I admire your ambition and wish you the best of luck.
Despite challenging odds, consider what you’ll do if successful. How/ where will you house the new chicks. If you hatch out 3 eggs and they are all male, how will you handle that? Etc…
Sort of like in the first Jurassic park, it’s easy to...
For a standard size bird 200g is reasonable for a male, which I agree tends to be a bit smaller. I cleared my excess males at 6.5 weeks last hatch. They were becoming problematic. Most of my males were around 240g.
How’s the temp where you are? To much heat can significantly stunt their appetite.
I think the largest issue I’ve had is my clutches constantly get eggs added to them. If I leave a hen with 10 eggs, the next day she has 20+, more than she can incubate.
I am hoping these birds learn from each other as well as the mama hen who hatches them. I don’t know that it’ll help, but I...
I’m surprised she had so many hatch and she stuck to it being so young. That’s fantastic. My hen’s have a horrible hatch rate compared to my incubator.
if all or enough of your birds are feather sexable I’d leave them be. If you have birds your unsure of I’d separate them out for a couple weeks. Choose the best males to reintroduce. Otherwise you run the risk of discovering your ratio is wrong.
Might want to look around online and see if anyone near you has some birds for sale. My first hatch only had one hen and a bunch of males. I didn’t want her getting that much attention.
If you’re building an aviary with ample room and hides I think you could consider integrating them at...
I dehydrated some wings in the oven. Lowest temp for however many hrs it took for them to seem good and dehydrated.
My cat played with one for about 5 minutes and then stopped caring. Pulling a few feathers off and tying them together on a string would have been a better use. My cat has no...
I agree with 1. But number 2 makes sense. Moisture encourages a lot of other bacteria and such that can harm them. They typically get their water from the food they eat.
My little mealworm farm is dry grains except the occasional piece of potato or carrot.
They are considered an invasive...
That protein amount is quite low for growing birds. I’d expect it to be fine for adults. 28%-30% is usually what i see recommended for younger than 12 weeks. I’m not saying that’s your issue but I don’t think it would hurt anything to give them a bag of game bird starter crumble. Purina makes...
I know quail are talented at finding ways to die, but this is impressive. I agree with earlier advice. If it where me I’d either get a vet or cull.
I can tell you from many years with zip ties, you will not get it cut clean enough to avoid a jagged edge. If you try to let the bird pass it, it...
I wanted to piggy back this comment for emphasis. I’ve gone to my local store before and more than one they were out of the feed I wanted. Fortunately I typically keep a spare bag in rotation but that easily could have been a problem.
Mine don’t seem to believe in shelter. They have shelters available but they seem content in their woodchips/ under tall grasses. Generally speaking they handle the cold quite well.
I wouldn’t say it will cause issues but rather it may cause issues.
I look at my birds diet similar to how I manage my own. If they eat mostly healthy foods and have an active lifestyle then I’m not overly worried about it. However I recently increased my flock size significantly and the cost...
There’s some semi recent debate about what protein percentage to feed adults. When I started with quail most people seemed to do game bird crumble from birth to death. So that’s what I’m still doing. It’s a bit more expensive but for two birds the cost is negligible.
If you offer any thing at...
Don’t count on them using nest boxes. They may or may not intermittently use them to sleep in. Given the choice they’ll usually seek some type of cover and substrate to dig into a bit and make a little softball sized divot for the evening.
When in my grow out cages most preferred the sand box...
Google crossbreeding quail. I seem to recall someone did an experiment with coturnix and (I think) California quail. The two naturally paired up and the owner decided to incubate. Most died in development but a few managed to hatch. None lasted very long though.
I wouldn’t dream of trying it...
overall I definitely agree. I’m personally trying to figure out a balance between quality of life and efficiency. I’m not running a business but I’m not exactly running a charity either.
That being said I’ll never recoup the initial costs for my aviary. And I’m fortunate enough not to care...