Hatching quail with a chicken

[dc3085]

Great job running this thread. I'm quite interested to see the final outcome.

 

[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.

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.

I understand what you meant and what I was saying was that I agree with what you meant.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

The chicks are looking better today, much more active than yesterday. They had a rough time yesterday. The one I removed and put under the light has recharged and is back with the flock.
Biggest problem was that the tiny chicks would roam off and be too tired to return to moma to warm up. They're getting with the program today, they learned moma means warmth & food so they are sticking close to her now. They're scurrying around her like little cockroaches and pecking at the ground. Every so often they will scurry over to the waterer and drink then scurry back to moma. I never dipped their beaks in it either, they found it on their own. It's a chicken waterer, not a quail waterer, so they are of course walking around in it and pecking at floating debris.

 

[Sill]

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.)

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Well darn, lost another 3. One was already dead when I found it and the other one was laying on it side acting like it was crippled and died a few minutes later. When I returned home around 9 pm ants had reduced the third one, that died while I was gone, to a skeleton. I think the rooster stepped on them. I grabbed Mr Rooster from the roost and booted him from the pen, he's now a freeranger. Maybe him and the other useless gamecock that roams around my place will kill each other.
To avoid a repeat of the nestbox incident I removed the box from the block it was sitting on and placed it on flat ground before I left for the evening. The hen & chicks didn't appreciate my effots and chose to sleep in a hole over in the corner of the pen.
2 days out of the nest and I've lost half the hatch, very dissappointing.

 

[Quail Jailer]

Drat!

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Another died during the night in the nest. He was in the normal sleeping position, didn't look squished or anything. I figured he was probably smothered by the bigger chicken chick.
5 are left. Hopefully the ones that died were the weaklings and the 5 left are the strongest and will survive. I hate to keep losing chicks for no reason but like I said in the beginning, most of the eggs were small cull eggs that produce small weak chicks, eggs that I ordinarily wouldn't hatch in the first place.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

After considering that the larger chicken chick may have been responsible for several of the nightly nest deaths I removed him from the picture.
If these remaining 5 are going to survive, the tiny delicate chicks need all the help they can get!

 

[ChickenLegs13]

A dead one by the feeder today. Probably victim of the large chicken foot. Even the hen is bad about stepping on the chicks.
When a hen is scratching, chicken chicks run in after the hen does the left right right left and step backward deal; the quail chicks run in while the hen is still scratching and accidently get kicked backward about 6 inches or stepped on.

 

[abbadackerygirl]

Oh, too bad! Sorry for your little loss. (Little, but large.)