Thank you, Debs Flock! I'm thinking of putting a bucket outside the coop with a treadle on the inside that would lift to open a window in the wire and allow access to deeper water.
How do you give your ducks the niacin?
Hello! I have a chicken coop with some very mellow breeds and would like to add a few of Metzer Farms hybrid layers, but I don't want puddles in the run. Is it possible to just let the ducks use the poultry nipples?
Also, would standard layer feed for chickens work for the ducks?
Thank you!
Holy Moses! My quail just layed two monster eggs, one 18 gram and the other 17 grams. They're supposed to be jumbo quail but they don't look any bigger than the standards I have that are the same age and laying at most a 12 gram egg here and there. Poor little gals were walking funny.
What's...
That's fascinating!! Thank you so much for the response! So, if for example, my quail have a nighttime visit from a raccoon, peering into their cage, I might expect a higher number of white-filmed eggs over the next few days? Very, very interesting! I'll keep my eyes on that. The ladies might...
My quail just started laying this week and about a third of all the eggs I'm gathering have a chalky white film and spots on top of the usual cream with brown splotches. It doesn't wipe off. I'm wondering if this is an indication of deficiency or just normal deviation.
The birds are on 28%...
Five eggs today!! Highest number yet. I have 23 seven week old coturnix and this is their first week laying. Such gorgeous eggs! Each hen seems to have her own particular pattern for her shell. I had no idea!
Well darn, I wish I'd seen this thread when I was building my quail hutch last month. I've got a cool LED strand of outdoor rope lights tacked to the back of their cages. The way their hutch is situated, its dark in there at most any hour of the day so at this point I have the light on a timer...
Yeah, I ultimately separated the bird with the worst scalping just long enough to run to the store for Pick-No-More. Naturally when I put the gal back in the pen, they pecked her head because hello, weird gloppy blue stuff. Luckily, it must taste awful because they've left her alone from then on...
Thank you for the advice! I'll see if my feed store carries blu kote. I'm worried about re-introducing a bird also. Fortunately, there's no male in the cage so its likely an isolated raccoon visitation as a few others have feathers missing directly on top. Darn coons.
I have two quail who suffered head injuries during the night. Both are bloodied with feathers and skin missing but are up and walking around, eating and drinking normally. So far, there's no sign of the others pecking at the raw spots.
My instinct is to avoid further trauma by catching them and...
My first quail hutch. Its six feet long with interior height of one foot in each cage, two feet deep.
I built a watering system with a seven gallon tank, 3/4" PVC pipes and three nipples in each cage. So far, I recommend the plug-in type nipples with a grommet over the screw in kind.
I have 11...
Okay, they did it again! I put in a five pound bag of chick grit and it was entirely gone two days later. My chickens are full of rocks! Does anyone else have this happen? Kind of worried!
Thanks LeiaLayers5! :) I'm over the moon about getting eggs finally. I've got chickens too, but they're still about two months from laying.
So far, I'm finding the quail incredibly easy and fun to raise. Not only was their hutch WAY easier to build, given the size difference (10x6x6 for...