Cute Button Quail Chick

[JaeG]

My ringneck dove seems fascinated by the quail chicks, but she gets chased off by protective mothers!

My 5 chicks in the aviary are still beetling along - one cinnamon seems to follow little Spicey a lot. I've had two more chicks hatch inside but they are a bit little to put out as I don't think they'd keep up with the others. I had to help one hatch. It hadn't progressed beyond an external pip for 24 hours. I cautiously chipped away and hit a little blood so left it be for awhile. Still no progress by the end of the day so I unwrapped it enough that it couldn't get suffocated by the inner membrane drying out and left it to do the rest itself. This morning it was still stuck and the membrane had dried onto it (despite the humidity being 80%). All it took was for me to wet it down a bit and it yelled in protest and pushed itself out. It's a big chick - bigger than its buddy that had hatched overnight. It's got a loud voice too!

 

[MageofMist]

My ringneck dove seems fascinated by the quail chicks, but she gets chased off by protective mothers!

My 5 chicks in the aviary are still beetling along - one cinnamon seems to follow little Spicey a lot. I've had two more chicks hatch inside but they are a bit little to put out as I don't think they'd keep up with the others. I had to help one hatch. It hadn't progressed beyond an external pip for 24 hours. I cautiously chipped away and hit a little blood so left it be for awhile. Still no progress by the end of the day so I unwrapped it enough that it couldn't get suffocated by the inner membrane drying out and left it to do the rest itself. This morning it was still stuck and the membrane had dried onto it (despite the humidity being 80%). All it took was for me to wet it down a bit and it yelled in protest and pushed itself out. It's a big chick - bigger than its buddy that had hatched overnight. It's got a loud voice too!

The blue-faced hen was kicked out by her sister, who deemed the nest not suitable in it's current state, and thus buried the eggs in nesting material before setting on them... She was literally picking up the hay from the cage floor and throwing it in the nestbox on the eggs...

When Speckles' babies hatched, the blue-faced and her siblings, Speckles didn't trust the dove at first, but after a day they started trusting him and I once found 3 babies somehow snuggled up under his skinny butt, no idea how they fit.

Also, it is always scary assisting chicks hatch. especially teeni baby quail. Also it seems no matter how high the humidity is, if enough membrane is exposed long enough, it'll dry out. Luckily my larger-than-average chick, the tux, only had his butt stuck in the narrow end of the egg and just needed encouraging.

I believe Penguin (I know, creative name XP) is a guy judging by his behaviour, not seen any cues of genders from the other babies yet, but at least they have easier colour cues.

 

[JaeG]

It must've looked so funny (and cute) to see chicks snuggling into a dove!

I've had a normal/wildtype baby hatch - the last of this batch. That was a surprise and my daughter will be happy (once she finally gets out of bed). It looks so funny in amongst the silver and cinnamon babies. The one I had to help hatch is huge compared to the others (he's in the middle of the group photo) and zipping round like an older chick too.
Here he is next to the one that hatched before he did!

Here's the wildtype baby - it's so dark!

I've had to bring in a silver from the aviary. It and a cinnamon were under Spicey and I managed to startle her and she hurried off, so I picked up the two chicks to return them to Whistler. The cinnamon struggled and protested and ran straight back to its mother. The silver just sat quietly in my hands and closed its eyes. When I put it down by Whistler it didn't move. I thought maybe it was a bit cold but the heat lamp hasn't helped. It's in with the new hatchlings (that's it on the far left in the photo). I've given it some sugar water but I'm not hopeful. He's pretty much the same size as the new hatchlings.

My hen who has done nothing but lay eggs for weeks on end has decided to sit on her current batch which I'm really pleased about too.

 

[MageofMist]

Hopefully the sickly one is doing better now.

Also, the sisters are now brooding together. Which is a good sign as it means they hopefully won't try to eat the babies when they hatch. I couldn't help but say to Rex and Speckles as they ran up to me for treats, the parents, that I couldn't believe their daughters were 'pregnant' already! Feels like only yesterday when they hatched...

 

[JaeG]

Hopefully the sickly one is doing better now.

Also, the sisters are now brooding together. Which is a good sign as it means they hopefully won't try to eat the babies when they hatch. I couldn't help but say to Rex and Speckles as they ran up to me for treats, the parents, that I couldn't believe their daughters were 'pregnant' already! Feels like only yesterday when they hatched...

Such a cute video!!! They are so adorable.

We did lose the sickly one. But I've had Coturnix chicks do what it was doing - cheeping constantly with its eyes closed. It looked the same as the newly hatched ones so I don't think it was growing.

The chicks I am brooding are being a bit thick - if I try and give them a bigger water bowl they won't go near it and one ended up with pasty butt (I'd say from dehydration because I put the new bowl in). The bowl they like is a super shallow jar lid that dries out pretty quickly (plus they love to poop in it and track food through it).

I have babies due to hatch in the incubator on Friday. Then our hen who thought she might finally sit after laying countless eggs sat for a whole day, then got off and showed no interest in the nest anymore, so those eggs went in the incubator too. Our first female started to make a nest in the aviary but decided helping look after the little ones was much more fun so I've put her 5 eggs from her abandoned nest in the incubator too.

I've got a funny egg in there. It looked like it was forming a blood ring yesterday and I saw no sign of a baby, but left it in to see what happened. Today I can see a little dark baby wriggling around but I can't see veins around it, just that one big vein or blood ring around the middle of the egg. It's so weird! The baby looks dark rather than pink too, but it's definitely moving - could've been the angle I was looking at it that made it look dark perhaps. I meant to mark it before I put it back in tonight, but I forgot and there are about 15 eggs in that batch.

 

[JaeG]

I've had more babies hatch and I've worked out which chicks end up being 'caramel'.

Caramel at the top compared to a Cinnamon on the bottom that has grey stripes on its head and a grey stripe between the gingery stripes on its back.
Caramel adult hen:

I've got a young Caramel that our disabled girl has raised but I can't get a good photo of her. Looking back at photos I could see the difference between her and the Cinnamon chick she's grown up with.

I want to know what a Caramel boy looks like!

I've also got 2 or 3 Ivory chicks that have hatched out so it'll be fun watching them grow up.

 

[JM25]

One of my youngest female quail has gone broody, a blue-faced hen who is in the cage with her sisters, mother and father... So far all she does is yell at them when they get close, and Rex just led the rest of the hens to lay their eggs in another nestbox so they won't pester the broody.

I noticed the other day when I collected the eggs that she fluffed up at me and ran at my hand, this time instead of attacking, she stays put and yells at my hand when it got close. I decided to let her sit on the eggs instead of gathering them and see what happens.

Edit: To make things stranger, I think she bonded with the diamond dove I have. The dove used to have a mate, a female, but sadly she passed away from a prolapse months ago and my dad doesn't want to go through that again. I see him do his bow-dance to her and I even heard him mating earlier, but didn't see who he was mounting, but my guess was the Blue-Faced hen.

My dad is joking we may get dove/quail hybrids, but I doubt it.

Our buttons and coturnix bonded with our pair of zebra finches. The finches walk around the bottom of the aviary and even snuggle with the quails on the ground. It’s so cute!