Covey Chronicles

[scyllarus]

Flan has decided to become broody again, seemingly at random. Sigh. Dang hen. It's so hot right now that we could honestly just incubate the eggs outside and probably get a good hatch if it wasn't for the night-time drop in temp. She's the one who gets to come inside and greet the new chicks because I keep hoping she'll decide she wants to be a mother, though it's never lined up very well with her deciding to sit, so she's never 'claimed' any chicks. We're not hatching another batch for a while, so she's just SOL for now.

I finally gave up and moved the rest of the juveniles to the main cage so we could get the chicks out of the brooder. Now it's just a waiting game - assuming we got 50% males, the plan was to remove all the roos except for 1-2 and then give a covey away so we'd be back to about 16-20 birds in a 24 sq ft space....until the new hatch gets big enough, anyway. Alas, the new babies were quite vigorous and needed more space, so plans have gotten sped up - good thing there's a farm swap coming up. Hopefully we'll be able to sell or trade the extra roos, but if not we'll have to probably cull them this coming week. They'll be about 7-8 weeks old, so they have most of their growth.

 

[scyllarus]

I wish the juveniles would find their feet already. Then I could make real decisions as to whom to keep vs whom to get rid of - the roos would finally be obvious with their crowing and mating, the hens would start showing their true personalities...

We're thinking to keep some chunky hens who are easy-going in the flock and friendly towards humans and a couple of roos who are at least on par with Tidbit, but it's not really clear who's going to be like what yet. Sigh.

 

[scyllarus]

And a funny post in which I indulge my anthropomorphization of my birds...

I do love how silly my favorites are - Pudding reminds me of a proper Victorian schoolmarm, very severe and haughty. No one messes with her. Mousse is a softer lady, more timid and sweet compared to Pudding - though they do get along well. An alternate universe of Matilda in which Ms Honey and Ms Trunchbull get along, haha. Flan is basically a grandma - she's so bad at pecking for treats and she seems rather slow and sedate, but she's constantly broody and very sweet. Dixie is a bossy girl who loves treats more than anyone else and will literally jump for them. Sugar is Dixie's sister and she's a little more interested in doing her own thing than getting treats. And, of course, there's Tidbit. I think he's really rather dapper and thoughtful, an ideal husband to his many wives - if he was a human, he'd bring them chocolates and let them eat the fries off his plate. He'd get up at night to check the weird noise. He'd offer a back rub if they weren't feeling up to getting mounted. This particular quail roo helps me understand why all the dang chicken keepers get attached to roosters, because in all honesty, most quail roo are awful.

 

[scyllarus]

A solemn day. The Husband is sending the first batch of extra males to freezer camp today. I still find it distasteful despite having dispatched and processed birds, but it's something that has to be done for the good of the covey. We currently have several males who are auditioning for our 2nd and 3rd roo spots - we're only keeping Tidbit as Tiramisu has become a lot more aggressive since introducing the juveniles. Two very pretty boys - one who is, I believe, a fee homozygous sparkly boy (gray with subtle white barring) and the other is a roux homozygous fawn (Manchurian but with faded reddish markings rather than black ones). There's at least one extended brown (Tibetan) male and one English White male as well.

Sparkly gray - gorgeous boy, medium sized, has attempted to mate and has been seen letting go/looking for mating cues from the hen. Not tidbitting or otherwise exhibiting many male behaviors, however.

Manchurian - gorgeous boy, very big for a male, has attempted to mate. Hasn't been seen engaging in considerate male behavior (checking hens for mating cues or tidbitting) but also hasn't been aggressive.

EB - Sneaky critter - I've heard him crow but couldn't catch him crowing, looks exactly the same as another EB in the cage (who might be a hen). Not as exciting in regards to color - I believe Tidbit is a het grau fee, so we're getting EB chicks already.

EW - Currently in with three others in a plastic tote (we just didn't have room). No real feelings besides not wanting to have so many dang EW chicks - we already have tuxedo hens and so many EW chicks from our last hatch.

Tidbit is always going to be with us because he's been an exemplary roo, but he is a fairly small male and having bigger birds is part of my eventual breeding plans. I'm thinking of keeping the Manchurian simply because he's so huge in comparison to the other males (he's as big as the smaller full-grown hens) and because he's incredibly placid as far as human handling goes. I'm thinking to give Sparkly a chance as well, but I probably don't need more than 2 males...hm.

Plus, the next batch of chicks is 3 weeks old and thriving in the auxiliary cage...I know intellectually that there's no real inbreeding risk if I choose to keep a roo from this batch, especially since we're keeping multiple hens from the TOF hatch, but it still bothers me. Ugh.

 

[scyllarus]

This right here is why I switched to digging up yard dirt for the quail instead of buying sand. That's just a roaster pan full of quail enjoying their new dirt.

 

[scyllarus]

The bird on the very right...I think might be a hen. If it's not, then it might be a contender for one of the roo spots - it's been super friendly and sweet. No roo specific behaviors, though, so maybe it's just a sweet hen.

It's also a decent picture of what the cage looks like from the inside.

 

[scyllarus]

It's getting close to time to name the new covey members. We're still paring down (I think we have 23 birds in 24 sqft) and honestly? I'm surprised they haven't started murdering each other from being crowded. I think having it super cluttered but with a lot of usable space has been helpful - the younger birds use the planks a lot to avoid fights with the older birds, and it's easy for a bird to get out of line of sight of an aggressor. I'll be keeping this in mind for when we make them a new aviary home - they don't even have ramps, the planks are simply around a comfortable head height for them.

Ah - now that I've raised a batch from TOF, I can reasonably say that they're decent birds. They were vigorous chicks and they've since grown into calm, easy-going adults who are integrating well into the covey. The roos have been fine, they have few to no bad behaviors as a whole but also few to no good behaviors - none of them have started tidbitting or looking out for the hens. It's a little disappointing, to be honest. I was hoping that Tidbit wasn't especially unique but we've gone through dozens of males by now and none of them have really come close. I might have to see if the person who was selling the eggs/chicks is still selling, or we'll have to keep one of his sons.

 

[scyllarus]

I'm just going to rant for a moment about Tidbit and quail roo in general:

I get why chicken keepers want to keep a rooster. There's something rather touching about the way a good rooster cares for his flock - he so obviously looks out for danger, calls his hens for food, and seems to even seek consent for mating. Quail roo don't tend to be this way - and the assumption is that they, as a species, aren't meant to do anything a chicken roo does. The general wisdom is that you don't generally want quail roos as all they do is mate hens, which the hens seemingly could live without.

But Tidbit acts like a good chicken roo. He's always alert and watching for unusual activity. He's the first to come over when one of us humans comes by to do some cage maintenance and the last to eat a treat because he'll call the girls over first. He's very gentlemanly with his hens and will step in if he hears distress calls. He's accidentally won himself a "get out of freezer camp" pass because I genuinely think that the covey is better with him in it - and it even seems like the hens like him.

I'm genuinely disappointed by the recent hatch of roos. All of them are calm and easy-going birds...for humans. They're just kind of mediocre as far as their roo duties go.

 

[scyllarus]

We lost a bird to a little juvenile possum. Not a cage security issue, exactly - we left the door open. It luckily got only one bird, and sort of luckily it was one of the younger birds that I was still trying to figure out as to whether it's a male and/or a more permanent covey member. The possum has been caught and taken to a near-ish nature trail.

Interestingly, the birds all stayed in the cage overnight despite the door being wide open. It might have been because it was night-time, but it was rather interesting.