Hatching quail with a chicken

[dc3085]

Oh man...It's getting deep in here.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

These pictures are the next day.
The hen is still sitting on the nest although several quail are active and have scooting around in the nestbox since yesterday.

While I was throwing some corn to some free range chickens I threw a handful into the pen. The hen promptly jumped out of the nest and started pecking at the corn so I figured I'd go in for a look.
There is about 15 or so quail that have hatched.
Something appears to be wrong here; 1 quail looks to be about 5x the size of the other quail.

Oh, wait a minute, that's the chick from that dang gone chicken egg I never got around to removing. I meant to take it out and put it in the incubator but I thought I had plenty of time before it hatched. I may remove the little chicken but it will be interesting to see how they all interact with each other.

 

[Quail Jailer]

Thats how it looks in one of my brooders I put a two day old in with the tens because he was picking on his siblings...at the moment he's terrorizing the 10 day birds...little fella must be made of brass...or he's directly related to LavLady...lol

 

[ChickenLegs13]

After the hen ate some corn she got back on the nest with the chicks and I didn't mess with them the rest of the day.
The next morning when I went out to the pens, the hen, several quail chicks and the chicken chick had jumped out the nest and were on the ground in front of the nest box. The rest of the quail couldn't/wouldn't jump out of the next. I suspect they couldn't make it over the lip of the box or quail just aint programmed to jump out of nests since they are ground nesters. So I manually placed them on the ground near the hen. They appeared to be cold and sluggish from being in the nest all alone. A few of them are active & vigorous but for the most part they appear weak & puny. Like I said earlier, I set cull eggs that I wouldn't normally incubate.
Total hatch tally: 30 eggs set/13 live chicks/1 dead in nest/10 unhatched eggs. Don't know what happened to the 6 missing eggs. They probably got broken and the hen ate them.


I sprinkled some starter on the the ground near the feeder to get them started eating.
Here the hen is feeding one of the quail chicks.

The game cock is also doing his step fatherly duties. The hen is getting feed from the feeder and dropping it on the ground for the chicks.

4 quail are staying close to the hen and acting like chicks and the rest of them are roaming in different directions up to 5-6 feet away and some are following the gamecock around. Overall they look weak & puny and I'm having doubts about their survival. If my incubator chicks looked this bad I'd be alarmed.

Another downside to chickens hatching quail; the big chickens step on the tiny quail. The gamecock is not a bantam, he's a fullsized rooster. When a chicken steps on a chicken chick it's no big deal but the gamecock stepped on a quail and totally wiped it out. 14 hatched and 2 are already dead.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

The chicks spent their first day out of the nest. I noticed the chicken chick doesn't get farther than a few inches away from the hen, while the quail generally stay within a few feet but they do individually roam to the far corners of the pen, which is 14x16 feet. They don't seem to need mothering as much and are more bold and on their own. The quail are not a tight little family group like chicken chicks are, and are more independant. 4 do stick close to the hen who is doing the "left, right, right, left, take one step backward scratch" and pecking at the ground. Every so often she took the chicks over to the feeder and droped some crumbles on the ground for them.
Another thing, the hen wasn't squatting down and warming the chicks very often and when she did the quail weren't in any hurry to get under her, but they eventually came in from the far corners for a warmup. It wasn't cold today, about 85* but I keep thinking how quail are sposed to be kept @ 100* with the temp being lowered 5* each week until the ambient temperature is reached.

Late afternoon I went to town and returned about 9 pm. The stupid chicken hen had left the chicks on the ground at roosting time and was sleeping by herself in the nestbox. The temperature was a cool 75*, 2 quail were dead, 3 more were laying on their sides doing the bicycle thing with their legs & feet and the rest were very cold. I gathered them up and put them under the hen in the nestbox and hope they will recover during the night.
Lost 4 out of 14 quail the first day out of the nest, not a very good survival rate. My normal loss rate is about 4 / 100 from hatch to butcher.
_

 

[Quail Jailer]

This is a very interesting thread, however, if it were me hatching with a chicken I would have pulled the chicks into a brooder, just after hatch, to mitigate any disease risks.
but very interesting indeed.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

If I wanted to insure their survival and vigor that's what I would have done too. In a brooder with heat and eating 24% starter 24/7 is waaay better than eating mostly chicken diseased dirt for only 12 hours a day and being cold all the time.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Lost 1 during the night and another was so pitiful looking this morning that the only humane thing to do was to put it under a light until it perks up.

 

[Quail Jailer]

If I wanted to insure their survival and vigor that's what I would have done too. In a brooder with heat and eating 24% starter 24/7 is waaay better than eating mostly chicken diseased dirt for only 12 hours a day and being cold all the time.

I understand and I was not trying to tell you what to do, I was just saying that for the benefit of anyone that was trying to raise quail with a hen.

Still a very cool experiment, and I understand for it to be carried out, chicks will perish.

 

[Quail Jailer]

Lost 1 during the night and another was so pitiful looking this morning that the only humane thing to do was to put it under a light until it perks up.

Count him like in a war game, put a tape on him that says "Dead"...lol


(if he survives of course. It would be kinda macabre to put a "dead" label on a dead chick.)