Can Buttons And Coturnixes Live Together?

[lena_]

Okay, I will admit. Today I impulse bought a pair of button quail. I have noticed that red breasted buttons are quite rare where I live. However, I don't have any other button quail (Except week or so old chicks)so, I bought the red breasted male I found and a silver hen. I put up the aviary divider so my two male coturnix quails didn't murder the newcomers. However, they both flew over the divider, and the male button now has no feathers on his back...
I set up lots of places for buttons to hide. So how can I intergrate the buttons?
On a side note- All the pet shop was feeding the quail was seeds? Surely seeds don't have enough protein. The pet shop is lovely, and the enclosures are gorgeous, but seeds aren't a suitable food for quail. I feed mine chicken mash, chicken pellets, and a little bit of blood a bone fertiliser for protein (as recommended to me by a breeder) So I gave the new buttons, chicken mash, blood and bone, and seed. Is blood and bone good for them? My coturnixes are healthy and well muscled, so it can't be doing them any bad.

 

[chickencheeper]

@Hybridchucks

 

[007Sean]

By blood and bone, do you mean bone meal and/or blood meal?

 

[DK newbie]

I'd put the buttons in a cage (with a roof) inside the coturnix enclosure. And I wouldn't count on ever letting them live with the cots. Some people do it and if we are talking just a few, very docile cots, it might be okay. Others do it for a while and everything is fine until one day it isn't.. Introducing cots to a button enclosure is probably more likely to work.
With regards to feed, they'll survive on seed (usually around 12-13% protein) but really they need 19%+. The 28-30% some use for cots isn't necessary. I usually use 24%.

 

[JaeG]

Male Coturnix will be too much for the Buttons if they don't have females of their own, and even then sometimes you get a bad egg that's mean to them. Male Coturnix will try and mate the female Button which could be very dangerous to your hen. The Buttons won't breed with larger quail around either. Can you make them a smaller cage within the aviary?

 

[JaeG]

There is a lady on TradeMe that sells feed enhancer for Buttons: cleodunn1 is the member name. She's up north too, I think Whangarei area. It's hard to get Gamebird feed in NZ so I use NRM Meatbird Crumble.