Chicks and Quail together?

[BigDaddy'sGurl]

I am sure that folks who have raised quail for years have more insight than me, but as a first time quail hatcher/raiser, my quail are beautiful, fat, healthy, the male crows often, breeds often, and the female lays nearly every day and is highly active. I have never bought special feed for them. They have thrived on chick starter and then layer crumble. The female does the whole "cricket talk" sound a lot and seems perfectly happy. We did go through a period of time when she seemed stressed by the chicks she was brooded with, so we removed her to be by herself and she is doing phenomenally well now and is happy. The male is still with his brood mate chicks and is the highest on the pecking order. The twice his size chicks stay out of his way lol.

 

[CARS]

My analogy covers disease but lets go back a bit and cover the food.

I started mine quail on Chick Starter, un-medicated 20ish percent and the yellow powder added to the water (name escapes me at the moment). I truly believe that it is enough for those little guys and gals till the chicken chick start shoving their weight around

Literally.

Now I think the difference in opinions about the feed occurs when you are raising for breeding to sell fertile stock or eggs to others. Your reputation is on the line, so you want to give them the best so you can charge the most for your product.

The same can be said if you want the most meat gain in a short time.

I never noticed any difference in eggs. I fed the same layer feed I gave my chickens. I got eggs up the wazzoo till I processed. I hatched a few with great success and gave out some fertile eggs to BYC members who wanted to try some so-called Texas A&M's. I wasn't impressed with "this white meat bird" so I stopped raising them. Will try Jumbo Bobwhites next spring.

I did try "finishing off" a separate cage of quail that were being fed my broiler feed. I couldn't tell the difference between the ones that stayed on layer feed and the ones that were finished on broiler feed.

The best/worse thing about BYC's.com is that there are tens of thousands of opinions.... we are all not going to agree. Your area may have a disease problem. Your breed of quail may need different nutrition than mine. Just cause I get away with the cats eating along side my peafowl doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do. All my animals are together in the same barn, mostly in different pens. So far, so good.

 

[Rozzie]

Quote:
Yes they can, even if it is not recommended. I did it for a year and only lost a couple while getting an egg a day.

Now that I have my Turkeys and Peafowl, I would feed the quail a higher protein. But at the time, it was 100 free quail and they had to eat what the chickens did.

(lets not get into an argument about how I should feed my Turks and Peas different foods. They all look good and keep my feed order simple)

OK, so they CAN eat chicken food. Physically, they can open their mouth, pick up pieces of chicken food, close their mouths, and swallow. They may even survive on the chicken feed. However, it's not the diet that their bodies really need. It's like feeding a dog cat food or a child an inferior diet based on potatoes and rice, but without enough protein foods (whether meat based, dairy based, or plant based).

 

[Rozzie]

Quote:
Quail should not quit laying at only 8 months old. They need about 14 hours of light a day to lay, though. Also, cold temperatures can reduce or stop their laying. 20% protein is also too low for quail & may have caused them to stop laying.

Quail that do not lay eggs at 8 months old are probably either 1) genetically inferior or 2) victims of poor husbandry or 3) in low light / low temperature conditions or 4) some combination of the first 3.
My 2 year old quail still lay eggs every single day.

Then what's the reason that the males completely stopped crowing? What's the reason why the males' testicles have completley shriveled up? I suppose that's poor genetics too...

Some roosters settle down when they get older. They may have just reached an age where they did that.

I did not say that your birds had poor genetics. I listed it as one of several possible options for the problems you are having. Quite simply put, quail should lay well past 8 months. There is some sort of problem in your birds -- whether genetics or illness -- or in your husbandry of them if they are not laying at 8 months.

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

If you are to raise chicks and quail together can you feed them both turkey starter? Or is that too high in protien for chicks?

 

[CARS]

Quote:
I guess you could. I don't think I have ever heard of feeding too much protein.

In fact, many breeders of rare breed chickens feed mid to upper 20%'s throughout the birds life.

During the summer I order bulk feed and my laying hens get the same high protein feed that my broilers get. I like to keep things simple. I can't imagine saying "I need a 1/2 ton of broiler formula in bulk, 12 bags of layer formula, 20 bags of gamebird formula," etc.

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

Quote:
I guess you could. I don't think I have ever heard of feeding too much protein.

In fact, many breeders of rare breed chickens feed mid to upper 20%'s throughout the birds life.

During the summer I order bulk feed and my laying hens get the same high protein feed that my broilers get. I like to keep things simple. I can't imagine saying "I need a 1/2 ton of broiler formula in bulk, 12 bags of layer formula, 20 bags of gamebird formula," etc.

Great! This will make things soo much easier!

 

[PoultryParadise]

So I guess after all the information you guys have provided me with, I am not going to worry about the 3 quail in the with chicks. Kind of interesting what you can learn from a small queston.