How many Quail for a 5x5 foot area?

[FloorCandy]

I’ve found that my birds seem happiest at about 2 sq ft per bird. Most of my pens are 6x4, so 24 sq ft, and I’ve had great success with 10-12 hens and 2 males in that space.

Mine love cinderblocks, and they’re great for breaking line of sight in a chase, and they also love to hang out inside and on top of them. I have a long rectangular plastic planter box that I cut entry holes in, and it’s actually become a very popular place to lay eggs. They also like the big T connectors for sewer pipes, you can buy them at Home Depot for like $3.50, be sure you get the sewer ones and not the heavy full pvc ones, as they cost 3x as much.

You’ll want to be sure you ring the cage with an apron of some sort. I ring mine with cinder blocks or patio blocks. It keeps rodents from digging under and getting in, and it also prevents the Quail from accidentally digging out. Quail love to dig pits and lay in them, and they favor pen corners, eventually they make some pretty deep holes.

As long as the pen is secure and predator proof, you don’t need to force them into a coop at night, they’ll just bed down wherever they feel like it. You do want plenty of hides, but be certain you can see and reach all areas, because they just lay eggs wherever they were standing when the mood struck, it seems they’re often in a hard to reach area.

 

[FloorCandy]

IMO, the 1 sq ft per bird rule applies more to birds in cages than in ground pens. Ground pens are going to require quite a bit more space as there droppings are on the ground with them vs when they are in a wire pen and it falls to the ground away from where they are. I throw down a bag of shavings in my ground pens and turn it over with a rake every so often and change it out completely every few months or when I decide it needs it.

Remember it's better to have fewer, healthier, happier birds then to have a whole bunch that are unhealthy and disease ridden from lack of space. I keep 11 Bobwhites in a 7X12 enclosure. If I went off the 1 sq ft per bird rule in a ground pen then that means I could house 84 quail in that pen. They would literally be wading around in there own crap in no time. More space is required for ground pens unless you are going to clean it just about every single day.

Wire pens work fine with 1 sq ft per bird. All the birds I raise for eating I keep in off the ground 3x8 pens and have been for years and they do just fine. I actually will run them a bit tighter at times then 1 sq ft per bird with no trouble at all ( I would not run them any less than 1 sq ft per bird on birds you are keeping for your layers and what not). Just keep food and water on them at all times and you will be fine.

Bobwhites have different needs than Coturnix, I don’t think anyone would suggest 1 sq ft per bob during mating season.

if you mix and turn the litter and add more regularly, your birds won’t be wading in poop. While I find 2 ft per to be ideal, 1 ft is very common and popular for cots, especially if you’re only keeping hens in the pen.

 

[IT Farmer]

Bobwhites have different needs than Coturnix, I don’t think anyone would suggest 1 sq ft per bob during mating season.

if you mix and turn the litter and add more regularly, your birds won’t be wading in poop. While I find 2 ft per to be ideal, 1 ft is very common and popular for cots, especially if you’re only keeping hens in the pen.

"if you mix and turn the litter and add more regularly, your birds won’t be wading in poop".
"More space is required for ground pens unless you are going to clean it just about every single day."

So we have both agreed. You can run them with less space but it requires more cleaning effort to keep their area clean. Just want to point these things out so people know what to expect when getting into something new.

 

[FloorCandy]

"if you mix and turn the litter and add more regularly, your birds won’t be wading in poop".
"More space is required for ground pens unless you are going to clean it just about every single day."

So we have both agreed. You can run them with less space but it requires more cleaning effort to keep their area clean. Just want to point these things out so people know what to expect when getting into something new.

Yes I guess we have agreed that more birds =more poop=more work, but I also agreed with my first grade teacher that 2 + 10 is more than 2 + 5, it’s basic math. No one is disagreeing there, the OP is looking for opinions on how many birds to keep in a ground pen that they described to us, so driving your point about birds on wire is irrelevant. someone who wants to go out and put each bird inside a coop at night for their safety and comfort is probably not interested in cramming more in on wire.

Most people who choose to keep birds on the ground and not on wire, do so for the happiness and quality of life of the birds. If you want to have almost no cleanup, then go ahead and pack them in on wire. Any time you add more animals to an area, the upkeep increases, keeping animals requires effort, if you consider raking 25 sq ft 2x per week and dumping half a bag of chips in every 1-2 weeks to be some kind of backbreaking work you need to prepare people for, perhaps wire is best for you. But this is pretty low maintenance in the poultry world.

