Sadly this story does not end well. The short story is I think ants killed off all my chicks except one that’s in an incubator now.
Now I’ll rant a bit: I went back to my calendar notes and Monday should have been their hatch day. Saturday morning I went to see the chicks after getting in late Friday night. Could not find those 2 chicks. Being that Saturday was day 22 I decide to clean out the nest and hope those two chicks are hiding inside mama’s feathers somewhere. I left her 7 eggs. 2 hatched and are missing, leaving me with 5.
One of the eggs had started to unzip decently but failed. I was a bit surprised but didn’t think to much of it. Nor did I think much about the ants crawling all over it. I noticed for the remaining 4 one had just pipped. Decided to leave those 4 alone since things were still happening. Came back out a couple hours later. That egg got about half unzipped as well but was now dead and crawling with ants. Initially I thought being on day 22 that chick was exhausted and didn’t have the strength to finish the job.
I decided to epptopsy the other 3. One was a dud as expected. One failed probably around day 14. The 3rd was still alive! Fortunately I always try to open the egg at their air cell just in case. I placed that egg in my incubator but it’s fighting being shrink wrapped at this point.
I think where I went wrong is 1st I never considered ants to be a predator for quail. Pretty sure the egg yoke remains brought them in and those ants killed the two chicks hatching. 2nd I suspect I noticed the hen acting broody on a Friday but she didn’t brood consistently enough to begin incubating for a couple days. Had I considered my day 0 might be off a few days I would not have started an eggtopsy so soon.
Since I’ve got another hen starting to brood right now I guess it’s time I wage war on some ants.
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