When I first began quail raising, I entertained vivid fantasies of having a tiny quail army that would placidly allow me to hold and carry them around, pocket-sized pets that would all magically forgo the allure of escape into the imposing, thickly shrubbed wood around my home and instead be satisfied with the far-safer offerings of their hutch, which was constantly stocked with dirt, pine branches, hay, boiled eggs, and hiding places.
I’d grown up with various poultry, and knew that the smaller the bird, the more personality was compressed into tiny, vicarious scraps of feather and beak. I’d often been amazed at how much spite could fit into some of my family’s punier roosters and hens, who seemed to usually run the flock against all rational order of the animal kingdom.
Quail had seemed perfect for my life at the time, as they were small, hardy, and laid enthusiastically if taken care of. Oddly enough, the fact they weren’t apt to brood was appealing to me because as a child I always felt bad “betraying” my hens by taking their eggs, watching them cock their heads curiously, as if searching for the lost eggs, when they would come back to their nests and find them empty.
“They’re chickens, but smaller!” I rationalized to myself as I first placed my order for the coin-sized, speckled eggs.
“They can’t be any more zesty than Bantam roosters!” I assured my friends when I texted them that my first egg had pipped.
“I’ll make sure to follow taming recommendations religiously!” I announced to my computer at three in the morning, eyes bleary and head spinning after the inconceivably small chicks had hatched and I perused guides and forum pages.
Looking at my current flock of a dozen quail, I can say with full confidence, chest puffed and proud like Blondie when he’s trying to impress the ladies, hands-on-hips-and-head-thrown-back-to announce-it-to-the-world-type-of-confident, that I have failed miserably in taming them.
I’d tried, for sure! I’d interacted with them as chicks and hand fed them, held them in my sweatshirt when they were molting juveniles, and imagined that it would last. However, the males started crowing, the females laid some first-timer eggs, they popped adult feathers, and then apparently shedded their weak affection for me right along with the downy coats of their youth.
The original three, in better days where I could hold them, before they got the fear of God put in them by biology.
Sure, they tolerate having the hutch open and won’t make a break for it, and while my scissor beak quail Scarface pecks at the dirt with enough gusto it appears she’s re-enacting the tunnels from Shawshank Redemption, I’ve yet to lose a quail to the wilds of semi-suburban forest. They recoil at the idea of human touch beyond me, and even then I’m limited to occasionally picking them up to move into the run during the cooler days of summer. They’ll scamper away and fluff themselves up and dive into their tunnels and hideaways if I overstay my welcome inside their little bird world.
By early spring of this year, I was at peace with my assigned label as the bird’s slightly scary, big-handed creature that brought treats and occasionally scooped all the dirt out and rearranged the whole hutch. All seemed well in the homestead. The birds had survived the winter with ease, and I didn’t lose a soul to the sub-20-degree weather and biting winds.
The hens were once again laying, the two new females I had just introduced had finally settled in after a week of some chasing, and the sun was beginning to coax pale sprouts and tangles of paper-thin leaves into the warming air. Insects abounded for the quail’s delight and stomachs. The days smelled like rain, the nights were mellow and cool. I was feeling pretty dang good about my bird raising abilities, yet saddened by the standoffish aura my flock emitted despite my best efforts.
Then, like most flocks are wont to do when everything is finally going right, multiple things went to sh*t alllllll at once.
I came back from about a three-day absence due to a small family vacation. I had supplied the quail with probably more food than necessary, a pile of seeds, some sprouts, plenty of fresh water, and called it a day. They could take care of themselves.
However, my motherly instincts still had me fretting as I pulled back into the driveway when I returned home. What if something breaks into the hutch? What if they tipped the waterer? What if a random burglar decides they want to take a hundred-pound, reinforced hutch with a dozen flighty birds inside? What if- the thoughts abated as I scrambled out of the car and abandoned the unpacking to my poor family. I peered inside the hutch, and didn’t spot any mutilated corpses or foxes hiding in the hay nests. I counted all the birds. All alive, if not a little peeved I was blocking their sunlight. My male, Blondie, was pecking around just out of my total view, in the little side box I had installed to add some extra draft protection. I waited a bit, and he ambled around the corner, totally and completely scalped.
