Personally I would recommend against making the floor itself wood.
Wood is impossible to sterilize and breeds bacteria making living conditions unclean, it will also trap ammonia from waste which can damage the birds respiratory system, not to mention smelling horrible.
A scrap piece of wood...
Very cool! Congratulations on jumping in on the deep end! Searching around here is great for answering most questions you may run into, and there are always those ready to answer the rest!
Cheers,
Jessie
What ever quail you get you will need an incubator and they will need to be brooded indoors for about five weeks, in the summer you may be able to get away with four weeks if you keep a heat lamp on them at night or have night time temps of 80.
I agree with the others that coturnix will be a...
I can't really tell from the picture, is the beak a normal shape? It's just kind of akin to a yawn or grinding teeth but for a bird?
I've never seen my own do that, but that's not to say it doesn't happen when I'm not looking.
Cheers,
Jessie
If you have two ages of chicks you can always divide your brooder and put the heat slightly towards the younger chicks to keep everyone at the right temperature. If your outside temperatures are consistently high it may be safe to move them outside, however I would still use a red heat lamp at...
I use small pet igloos just because I had them left lying around from rescue guinea pigs and such. Before I dug them up I used a cardboard box type hide(actually a pet castle, hehe).
When I'm able to expand my quail operation I'll likely use plastic flower pots with doors notched in the rims...
I would add some more hens to your original breeding group as well, 1 to 4 is a good minimum ratio. This is likely the source of your problem. If even after your ratio is improved the roo singles out and picks on hens he may just be of bad temperament.
Cheers,
Jessie
From what I understand from raw/fresh feeding based on dogs and cats, and fodder feeding for parrots and rabbits and the like, you will see a drop in water consumption. A wild quail/rabbit/goat/etc. spends a lot more time eating and searching for food than a domestic animal eating what amounts...
A quick search turned up a short list of feed additive medications, not all of these are used in quail feed typically but I thought I would include them all. Avatec(Lasalocid), BMD(Bacitracin Methylene Disalicylate), Bio-Cox(Salinomycin), Coban(Monensin), Corid(Amprolium)...
It is true that organic is supposed to mean non-GMO, however if I recall correctly from my father telling me about the regulations they leave a few loopholes. USDA organic products are supposed to be 95% organic ingredients, products can specify 100% and have to follow that by labeling...
Totally agree with TwoCrows on the mineral and amino acid points.
For finding out the nutrient content of your fodder you should be able to find crude analysis of the sprouted grains, just make sure that it is a crude analysis and not a human nutritional statement. The former will give you a...
I have also seen old female birds take on male characteristics, when I was a kid we got some adult chickens with no idea of their age. After a year or two one of them stopped laying and started mounting the other hens, she also made a strange attempt at a crow though it didn't really sound much...
I agree with veggiecanner, moving birds will interupt their laying cycles and quail seem especially likely to be effected. Give them a week maybe, as long as your day daylight hours are at least 12 they should start up again in a little while.
Cheers,
Jessie
I'm debating what to do about my quail right now.
I haven't got an egg from them since early/mid June and the last couple I got before they quit completely had thin shells and dents in them. They had not been laying long before they stopped.
A few weeks ago we lost one hen unexpectedly and...
X2 on this. See if you can give someone you know with a eBay account cash to order them for you, if you can only incubate 8 put the extra in the fridge and they won't be developed so they're perfectly fine to eat. They're just like any other eggs, you can't tell if you're eating a fertile or...
I'm so sorry for the bad luck you've had with this hatch. It sounds very much as though your problem is the source if all of their babies died as well.
Please don't beat yourself up over this, things happen and this clearly was not under your control. Sterilize everything in case it was caused...
I hate to be a pessimist here, but if the birds were clearly neglected as you say I wouldn't hold your hopes too high that these are genuinely ruffled birds.
Malnutrition and poor gender ratios can create ruffled feathers from the birds simply not being able to grow them back in properly for...
I've seen it generally advised to wait a week or two after they start laying to let them sort things out before you start incubating them. A lot of early eggs will be abnormal while their body settles into egg production. A for if the mail is doing is thing... a cold beverage and lawn chair...