➡ Quail Hatch Along🥚

[muddy75]

Well if I had a crazy lady with a net chasing me I would freak out too!

 

[Kiki]

Today I butchered the last of my quail.
I haven't been quail-less for years.

. I think I am going to wait until January to set more eggs.
I think.
I am not sure.

 

[RoosterML]

Today I butchered the last of my quail.
I haven't been quail-less for years.

. I think I am going to wait until January to set more eggs.
I think.
I am not sure.

What did you do that for?

 

[muddy75]

Just a quick reminder…….I will be on the Coturnix Corner live show tomorrow night at 7 pm discussing winterizing tips for keeping quail on the ground. Please join in……I need all the support I can get!!!!!

 

[Kiki]

 

[vall]

Something always happens hours before I leave town.. tonight there is an owl trying to get in one of my ground pens. It's hardware cloth surrounded by pavers, but I put some buckets around it so the owl can't really lunge at the cage anymore. Maybe it'll move on?

 

[FloorCandy]

Something always happens hours before I leave town.. tonight there is an owl trying to get in one of my ground pens. It's hardware cloth surrounded by pavers, but I put some buckets around it so the owl can't really lunge at the cage anymore. Maybe it'll move on?

I had one that perched on my deck rail all night every night over my quail cage, I would find gross owl pellets on the tarp in the morning, disease from the exposure to the owl and its pellets was one concern that pushed me to move the quail under my deck. The benefit of the owl keeping watch tho, was he kept other predators away. The owl left after I moved the birds, we had a flood a few months ago and it brought in new predators that were displaced, and I lost nearly all my birds to a rat attack. Those rats never would have gotten close with the owl overseer.

 

[vall]

Yeah, I guess I wouldn't mind if it moved in, I do have owl boxes and it would help control the gophers too. Just bad timing. The resident hawk knows not to bother trying the cages, but her offspring try once or twice every year.

 

[FloorCandy]

Just some pics of the button chicks, the top has the 2 best looking male darth Vaders showing off their new chin straps:

 

[FloorCandy]

Here’s a pic of my worst injured survivor from the rat attack. I didn’t take before pics, honestly I thought she would die, but she was the only Italian celadon who made it, so I really hoped she would pull through:

If you zoom in, you can see she has an anime style slice thru her bottom eye lid, and it healed in a V. When my dogs interrupted the attack, she must have been getting mauled, I can’t imagine how else she survived. The right side of her face and her nares and upper beak were totally mauled, the nares were gone and I’m not sure how the end of her beak was even still attached. Her head, neck and back were mauled, they must have tackled her from behind. The scar tissue on her head and shoulders makes tufts of feathers stick out in weird directions, and the back of her head has not gotten feathers back in small patches, and it doesn’t look like they will regrow, the skin was just too damaged.

Having said all that, she made a miraculous recovery, and is a sweet and spirited lady. For the first week after the attack, she sat puffed up on top of the water container, eyes closed, not moving, freaking out when I tried to give her nutridrench. I have no idea how she even got herself up and down from there in her state, but she did. I think it’s been about a month and a half or so since the attack.

I’ll be collecting eggs from this group to set this week, fingers crossed .