There’s nothing wrong with ranching quail on wire, but read your audience friend, this person is clearly not looking to factory farm Quail to feed their homestead.

 

[FauxintheCoop]

Yes. Does it have a roof and no holes larger than a half inch?
Hardware cloth covered?

It will, there's nothing built yet but it will have .5" mesh and a solid roof

 

[FauxintheCoop]

Do you have a roof over the 5x5 area?

It will! It's not build yet but the roof will be about 65 inches high

 

[FauxintheCoop]

I’ve found that my birds seem happiest at about 2 sq ft per bird. Most of my pens are 6x4, so 24 sq ft, and I’ve had great success with 10-12 hens and 2 males in that space.

Mine love cinderblocks, and they’re great for breaking line of sight in a chase, and they also love to hang out inside and on top of them. I have a long rectangular plastic planter box that I cut entry holes in, and it’s actually become a very popular place to lay eggs. They also like the big T connectors for sewer pipes, you can buy them at Home Depot for like $3.50, be sure you get the sewer ones and not the heavy full pvc ones, as they cost 3x as much.

You’ll want to be sure you ring the cage with an apron of some sort. I ring mine with cinder blocks or patio blocks. It keeps rodents from digging under and getting in, and it also prevents the Quail from accidentally digging out. Quail love to dig pits and lay in them, and they favor pen corners, eventually they make some pretty deep holes.

As long as the pen is secure and predator proof, you don’t need to force them into a coop at night, they’ll just bed down wherever they feel like it. You do want plenty of hides, but be certain you can see and reach all areas, because they just lay eggs wherever they were standing when the mood struck, it seems they’re often in a hard to reach area.

This is super helpful! Thank you so much is it worth it to put wire running, buried, under the area?

 

[IT Farmer]

Yes I guess we have agreed that more birds =more poop=more work, but I also agreed with my first grade teacher that 2 + 10 is more than 2 + 5, it’s basic math. No one is disagreeing there, the OP is looking for opinions on how many birds to keep in a ground pen that they described to us, so driving your point about birds on wire is irrelevant. someone who wants to go out and put each bird inside a coop at night for their safety and comfort is probably not interested in cramming more in on wire.

Most people who choose to keep birds on the ground and not on wire, do so for the happiness and quality of life of the birds. If you want to have almost no cleanup, then go ahead and pack them in on wire. Any time you add more animals to an area, the upkeep increases, keeping animals requires effort, if you consider raking 25 sq ft 2x per week and dumping half a bag of chips in every 1-2 weeks to be some kind of backbreaking work you need to prepare people for, perhaps wire is best for you. But this is pretty low maintenance in the poultry world.

There’s nothing wrong with ranching quail on wire, but read your audience friend, this person is clearly not looking to factory farm Quail to feed their homestead.

What? I raise my quail on the ground. I wasn't pushing the idea to raise birds on wire. How you came to that conclusion is beyond me. But I am also not pushing the idea that everyone should get 1 bird for every square foot in there ground pen.

 

[FloorCandy]

This is super helpful! Thank you so much is it worth it to put wire running, buried, under the area?

I have one small pen with a wire bottom that I put bedding over and it is getting rusty and worn in the wettest places. Your best bet, unless you have some really relentless predators would probably be to put extra wire at the bottom and orient it out over the ground around the pen, and then put patio blocks or something like that over it. If you look at the Omlet brand runs, you’ll see how they have a wire skirt around the edges, many people find this very helpful, I don’t have serious predators, just rodents, hawks, and stray cats, so my primary goal is containment, and I just ring mine with blocks.

 

[CovidtimeQuail]

If you have 1 pen, you can have 1 male. If you have 2 pens, you can have 2 males, one in each. . .

Don't build 1 big one, make two smaller ones and keep the sets separate. You can put a removable divider in between if you think you might change your mind later. Mine love living on the ground, but you need to bury wire around the edges. My wire is lightly buried, but has a 3" wide ribbon of hardware cloth buried horizontally underground to keep the birds from digging out, and the predators from digging in. Our largest predators are rats. If you have raccoons or foxes, you will need more of a barrier than what I use.

Update: I just read the post from @FloorCandy. You can keep 2 males and 10-12 females in that space -- the biggest downside is that if you only have 1 pen, if there is a fight or the birds don't get along, you have nowhere else to send them to.