Bizarre health issues with my Bob White quail.

[Jerank]

Hi. I'm a long-term owner of chickens and guinea fowl. Recently I decided to add some Bob White quail to my collection. To cut a long story short, there were a pair of birds that got singled out for bullying by the others, starting at just a month or two old. I rescued them and made them house-pets. For the most part, they're happy and healthy. However, the female seems to have some very strange health issues that I just can't pin down the cause of.

To help illustrate, this picture was taken of her in the morning:

Spoiler: Morning gal.

And these two are the same bird, only six hours later:

Spoiler: Evening gal.

Now, the important thing to note here is that this happens frequently. She will be perfectly fine, active and normal for a day or two. Then she will suddenly become extremely lethargic for seemingly no reason, lose most of her coordination (she will stumble around, falling over constantly) and start gaping. After a day or so of this, she will inexplicably make a full recovery and act normally again until her next 'episode'. She also eats and drinks more or less normally during these episodes. Put food and water in front of her, and she will consume them.

The first time this happened, she passed a soft-shelled egg, which made us increase her calcium intake. She has since laid a mixture of hard and soft-shelled eggs, but these don't seem directly linked to her episodes. She can have an episode and lay an egg then recover, or she can have an episode, lay nothing, and still recover. I've felt her rear end during these episodes, and it's still soft and pliant, not hard or seeming to strain. Her vent is also clean. She does however sometimes lay quite watery droppings.

At the moment I have them on antibiotics because the male seems to have picked up a respiratory infection from the times I put them outside to get extra sunlight. Apart from wheezing a little and sounding like he has blocked nostrils, he is perfectly healthy and active. I'm starting to think he just has a cold, as she hasn't shown any symptoms at all despite being in close proximity to him at all times. Likewise, he has never shown even the slightest symptoms of lethargy or loss of coordination, leading me to believe this isn't something infectious.

Any help or advice would be appreciated. This has me completely stumped, and I've never seen anything like it in any of my birds before. All the other Bob Whites I have in outside runs are healthy. She is the only one that has any symptoms like this.

 

[Nabiki]

I don't know much about Bobwhite, but what are you feeding them?

 

[Green Bean Quail]

This may be a stretch, but do you keep them in a cage indoors overnight? And then let them out in the house the morning if they are house pets? Because she could theoretically be getting into something/having a reaction? To something she is eating/in contact with in the house. That could explain how it is periodically and in the mornings. What’s their housing like?

 

[Jerank]

I don't know much about Bobwhite, but what are you feeding them?

They get the same food as my outside quail. Actually, they probably eat better. I give them mixed grains, dried mealworms, sunflower hearts and crushed oyster shell. They also get a lot of rocket leaves, which they adore.

This may be a stretch, but do you keep them in a cage indoors overnight? And then let them out in the house the morning if they are house pets? Because she could theoretically be getting into something/having a reaction? To something she is eating/in contact with in the house. That could explain how it is periodically and in the mornings. What’s their housing like?

They're on wood with a tough, waterproof lino base that I wipe down with disinfectant every few days. Their bedding is pine shavings, and I recently started giving them dried grass to build nests with, as they were definitely on the hunt for nesting materials. I don't really think she could be eating anything bad for her under those conditions.