Covey Chronicles

[scyllarus]

Keeping a bit of a journal on my quail covey(s)! This is mostly to note my own experiences and some quail behavior which I haven't seen elaborated on in other places. For anyone following, be prepared for plenty of dumb mistakes and absolute nonsense at times. Also, I'm mostly posting on my phone, so also expect weird formatting.

 

[scyllarus]

Brief history:

We picked up 5 coturnix quail on a whim at Repticon, all 9 weeks in age (per seller). I didn't know anything about quail at the time (kids, don't get animals without research) so we ended up with 3 males and 2 females. We kept one male, an English white we named Sugar, and two females - a Pharoah/brown named Biscotti and a scarlet tuxedo, Pudding. The other two males we culled.

Me, in my newfound quail anxiety, got 15 more birds from a local keeper who sourced hers flock from SW gamebirds. Half of these were male, and we kept only one - a scarlet celadon boy we named Jason. We kept five celadon hens, all scarlet/tuxedo - but we currently have one.

Mishaps:
One celadon got caught under a plank and got her face scalped. She recovered and we named her Freddy (of the Kreuger variety). Jason was named after her as they were both Scarlets. She was killed by our pet bullsnake (we had a neighbor's kid help us care for the animals and she forgot to fully secure the snake enclosure).

Three of the other celadons were given to a friend who wanted quail. They were being bullied to death by Sugar (the other quail were often hostile but Sugar would chase them down and scalp them) my best guess as to why was because they would scream when harassed.

Two hens (a fawn? And a rosetta) were culled accidentally as we had mistakenly sexed them as roos.

Pics of the enclosure attached. Current covey in this enclosure: 9 birds, including Jason, Pudding, a celadon named Mousse, a fawn named Flan, two rosettas named Cookie and Cream, and three newer birds - a jumbo brown named Brownie, and two Italians named Blondie and Butterscotch.

 

[scyllarus]

We also have a newer cage (just finished yesterday!) holding our first batch of babies - seven chicks currently 3-4 weeks old, four English whites, two fawn-colored ones, and a rosetta tuxedo.

We put in cameras to observe the birds, btw. Some newer camera screenshots attached.

 

[scyllarus]

The Sugar Saga:

So - lemme preface this with "We should have culled him, but we named him and experimented on him and now people in our community like him too much for us to cull him."

Sugar is an English white (I think it's over Pharoah) who was one of our original birds. We originally separated him from the covey when he started scalping the celadon hens. We tried a time out (immediately had to separate him again as he went right back to chasing them) and contemplated culling him vs keeping the celadons in a completely separate enclosure. We ended up giving the three celadons to a friend as the other birds also started picking on them. We tried again to integrate him - he began trying to kill Jason, the other male quail in the cage, so he was again separated.

During this time we decided that we wanted to try out keeping Sugar as a single pet quail - trying to see if there were ways to make this a reasonably humane proposition. For those who aren't quail keepers - quail are social birds and do not enjoy being solitary. We purchased flightsuits (aka bird diapers) (for those interested, a duckling-sized diaper works well for adult male non-jumbo quail). He's tolerated them all right.

Most interesting have been several interactions he's had with the other quail. We found out (through accident) that roos have a specific warbling song they sing as a threat to other male quail. The hens have had very different interactions with Sugar - when placed into his enclosure, they generally submit to his advances with little fanfare, but when we take him out of the enclosure afterwards, only a few will make the chirruping call to search for him (and he will make a beeline to his enclosure if he can). One hen, Pudding (my favorite, a larger scarlet tuxedo), turned out to have become the head bird in the cage during Sugar's extended separation - when we were trying to integrate him again, she started chasing him down and pecking him while making a unique call. She did not interfere with the fight between the males at first, but I think she was triggered by Sugar attempting to approach the other hens and was absolutely vicious in her pursuit.

Sugar's back in isolation for now.

 

[scyllarus]

My birds as of this time:
Sugar has been deemed unsafe to keep with the rest of the covey, though I feel that that's partially due to being isolated for so long. Since I didn't mention it earlier, we've mostly introduced birds at night - we've only recently managed to get a cage together to allow for 'look, don't touch' integration and that's currently being taken up by the seven fledgling chicks at this time. Sugar has generally been middling in dominance, but his aggression towards certain birds has been intolerable. He crows and has a lovely voice, though I definitely get sick of it. I've seen him tidbit when no hens are around, but he doesn't bother doing it when there are...

Jason is our other roo, a scarlet celadon. He's rather small and timid/docile, but as we're planning on more celadons + my (unrealistic, probably) anxieties about inbreeding, we're keeping him around for the planned celadon cage. We actually ended up giving away the three bullied celadons because he also started bullying them due to their habit of screaming whenever he attempted to breed with them.

Pudding has never been aggressive (aside from her attacks on Sugar, as above) and seemingly minds her own business at all times. She loves snacks and is always the first to go for treats, whether it's greens or bugs. Some of my birds will tolerate being patted or touched, but she won't - she'll happily come up to you for treats but will shy away from your hand. I've never thought of her as head hen - as far as I've seen, she's never even pecked at anyone else - but given her willingness to fight a 'strange' roo, I have to assume that's her position.

Mousse is the only celadon hen who has managed to stay with us. She's been named Mousse because...well, she looks like Pudding but she's not Pudding. She's docile but quiet, which has kept her from getting scalped.

Flan is very cute and seeming to grow some sort of wart or keratinous horn on her nose? It doesn't seem to bother her, but it does help distinguish her. She has a tendency to want to peck at the sifter when I'm cleaning the sand. She was one of the birds who seemed to like Sugar - but joined in with Pudding in pecking him later.

