Coturnix Quail Basics- Information and Pictures Galore

[dc3085]

King pheasant crumble is 28% and ive found it to make a good starter and layer feed. I switched over when purina raised their price again early this year. A 50lb bag of startena where i live is $27.99 a 50lb bag of king pheasant crumble is $18. The nutritional values are very similar and ive raised enough birds on it now im confident in the quality.

 

[FriAndRoo]

Is it possible to free range these birds? I have a friend who might like me to hatch some for her but she wants them just to free range on her acreage. Are they good foragers and fairly cold hardy? We live in Texas, but North Texas and it still does get down to freezing in the winter...

 

[caeti21]

We got coturnix quail this past weekend first time we ever had these , (years ago we had button quail)but anyways your thread here helped us alot i just wanted to say thanks for putting it together, we are eagerly wanting for them to lay their first egg we do need to modify their little hutch better discover it was to tall they keep flying up and hitting the wall and they were starting to hurt them selves , so i sarted putting them in a wire crate thats not as tall during the day and their doing much better than at night i transfer them back to the hutch because its more secured ,i know it sounds like a pain ...it is , but my hubbys next day off we will get things right so no more transfers back and forth

 

[Kusanar]

Is it possible to free range these birds? I have a friend who might like me to hatch some for her but she wants them just to free range on her acreage. Are they good foragers and fairly cold hardy? We live in Texas, but North Texas and it still does get down to freezing in the winter...

I wouldn't free range them, one, these birds have been in captivity (as a species) for so long that their most basic instincts are disappearing such as laying eggs in a nest and hatching young, I would imagine that their other instincts are also pretty much gone at this point so chances that they would survive very long outside are really slim. Plus, quail are quail and the wild ones can breed with the tame ones... if a wild male mates with a domesticated female, probably no problems, she won't set her eggs, but if a domesticated male mates with a wild female, she will take care of her eggs and hatch out chicks that will have some of the bad (for living in the wild) traits of the domestics but have a decent chance of growing up to breed, this could get bad for the native wild birds very fast if it continued to happen.

 

[Lynn Manes]

 
Hi,
Looking for advise as one of my japanese girls has managed to hatch some babies!
First time she started sitting she hadn't got the hang of turning the eggs and the chicks didn't form properly.
but this year we had 6 chicks hatch out of which 3 survived
We have 1 male and 2 females in a hutch/run so when they started to hatch we shut the other two adults out in the run, about a week in somehow the door got open and one of the other adults killed one of the babies, so now down to 2.
But these two have grown up nice and healthy and now at the stage where they have their adult feathers in and I have 1 male 1 female.
After all that, my main question is do I now need to separate them from the other adults, and from each other? they're proably at the 5-6 week age.

If you can provide a separated area where they are close or next to each other but through a wire fence.  That worked really well for me.  I only had to keep them separated for half the day and when I opened the  door between the two areas the one group went one way and the other group migrated into the other pen area.  It was funny...the grass is always greener you know.  Anyway, not serious fighting or anything.  Some of the older females growled and chased some of the younger males when the males tried to mate with them but that is about it.  Here in the SF bay area we were having a very hot spell so I think it was a good time to introduce as they were so hot and tired from the high temps that they didnt have the energy to complain anyway.  I did introduce about 12 new ones to a group of 6 at that time.

I keep my boys separated from my girls except for my senior quail which are 4 girls to 1 male. But we are going to soon incubate more eggs for the BYC Halloween countdown, so the males will be processed leaving us with the seniors and my white quail 3-1;then my junior girls with 1 male. I may add a couple more junior girls in my senior pen to even out the numbers. All the junior girls and boys are actually in our divided nursery pen right now so Michael has to build a new pen for them, so when the babies come out of the brooder they can go in the nursery pen. It has smaller wire on the floor for their tiny feet. It was so blue blazing hot here all summer in Bakersfield, he just was unable to get out there to build our "juniors" a proper pen and that's why they are still in the nursery pen.

 

[Lynn Manes]

Is it possible to free range these birds? I have a friend who might like me to hatch some for her but she wants them just to free range on her acreage. Are they good foragers and fairly cold hardy? We live in Texas, but North Texas and it still does get down to freezing in the winter...

I certainly am no expert, but I can tell you from experience that Cortinix quail can fly pretty high as we've lost a couple of them that fell out of the pen when the door was open and flew over a 6 foot fence into a neighbor's yard. And the little cuties are fast and hard to catch at times unless you corner them. They are so small that my biggest concern would be predators and not just owls,hawks etc., but even domestic cats. Maybe someone more knowledgeable can advise you here.

 

[orumpoultry]

Coturnix quail are non native and invasive. If bred to wild bobwhite it creates mules that aren't good for the environment. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's illegal to release them in the state of Texas.

 

[dc3085]

The coturnix x bobwhite hybrid is a myth. Ive heard people talking about it for ten years and never seen one single picture of one ever. The minute a new color of bird shows up there are 30 pictures of it on google. Bob birds exist in the same world as bigfoot, no real photos and a bunch of 'claims' is as close as youll get.

As far as releasing them it would be better than releasing birds that are fertile as far the environment is concerned. Bob birds couldn't by nature invade anywhere cause they wouldnt be able to reproduce.

Coturnix cant become an invasive species either. Theyre migratory birds, so eventually, like the government found when they released them, theyll just fly into the ocean trying to migrate south.

Most states require a permit to release quail except a few that let you release bobwhites on property you own. For the best legal info on the subject contact your local fish and game office.

 

[Halloweengirl13]

I have a question, some of my older girls ( about a year almost look like they're losing their spots. I know they are the girls I am seeing cause I put leg bands on them before their spots started going away... They look more like boys now. Do quails go thru menopause or something similar cause I can't tell them apart unless I check the bands on their legs....

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

I think I had a post deleted.. It was very positive and I guess am not sure why. I do not understand if you have a positive experience why it can't be shared.