Quail have two settings: eat it or it eats me, you are too big to eat thus by their reckoning you will eat them. Even hand raised they’ll be a little spooky, won’t like being held, and won’t be your ‘friend.’ But they are cute and quirky and lots of fun but they aren’t philosophical or even...
I like my wild birds as much as my domestic ones, but I was truly baffled this morning. I had a small yellow bird repeatedly pecking at the window and couldn’t figure out why. It wasn’t attacking its reflection and wasn’t a collision victim, but it was determined in its business. Finally...
Most places want $50 a bird to ship adult quail. Order some hatching eggs (more than you want for chicks but no more than you can handle if they all hatch) from the source of your choice. Artificial insemination or short conjugal visits might work but you’ll have a very limited gene pool.
Peaches is a boy, he just started crowing, will save me 3 generations of breeding, if sex linked recessive his daughters will be this color first generation!
Pseudomonas is a type of bacteria that likes to live in moist, dark places (dog ears) and can produce a nasty smell and greenish discharge, it is a possible causative agent but it could easily be some other bacteria as well. Unless this is a one time thing (cracked eggs allowed bacteria to get...
Cinnamon have red eyes, I hatched one in some thieving otter shipped eggs, sold her because she was more delicate and I’m not interested in the color. I plan on breeding this bird to both figure out the color and because I love it but I also have an American pansy line I’d like to expand but I...
I candle excessively as well, also like to hand turn, just had a disastrous hatch with a broken autoturner, I know I don’t actually do anything but it makes me feel involved and theoretically more patient, you’d think this would get old but it never does!
I will disagree with you (just a bit) on the pied markings in quail, other species I quite agree, but from the birds I’ve personally bred and some remarks on the pipsnchicks website (best source of quail color genetics I’ve found) that isn’t quite the case. White in quail is connected to...
I had a disaster hatch with that things brother, it seemed to be working but hatched 3/20 quail, 50% day 3-5 death loss, another couple late embryonic deaths and failure to hatch and another died in the brooder 12 hours post hatch. It maintained heat fine but the turner was a joke. If you...
Quail chicks are also little monsters, they'll drag each other around by toes or wings, play full contact football with a bit of feather or bedding, hilarious but sometimes a little disturbing to our more peaceful tendencies, just think of it as having a dozen little brothers!
This is Peaches (5 weeks old), my son wanted Pineapple but that's a mouthful, I have no idea what color this is. EB base and I think some white but I'm still trying to figure out what this beige color is. The bird may carry Roux and or Fee as well. The mother was this color but never threw...
The black Tibetan (5 weeks old), indirect sunlight and real camera, background is black as well. Does carry white on chin and breast.
From left to right: Black Tibetan, middle is TOF Black, and then whatever Peaches is (Ginger Fee EB?) but colors are accurate to life.
For comparison I...
Use external thermometers, never trust the incubator and check them often, adjust incubator temp accordingly. Make sure you know parameters for your species, what works for chickens won’t work for quail or pea fowl (temp is pretty consistent but incubation period is highly variable and humidity...
The first bird is eb/white for sure, I’d say also roux with that reddish tinge in the pictures and you mention gray so maybe something like Andalusian which is silver/gray but allows the base color to show through, so a scarlet (eb/rough) Andalusian tuxedo? Gray color could also be silver or...
Black is sort of a weird color for coturnix, most birds referred to as black are Tibetans plus or minus the fee gene, maybe some lab birds with some funky genes or a bird out of thieving otter/SW game birds multi genetic phenotype line (not a single gene but multiple genes that produce a black...
I know this is a ghost post but I do have to reply to some of the older theories! Unless your quail is laying copper coated eggs that then have years to oxidize this is not the problem, that much copper (a trace mineral!) in the system of anything is toxic, interesting theory but about as...
We have been home for 24 hours, house still standing, we’re day 12, temp steady, humidity 20% for both as water bottle didn’t supply water to the equipped incubator. Candled eggs, 1 cracked and dried out but had developed, 10 infertile (half out of a very young male so no surprise there!) and 2...
You can’t fix them but they can still hatch, prepare yourself for a lousy hatch (mine was 25% on similar eggs) and you might be surprised! Half my deaths were normal eggs and half my hatched eggs were saddled air cells. The whole batch was traumatized by rough handling, the air cells are just...
Look for egg stresors preincubation or during early incubation: greater than ten days old at start of incubation, heat or cold stress (a couple hours outside at below 40 or above 80 might be enough to cause issues), incubator temp spikes, turning issues are most common (and in other cases...