Cookie and Cream are...Rosettas? Sparklies? Good and calm birds.

Brownie (brown/pharaoh), Blondie (Italian), and Butterscotch (Italian) all came from the same farm swap and have been generally very docile with the other birds.

We have eight chicks, all 3-4 weeks old at this point. None of them get names until we've decided if we're keeping them, so right now we have four English whites, all of whom are strangely friendly (the largest and smallest are especially so), one tuxedo (does not appear to be scarlet, some form of extended brown) who is extremely food-motivated, two dilutes/pharoahs who are somewhat flighty, and one extended brown of some sort who is somewhat flighty and often makes alarm calls.

We gave our friend the three celadon scarlet tuxedos, an italian, and a pharaoh (Biscotti) to replace her chickens (she was unable to keep them d/t renting situation). Plans are to give my mother-in-law some birds...luckily for us, we're currently incubating like...80 eggs, at least 48 of which are shipped.

 

[scyllarus]

Oh - I wish I could edit my first post, but I can't figure it out, so...For all those who are interested, feel free to chime in on this thread. I like the idea of a poultry picture tax for derailing replies, so - anything not quail related needs the tax to be paid

 

[scyllarus]

Ugh. So, today I figured I'd post pictures of the babies...one of them wriggled out of my hand and flew away. Luckily, we were able to catch it again but it wasn't a very fun time Baby quail, like most babies, haven't fully calcified their bones yet. You're terrified of squashing them to death, and they're especially flexible, so while I've never had an issue with holding an adult quail securely...

Anyway, here's some babies.

Their current set-up. The main cage is behind them and the adult quail are able to look at them.

The whole set up. The weird dirt patch is being used as a bird poop collector for garden purposes...between the poop and pine straw, we're looking forwards to a productive spring in a few months.

Onto the chicks:

The smallest of the chicks, we were worried it had something wrong with it. It still looks like it's a few days behind everyone else.

The first-hatched chick and one of the largest. I think it might be a roux dilute or something, the patches are reddish.

Looks like some form of extended brown under the English white. Also a large chick - the white chicks seem to be calmer overall.

Last one looks like a regular Pharoah under the white color. Of course, none of these chicks are sexable yet, so I just took pictures of their identifying markings.

Looks like a sparkly, but I'm not sure what kind. I also can't really tell the sex, though I think it's supposedly sexable...maybe a hen? This is also the escape artist today.

My husband is holding this one, hence the different hands. I still don't know what color this is, but it seems to be a hen.

Same color as the above hen, but I think this is a roo. That being said, we accidentally culled a hen that looked like this, so I'm going to just...wait until I see crowing or other male behaviors.

And last but not least, what looks like an extended brown tuxedo. Not sexable at the moment. One of the flightier birds, but not much more than the others.

I'm pretty sure dad is Sugar, our English white, for all or most of these chicks. The other roo is scarlet without tuxedo, so there's no way he fathered any of the white chicks, but it's possible he's the father of the non-white chicks.

We'll likely keep the tamest of this set and give the others to my mother-in-law, who is interested in pet quail.

 

[chrissynemetz]

They're so petty!

 

[scyllarus]

They're so petty!

Thank you! I'm hoping to introduce some new genes - I'd like to get some of the Fee genes and stuff like calico in there since they don't really have morphological variants like chickens - ie, beards, feathered legs, etc.

 

[scyllarus]

I'd like to get a collection of quail noises on video some day, though it might stress out some quail. I think everyone has heard the "Co-turn-NIX" crowing, and it's easy to find it on youtube, but I think there's a lot of other sounds that are less well-known. Here's what I've heard so far:

Crowing: I've seen it said that female quail can crow, but I don't think I've ever seen any quail keepers on this forum report this. Sounds about as close to Coturnix as chicken rooster crowing sounds to Cockadoodledoo, which is to say, quail crowing sounds more like Err-err-ERRRR. Males will stand tall and their whole heads will shake with their crowing. As far as I can tell, males will crow to call the rest of the covey.

Growling: Only roos will make this noise, and it seems to be a sound of displeasure. It sounds like a rusty 'rrrRRR'.

Egg song: Hens will typically make this sound after laying, and it sounds like a cartoon bomb dropping with laser gun shots. A descending whistle with a 'pew pew pew' sound after it.

Locating call: Hens will make a cricketing 'ree ree ree' sound to call to the covey - I've seen hens make this sound in response to roos crowing or when they're away from the covey. I've also seen them make this sound when I approach the cage - no idea if they're calling *to* me or warning the rest of the covey. Typically it's one of the more...dominant? hens who calls in that case.

Peeping: Typically a sound made by chicks and rarely by adult birds. It's pretty much what you expect - a high-pitched "peep-peep-peep" sound. We had three adult birds who would do a louder, screamier version of this and it seemed to enrage the other birds - especially the roos, who would chase them and scalp them.

Some calls I've personally never seen described elsewhere:

Chatting: I've only really heard this from our male, Sugar, and typically while he's alone with us humans or with one hen. It's quiet and chirpy - I'll make this noise back at him and it sounds like "pi-chi' and 'chi-chiriri'. It doesn't seem to be a frightened or angry noise - not sure what this noise is for.

Threat noises: Seems to be different between males and females. My husband had accidentally put Jason in with Sugar and they would make this noise shortly before getting into a fight. I don't have a strong memory of this noise, but iirc was a constant, almost ululating noise like "bi-bi-bi-bi-bi." Pudding, our hen, made a similar noise when she was attacking Sugar, but it was...chirpier?