Hatching quail with a chicken

[dc3085]

You've tried about everything you're able, not much else you could do. I think you have found the biggest non infectious issue of hatching quail under chickens.

 

[Quail Jailer]

You've tried about everything you're able, not much else you could do. I think you have found the biggest non infectious issue of hatching quail under chickens.

Now just a minute, he hasn't tried EVERYTHING until he builds little suits of chick armor out of bubble wrap....

And please take photos...

 

[ohiogoatgirl]

Well it still proves a chicken can brood them. I would still love to have a lil silkie or banty hen to brood cots for me and pop them into brooders. Rather feed a broody hen than worry over a bator and pay electric bill. Jmo.

 

[Quail Jailer]

And, when the power goes out most hens keep working....

 

[dc3085]

Well it still proves a chicken can brood them. I would still love to have a lil silkie or banty hen to brood cots for me and pop them into brooders. Rather feed a broody hen than worry over a bator and pay electric bill. Jmo.

And you can spend the worry that saved on the bator, for this poultry disease list. Quail can get a whole lot of the things off that list from chickens.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Wow, a day & a half without any deaths!
Maybe these 4 will make it. These are the same 4 that stuck close to the hen from the beginning. They seem to be learning to avoid the hen's feet as she scratches. I rarely see them get kicked & rolled across the pen like a soccer ball any more. When she scratches they run away. Then she says "buk buk buk" and they run back and peck at the dirt. They're starting to act like chickens, all they do is walk around all day scratching and eating dirt. They're constantly foraging but I'm concerned they're not eating properly. I hardly see them around the feeder but I guess the hen is turning up some kind of food with her scratching, other wise they'd be hungry and hanging around the feeder. They don't seem to be growing very fast. I guess the difference is my incubator & brooder quail eat 24% starter 24 hours per day and these only eat dirt 12 hours per day.

 

[abbadackerygirl]

I have watched something on Youtube today, where the farmer also put quail under a broody hen, only she used a bantam, and kept them indoors away from everyone else for about a week. She had a lot more luck it seemed.


Try throwing a bunch more food on the ground. A BUNCH. Maybe that will help them eat. You should still grind it up as if they were in the brooder.

 

[GuineaFowling]

Such a cool project. I would love to try this but instead of a regular bantam I would use a serama hen. They are really small and I think are perfect for my bobwhite eggs. Also would be a smaller risk of dying.

 

[dc3085]

My friend gave his serama some quail eggs and she went un-broody the next day lol.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Well now I can say I've seen it done. QJ can come over here to this thread and do his I told you so dance again. I didn't mean to imply it was impossible just that it's not successful enough  to deal with the hassle of decontaminating the little buggers. And I can't in good conscience suggest to someone to raise quail under or in contact with a disease basket...oh umm, I meant chicken. Seriously though I'm glad you did this, and if your up to it I have another experiment for you. 

Most of what I've read says our coturnix aren't broody mostly because we have incubated them so long, I believe this is true. You have to figure that broodiness as a trait can't have died out too long before the advent of electricity right? 

I've also read that brooding is a learned behavior from being reared in a nest.

What I'm suggesting would be to keep all a pair of them long enough to see if they'll try to brood their eggs. That is of course if they don't exhibit any symptoms of anything harmful to your flock. 

I wasn't ignoring you DC, I found your post interesting from the day you posted it but I wanted to see what happened before my 2 fat dumb fingers wasted a lot of keystrokes talking about it.
You know, I think you may be onto something. "They say" tell us quail have been bred for thousands of years so they have lost the broody instinct. If that's correct, then who's been hatching their eggs for thousands of years?
We know domestic production chickens have had the broodyness bred out because broody chickens don't lay eggs for months at a time. You know of anybody that has ever culled a quail for being broody to remove that trait from the gene pool?
Last week I culled several hens because they were walking around all puffed up looking like a porcupine and chattering & barking and attacking the other birds in the cages and also attacking me at feeding time & when I gathered eggs. Thinking back, maybe I culled them because they were broody?
If quail have been selectively bred for thousands of years they should be domesticated by now and walking around the yard like a fat tame clucking chicken instead of flying away at the first chance they get.
If you ask me, that instinct is still there and under the right conditions the behavior can be relearned, if they ever forgot it in the first place.

A good example of this is that 4 of the chicks naturally stuck tight to the hen; their instincts told them to seek out a nuturing mother figure. Those 4 are also the most active & thriving ones of the bunch. Those that were independant and roamed far away and got cold & hungry either died or learned that the real world isn't a constant 95* with a floor sprinkled with chick starter and sticking close to moma is their best chance of survival.

Anyway, if they can survive the looming pestilence of chicken disease & misery I'll remove the chickens and dedicate the pen to the quail and I bet that in several months I'll have a flock of quail that will reproduce naturally. But I'm remembering the old saying "Don't count your quail before they hatch." Or something like that.