I nearly burst into tears. His little head was one massive scab, and his entire back neck was bald. I’d never seen such a brutal injury on my quail, and although I knew scalping was a fairly common injury, I had always thought, in the back of my mind, well, MY quail are the exception. They’d never stoop to such lows as to nearly peel another bird’s skin off.
I frantically posted on this forum, probably fifteen times in an hour like a totally reasonable and sane person, and separated him a day later (after hoping it was an accidental cut from bonking at first, and quickly being proven wrong). After a few days in a tiny injury ward box kept in a warm, quiet room where I practically wore a path into the carpet from pacing in to check on him, Blondie got upgraded to a bachelor pad sparsely decorated with some quail necessities. I also found out, after keeping a sharp eye on the rest of the quail to find his attacker, that I had been misled. My two new “female” quail were very much NOT females. It explained Blondie getting jumped, and I was filled with enough rage that the second I heard them crow, it was freezer camp.
After monitoring Blondie until I had convinced myself he wasn’t going to keel over, I purchased a bottle of Banixx for Chixx to take care of the scab. Getting the spray ON a writhing bird that had long been documented as a severe head case of little-man syndrome, however, was exceedingly difficult. At first, I put him in a stretchy glove so only his head popped out, spritzed the wound, and plopped him back in his hutch. He chirped and pecked indignantly, chasing my retreating hand once he was back on his feet inside his hutch.
A furious tuxedo with a wounded pride, in his first day out of the injury ward and in the bachelor pad.
He continued to puff up in a slightly balded mash of black and white feathers when he would see the glove in my hand, bound and determined to impart grievous vengeance upon his woolen prison.
Eventually, however, whether he finally accepted his fate or if he had been mildly concussed in his vicious assault, he stopped fighting the glove. So I started picking him up with a hand. Then I moved to setting him on my knee. And miraculously, by the end of three weeks, Blondie would sit in my lap. Not for long, and he did drop a load of smelly quail doo once or twice, but he tolerated me. It was like a hokey Disney flick where the gnarled old man learns to love the over enthusiastic kid that won’t stop popping by his house and bothering him. I rewarded Blondierichly with mealworms for such concessions.
I was flabbergasted. Was it really this easy? It may have been helped by the fact he was recovering from a traumatic experience, but I couldn’t believe I finally had some semblance of a tame quail.
Once his feathers were poking back up in erratic pufts on his head, his bald spot slowly receding and the scab mostly gone, I put him back in the hutch, albeit with a divider from him and the other birds, as I wasn’t about to risk a second attack right away. Blondie was thrilled, rushing over to see the girls. I resigned myself to the fact that he would surely abandon his pretense of enjoying my lap to sit on now that he was back in action and in his old home.
The next day, I approached the hutch, opening the lid and beginning to change the water and collect the eggs scattered by most of the birds. I fondly absorbed the chirps and background ambience of the hutch, and scooted a fresh pan of water into Blondie’s section, watching him pause from trying to woo an unimpressed Rosetta through the fence and waddle over to take a drink.
Eh, what the heck, let’s see if he’ll tolerate me picking him up. I made a very obvious and exaggerated deal out of reaching over to him, making sure I was practically waving in his face and giving him plenty of options to rebuke my advance, or retreat into his hollowed log hideaway.
Blondie just sat there placidly until I had picked him up.
I stood there for a second, feeling like I had witnessed a small miracle, holding Blondie in one hand. He cocked his patchy head expectantly at me, like he was asking okay, big-handed creature, where are my mealworms? Usually I get paid for this crap.
The slightly annoyed gaze of a hungry quail.
Since then, I have been fervent about handling Blondie. He winds up with far more treats than the girls, but I have elected that he deserves it. While I don’t think it is truly affection and rather just in his eyes, an obstacle to surmount for extra seeds and egg and other delights, I look forward to it whenever I have the opportunity.
