there so they can get off the wire, but they haven't figured it out yet. I am going to go check on them later. I put their heat lamp on the top of the roof like I did last time, so I am sure they will work their way over there eventually. Highs are in the 80s and lows are around 60, so they should be fine with their lamp as an option.

 

[paneubert]

Other observations from today. My one baby that I kept from the first hatch is right around 4-5 weeks old. I am going to call it a she from now on. I say this because when I went out to the aviary tonight, I thought she might be injured. She was walking backwards and scooting her butt in the dirt. Like....a lot. Kept walking towards me backwards, almost to the point where she would bump into things behind her. Can you guess why? My guess is she is a she and is submitting to me. I guess time will tell. She is an Italian, so not as easy to sex.

 

[paneubert]

Kids seem to have survived the night. I did a quick look before work and most were in a pile on the plywood under the lamp, but a few were walking around. I think the only real risk is if any crush each other at this point. There is a size range between some of them.

 

[Binki]

Other observations from today. My one baby that I kept from the first hatch is right around 4-5 weeks old. I am going to call it a she from now on. I say this because when I went out to the aviary tonight, I thought she might be injured. She was walking backwards and scooting her butt in the dirt. Like....a lot. Kept walking towards me backwards, almost to the point where she would bump into things behind her. Can you guess why? My guess is she is a she and is submitting to me. I guess time will tell. She is an Italian, so not as easy to sex.

Hehe they do stink when young, growing and pooping and growing and pooping lol, I find wood shavings helps with drying up the poop fast

If I had to guess with the Italian quail walking backwards repeatedly - she jumped and hit her head which is now causing her to act strange.

When they get a few weeks old they love to randomly explode into the air to try out their wings, or maybe they were spooked at night?