Hello! I have a very small hen...like legit tiny
she is a frizzle bantam, and just never grew to the right size. She is constantly being picked on by her other flock mates, and I just don't know what to do anymore! Do I put her in a pen by herself for the rest of her life?! So the question I have is, can I raise this tiny chicken with quail?? She doesn't bother any other birds...just kinda sits around by herself most days. I want to keep her because she is the first hen I ever hatched, but I also want her to be safe. Thanks for reading!
I lost all but 1 quail this year, a cat ripped open my pen and pulled them out 1 by 1. I had one male inside recovering from a hen attack. He was from my first quail hatched and was maybe 2.5 years old, he was a full celadon so I kept him all that time. He ended up totally blind. I didnât have any quail for him and he crowed non stop in a cage in my basement. He had raised quail chicks before so since I had hatched out 3 meat chickens I let him raise them. He did a great job, and even after the meaties were huge, they all got along, and they were gentle with their âdaddyâ. I culled them and he laid down and died that night or the next. So they definitely will form a bond and he had stopped crowing when he got the chicks.
Having said that, quail are vicious toward newcomers, so you would do best to give her fresh new chicks to raise, and Iâm betting theyâll grow up and get along. I now have 8 chicken chicks that are brooding with 18 quail chicks, the quail are 3 days older than the chickens. I donât bring in new birds, and Iâve tried to minimize illness as much as I can by hatching them from eggs, they donât have any contact with other birds. Once they go outside, they would be penned next to each other if I didnât house them together, and the biggest threat would be wild birds having contact, and I feel like they have equal chance of contact from wild birds, and the chickens arenât adding anything new.
I actually hatch and raise quail all the time, and I sell off new and previous birds at an auction filled with chickens so anyone buying them would see them caged in the middle of other fowl and know the risks anyway. But if you keep them together, donât sell them to anyone expecting them to have been kept separately.
Because I sell and hatch, most of my quail donât reach old age with me, so Iâm not as concerned about losing beloved birds, theyâre not pets here. If you mix them, just be prepared that you can lose your quail.