So, while I may have failed miserably in quail taming, the strange opportunity of a vicious pair of males and a head wound allowed me to have one-kind-of-placid bird. And, for now, I’m perfectly content with that.
I’d grown up with various poultry, and knew that the smaller the bird, the more personality was compressed into tiny, vicarious scraps of feather and beak. I’d often been amazed at how much spite could fit into some of my family’s punier roosters and hens, who seemed to usually run the flock against all rational order of the animal kingdom.
Quail had seemed perfect for my life at the time, as they were small, hardy, and laid enthusiastically if taken care of. Oddly enough, the fact they weren’t apt to brood was appealing to me because as a child I always felt bad “betraying” my hens by taking their eggs, watching them cock their heads curiously, as if searching for the lost eggs, when they would come back to their nests and find them empty.
“They’re chickens, but smaller!” I rationalized to myself as I first placed my order for the coin-sized, speckled eggs.
“They can’t be any more zesty than Bantam roosters!” I assured my friends when I texted them that my first egg had pipped.
“I’ll make sure to follow taming recommendations religiously!” I announced to my computer at three in the morning, eyes bleary and head spinning after the inconceivably small chicks had hatched and I perused guides and forum pages.
Looking at my current flock of a dozen quail, I can say with full confidence, chest puffed and proud like Blondie when he’s trying to impress the ladies, hands-on-hips-and-head-thrown-back-to announce-it-to-the-world-type-of-confident, that I have failed miserably in taming them.
I’d tried, for sure! I’d interacted with them as chicks and hand fed them, held them in my sweatshirt when they were molting juveniles, and imagined that it would last. However, the males started crowing, the females laid some first-timer eggs, they popped adult feathers, and then apparently shedded their weak affection for me right along with the downy coats of their youth.
The original three, in better days where I could hold them, before they got the fear of God put in them by biology.
Sure, they tolerate having the hutch open and won’t make a break for it, and while my scissor beak quail Scarface pecks at the dirt with enough gusto it appears she’s re-enacting the tunnels from Shawshank Redemption, I’ve yet to lose a quail to the wilds of semi-suburban forest. They recoil at the idea of human touch beyond me, and even then I’m limited to occasionally picking them up to move into the run during the cooler days of summer. They’ll scamper away and fluff themselves up and dive into their tunnels and hideaways if I overstay my welcome inside their little bird world.
By early spring of this year, I was at peace with my assigned label as the bird’s slightly scary, big-handed creature that brought treats and occasionally scooped all the dirt out and rearranged the whole hutch. All seemed well in the homestead. The birds had survived the winter with ease, and I didn’t lose a soul to the sub-20-degree weather and biting winds.
The hens were once again laying, the two new females I had just introduced had finally settled in after a week of some chasing, and the sun was beginning to coax pale sprouts and tangles of paper-thin leaves into the warming air. Insects abounded for the quail’s delight and stomachs. The days smelled like rain, the nights were mellow and cool. I was feeling pretty dang good about my bird raising abilities, yet saddened by the standoffish aura my flock emitted despite my best efforts.
Then, like most flocks are wont to do when everything is finally going right, multiple things went to sh*t alllllll at once.
I came back from about a three-day absence due to a small family vacation. I had supplied the quail with probably more food than necessary, a pile of seeds, some sprouts, plenty of fresh water, and called it a day. They could take care of themselves.
However, my motherly instincts still had me fretting as I pulled back into the driveway when I returned home. What if something breaks into the hutch? What if they tipped the waterer? What if a random burglar decides they want to take a hundred-pound, reinforced hutch with a dozen flighty birds inside? What if- the thoughts abated as I scrambled out of the car and abandoned the unpacking to my poor family. I peered inside the hutch, and didn’t spot any mutilated corpses or foxes hiding in the hay nests. I counted all the birds. All alive, if not a little peeved I was blocking their sunlight. My male, Blondie, was pecking around just out of my total view, in the little side box I had installed to add some extra draft protection. I waited a bit, and he ambled around the corner, totally and completely scalped.
