Recent content by Susan Skylark

  1. Susan Skylark

    Not a quail but could be!

    The pheasant board is pretty quiet, so I’m posting here about my honorary quail’s antics (really a hen red golden pheasant). The male pheasant seems to have a bit of a brain but his lady friend isn’t much brighter than your average quail. I finally figured out why their water cup was always a...
  2. Susan Skylark

    Learning coturnix colors...

    Those are both pearl (or Italian fee). Pictures and charts are very difficult to keep updated and accurate with coturnix, there are so many modifier genes and thousands of combinations possible and new ones always emerging. Pips n chicks is by far the most up to date and accurate source. First...
  3. Susan Skylark

    The Disaster themed hatch-along’s frozen (not the movie) hatch along?!

    We are off to a wobbly start, besides freezing temps, we also have a couple older eggs (took 8 days of collecting from 3 hens to get 13 eggs), one is lacking the outer coating (amazing views of embryo but egg is more delicate), it is day 4 and only 6/13 look fertile (young male!), and one of my...
  4. Susan Skylark

    What breed of quail should I get?

    New world quail: bobwhite, California, gambels, etc: wild, pretty, nuts, not good beginner game birds/poultry. Coturnix/Japanese quail: domestic, egg and meat producers, easy to tame, curious, not very bright, lots of colors, cold and heat hardy, my 13 year old took grand in 4-H breeding...
  5. Susan Skylark

    First time, long time...also Newbie Quail mom...worried!

    Quail eggs rarely move, never heard them cheep, pips are just tiny hairline cracks, they are like egg ninjas, silent and apparently not there until boom! And your incubator may be running cold, I’d recommend a couple external thermometers for the next batch! My first hatch was day 18/19 as I...
  6. Susan Skylark

    My own private hunting preserve or egg farm?

    My son came home and told me our quail don’t count as an ag commodity (meat, milk, eggs, wool, crops, feeder calves…) for some project his ag class is doing, apparently we raise quail for personal shooting enjoyment and not production? This is news to me, I couldn’t differentiate a shot gun...
  7. Susan Skylark

    Incubation Egg Size: How small is too small?

    Definitely go by ‘normal’ for the bird (impossible on shipped eggs) rather than normal for the breed, I’ve got quail, so the eggs are ridiculous to begin with, then I’ve got big girls and smaller hens, those smaller hens lay smaller eggs, too small for a normal egg from the bigger hens but fine...
  8. Susan Skylark

    The Disaster themed hatch-along’s frozen (not the movie) hatch along?!

    Yes, you read that right, and it is as grammatically correct, or as much as I can make it! I had some scrambled shipped eggs (jumbo ginger coturnix quail) in a hatch along back in November, they hatched thanksgiving day and I’m going to start collecting eggs from them this week (plus a couple...
  9. Susan Skylark

    Quail eggs and twenty below

    “Ground stood hard as iron, water like a stone,” and the quail eggs are frozen too! I was happy with keeping the water flowing this weekend, I wasn’t going to worry about eggs! I think I’ll try baking them (cracked shells) whole, blenderize them, and feed them back to the birds in small...
  10. Susan Skylark

    Sex these birrrrrds: if you daaaaaare

    Pearl fee are feather sexable, but you’ll want to wait until 4 weeks to be sure, usually male Italians have reddish heads but homozygous fee can turn them black/gray, but if you see rusty or chestnut feathers on the back of the head it’s a boy. I’m going to wild guess it here, apple looks...
  11. Susan Skylark

    Feeding frozen eggs back to your birds?

    So -25F and quail eggs don’t mesh well, they freeze solid in under half an hour, and as I have a life, and figure that they have water a couple times a day so that’s something, I was wondering if I could bake the eggs in the cracked shell, cool to room temp, blenderize the whole thing and feed...
  12. Susan Skylark

    Do you use a secondary temp/humidity meter?

    Temp is vital, humidity is secondary, definitely have a couple thermometers, those look like the ones I use, I have 3 and as long as they are within 0.5 degrees of one another I’m happy (temp varies from 99-100.5 depending on location in incubator, room temp, drafts, etc). Humidity can be hard...
  13. Susan Skylark

    Arctic front - sudden drop in temperature

    It was -25F here this morning (40s a week ago), my quail are jealous!
  14. Susan Skylark

    Quail and supplemental calcium

    A balanced and complete feed for laying coturnix is a layer feed (which I can’t get), they are production animals and need an insane amount of calcium to produce 300 eggs a year, vs real gamebirds (quail have been domesticated and bred to lay/grow at an insane rate!) like a golden pheasant which...
  15. Susan Skylark

    Quail and supplemental calcium

    I usually feed a high protein chicken layer feed to my coturnix with some supplemental Ground egg shells for a couple big celadons that otherwise like to lay soft shells. Due to an issue getting feed (three different stores in 3 states were out of just that particular type) I’ll be feeding an...
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