How long will coturnix quail lay reliably? +a few other questions.

[monarc23]

Quote:
I wish I had help here for ya

living where you live this probably isn't pratcical but if you're willing I wonder if this will help some I know it helped whenI had a rabbitry and it would get this hot here (only for like a day or two) frozen water bottles in their cages. Or fans on them with the fans blowing on frozen water bottles. Though I can imagine in pheonix those wont stay frozen very long

that's a hard one!!!! Though if you do find something that masters the problem for you please post about it because it would be really helpful info for someone who is in a climate like yours with coturnix.

I know mine pant in 80 degree weather so I can only imagine lol!

 

[Boyd]

A swamp cooler may be the ticket for Rach. Cheap and easy!

 

[rachel]

I do the frozen water bottle thing for the chickens. I'll start doing it for the quail too. Yeesh. I'm going to need a separate freezer just for animal water bottles. I noticed that the quail didn't really start panting until it was 90+, maybe they'll do a bit of acclimating? Another thing I'm going to try is just having a bucket of water on the ground and some muslin-like fabric barely in it, the wicking action should keep the whole piece wet and the breezes should act like a natural swamp cooler. Soon the lows will be in the 90's.... sigh.

 

[CheerfulChaos]

Howdy Rachel, nice to see another quail lover in Phoenix. My quail are panting now also but they seem to be doing OK. I mist them with a misting bottle during the hottest part of the day. I have them on my back covered patio under our ceiling fan and they still pant. We have misters rigged around the outer ceiling edge that we can turn on when it gets ridiculously hot (105 and up). I also fill their dusting bowls with damp sand and they love that (though it doesn't last very long, as you can imagine)! We also use the frozen water bottle trick with our chickens and our quail. I like your idea for a cheap version of a swamp cooler, I'll have to try that. If you're cage isn't too far from a water line, you could hook up a hose to one of those stand misters or one of those "personal" misters that are very small and bendable that you could attach directly to their cage. I know water is too expensive to do this all day, but it could give your birds some relief during the late afternoon when temps are at there highest. You could even put it on a timer if you're not home much, but I would angle the mist up instead of ON them. It's starting to get that time of year that we know and love when the water coming out of the hose will scald between 5 am and 11 pm.

You can see a picture of my set up for quail on this link:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=2032774

 

[rachel]

I love your set-up! Is that four cages of 16 quail? Also, did you buy those pop bottle waterers in town here, or did you have to order them? I looked at a couple of feed stores and couldn't find them. Today I tried putting a section of wet scrap cotton fabric on the bottom of their cages and they LOVED it. Seemed to really cool them down, they all sat on it and stopped panting.

 

[Boyd]

water expensive? ACK! I sorta forgot the difference when I said swamp cooler. I suppose it's something that's a hot commodity in Arizona. (no pun intended)

 

[CheerfulChaos]

Yes, since everything here is drip or flood irrigation if you want to grow anything here except cactus, water is EXPENSIVE!

Rachel, I was able to find everything but the popwater bottle bases and springs in the area, but I had to order the popbottle waterer's on-line from (get this) gundogsupply.com. They are very cheap, but they will charge about 5 or 6 bucks for shipping. If you're going to use the popbottle waterers, I would suggest you get one more than you need for your number of cages, so if one breaks or cracks with the heat (they are plastic) of summer, you're not out of luck. There are metal versions of these waterer bases, but it's hard enough as it is to keep the drinking water from becoming too hot in the summer, so I didn't get those. We made two cages approximately four feet long by 20" wide by 14" high. Then we divided those two cages to make four cages about two feet long each. Two of the cages have 6 quail in them (1 male, 5 females) and one cage has 5 quail in it (1 male, 4 females). One cage has my older birds in it and it's only got 1 male and three females in it. In that cage, the females are a little over bred by the male, and I want to try to move one of my extra females in the other cages to this cage, but I'm waiting till they are fully mature and laying eggs (another week or so). So I have a total of 21 quail, 3 cages of Jumbo Browns, 1 cage of standard sized tibetans and tuxedos. The floor of the cages is sloped 2" using 1/2" x 1" hardware cloth, so the eggs just roll out to the front. My oldest daughter collects the eggs, and we wanted to have it set up so that she could collect them with out her having to open the cage doors and possibly have them fly away. This is also one of the reasons why we have outside feeders and waterers that can be filled entirely from the outside. I didn't wan't an automatic watering system as I was afraid the water from the hose would scald during the day. I use the popwater bottles and put those frozen long tubes of ice in the water bottles to cool them down during the day, if needed (we use an ice tray made for freezing ice cubes in shapes that fit in a water bottle). The inside dividers for the two cages as well as the outside end of the cages have a white hard plastic sheet that I cut out of the top of a sterilte container from Walmart. These act as our windbreaks. Other than that, they get plenty of airflow and movement to help them keep cool. HTH I'll have to try the damp cloth trick! Sounds fast, cheap, and easy!

 

[CARS]

I just received my pop bottle waters yesterday from gundogsupply!
Actually, I ordered through MS Quail Forever and they sublet it through GDS.

.83 each plus shipping!!! Mc Murray wants close to $6.00 for 2 of the same thing

 

[CheerfulChaos]

Yeah, that's why I went thru gundogsupply also. The prices everywhere else were $2.00 and up per waterer.

 

[rachel]

Thanks! I just ordered a dozen from gundog, it says they're out of stock on the website but I called and they were in stock. Today I combined the wet fabric/frozen waterbottle thing. I put the wet fabric on the cage floor around 11, and then at noon I put an open frozen water bottle on top of that, so that they can lean up against it, drink the cold water out of the opening and any that drips will be absorbed on the fabric, keeping it wet and the birds cool.

Do the birds lay everyday in summer here, or do they slow down like the chickens?

When people build cages where the eggs roll out the front, what keeps the quail in if there's a 2" gap at the base of the cage? I'm building more cages soon and I think I'm going to do something like your set-up, it seems very efficient and it looks good. If you don't put dividers between the cages do the males try and fight through the cage walls?