I nearly burst into tears. His little head was one massive scab, and his entire back neck was bald. I’d never seen such a brutal injury on my quail, and although I knew scalping was a fairly common injury, I had always thought, in the back of my mind, well, MY quail are the exception. They’d never stoop to such lows as to nearly peel another bird’s skin off.
I frantically posted on this forum, probably fifteen times in an hour like a totally reasonable and sane person, and separated him a day later (after hoping it was an accidental cut from bonking at first, and quickly being proven wrong). After a few days in a tiny injury ward box kept in a warm, quiet room where I practically wore a path into the carpet from pacing in to check on him, Blondie got upgraded to a bachelor pad sparsely decorated with some quail necessities. I also found out, after keeping a sharp eye on the rest of the quail to find his attacker, that I had been misled. My two new “female” quail were very much NOT females. It explained Blondie getting jumped, and I was filled with enough rage that the second I heard them crow, it was freezer camp.
After monitoring Blondie until I had convinced myself he wasn’t going to keel over, I purchased a bottle of Banixx for Chixx to take care of the scab. Getting the spray ON a writhing bird that had long been documented as a severe head case of little-man syndrome, however, was exceedingly difficult. At first, I put him in a stretchy glove so only his head popped out, spritzed the wound, and plopped him back in his hutch. He chirped and pecked indignantly, chasing my retreating hand once he was back on his feet inside his hutch.
A furious tuxedo with a wounded pride, in his first day out of the injury ward and in the bachelor pad.
He continued to puff up in a slightly balded mash of black and white feathers when he would see the glove in my hand, bound and determined to impart grievous vengeance upon his woolen prison.
Eventually, however, whether he finally accepted his fate or if he had been mildly concussed in his vicious assault, he stopped fighting the glove. So I started picking him up with a hand. Then I moved to setting him on my knee. And miraculously, by the end of three weeks, Blondie would sit in my lap. Not for long, and he did drop a load of smelly quail doo once or twice, but he tolerated me. It was like a hokey Disney flick where the gnarled old man learns to love the over enthusiastic kid that won’t stop popping by his house and bothering him. I rewarded Blondierichly with mealworms for such concessions.
I was flabbergasted. Was it really this easy? It may have been helped by the fact he was recovering from a traumatic experience, but I couldn’t believe I finally had some semblance of a tame quail.
Once his feathers were poking back up in erratic pufts on his head, his bald spot slowly receding and the scab mostly gone, I put him back in the hutch, albeit with a divider from him and the other birds, as I wasn’t about to risk a second attack right away. Blondie was thrilled, rushing over to see the girls. I resigned myself to the fact that he would surely abandon his pretense of enjoying my lap to sit on now that he was back in action and in his old home.
The next day, I approached the hutch, opening the lid and beginning to change the water and collect the eggs scattered by most of the birds. I fondly absorbed the chirps and background ambience of the hutch, and scooted a fresh pan of water into Blondie’s section, watching him pause from trying to woo an unimpressed Rosetta through the fence and waddle over to take a drink.
Eh, what the heck, let’s see if he’ll tolerate me picking him up. I made a very obvious and exaggerated deal out of reaching over to him, making sure I was practically waving in his face and giving him plenty of options to rebuke my advance, or retreat into his hollowed log hideaway.
Blondie just sat there placidly until I had picked him up.
I stood there for a second, feeling like I had witnessed a small miracle, holding Blondie in one hand. He cocked his patchy head expectantly at me, like he was asking okay, big-handed creature, where are my mealworms? Usually I get paid for this crap.
The slightly annoyed gaze of a hungry quail.
Since then, I have been fervent about handling Blondie. He winds up with far more treats than the girls, but I have elected that he deserves it. While I don’t think it is truly affection and rather just in his eyes, an obstacle to surmount for extra seeds and egg and other delights, I look forward to it whenever I have the opportunity.
So, while I may have failed miserably in quail taming, the strange opportunity of a vicious pair of males and a head wound allowed me to have one-kind-of-placid bird. And, for now, I’m perfectly content with that.
