Hi, I was wondering how you clip your quail's wings? Also how young you clip and how frequent? Thanks
Welcome to the quail forums! What type of quail are you talking about and why do you want to clip them? Clipping wings will not stop quail from flying up in small cages or pens and hitting the ceilings or walls. It might help to clip wings if they are kept in an aviary style setting. Wings are clipped after the flight feathers have been molted out and have completely grown in. They will not need to be trimmed until the wings have again molted and regrown again. You would trim about 1 inch or so off each side of the wings, mainly the primary wing feathers. You can trim just one wing and leave the other side whole, as to make it more difficult to get off the ground. However this can lead to no control and should they still get off the ground, it makes steering difficult and could lead to crashing.
I actually recommend only clipping on one wing - I have personally found that they just get used to compensating for not having the feathers if you do both, but clipping one completely off-sets their balance. I have done it for all my quail, Japanese and Chinese, and although it doesn't completely stop them jumping up, I do find they do it considerably less since I clipped them. But just my personal opinion, there.
I keep Chinese (button) quail and i only clip one wing. I clip the main flight feathers to be even with the row of feathers above them. It doesn't stop the quail from "boinking" and they can still jump two or three feet straight up when they feel the need, but i've noticed that they boink less and less often since the clip. This could also be due to the fact that i keep my birds indoors in the living room so they're quite used to human interaction. They still don't like to be handled but they don't run from my hands unless i actively grab at them.
