I wanna start hatching and raising buttons - looking for dialog :)

[T3rrorToff33]

I've been looking into raising/breeding quail myself for agessss and me and my mom have 100% decided it'd be really fun and possibly even useful to do.

We were thinking about having an outdoor aviary for Japanese quail for months now, but my mom is gonna have heart surgery soon and will be in rehab for a while so a big project like that would be impossible to pull off.

I've been personally really invested in Chinese button quail because I think they're stupidly cute, their color morphs are gorgeous and obviously they're more practical since I already have a large enclosure with 2 levels that is easy to clean and maintain as well as modify. (It covers an entire wall of my living room, and my 2 quail regularly fly in it with no incident)

Basically the reason I've settled on the button quail route is because I've been keeping a pair of males for quite a while now, and one of them made it a habit to pluck the others feathers out, so I'm considering culling him if he won't stop (he's currently in solitairy confinement to give my other quail a chance to grow his feathers back). Since I don't want my lovely blueface boy to be on his own the rest of his life I called the breeder I got them from to ask if he has any hens but he has significantly downsized and hasn't had chicks from his 2 remaining hens and his roo since may.

While talking I ended up saying that I've been thinking about getting an incubator and just hatching my own quail and he essentially agreed that it's very rewarding and if I really want to try it I should go for it.

Now I know that they're tiny and not super useful for food production, but also meat is meat and I've culled 2 quail, skinned 3, and while each quail has about enough meat for making a single chicken nugget out of, I think that even button quail can be a nice meat portion for a meal when you hatch 30 eggs and need something to do with the extra roos.

Basically a big interest I have is to raise the chicks with as much human contact as possible and select the adults with the most docile and chill personalities for further breeding. What I don't like about the quail I've bought as adults is just how skittish they are, but I had one quail hen that was very curious and less flighty than the others so I know that it's a trait that exists in these birds and I would love to see how far I can push it in a couple of generations! And I want to give my blueface roo the chance to father chicks because he is a LOVELY fella, a true gentleman. He treats hens with lots of care and hasn't started a single fight, even when I had him with a hen and another roo for 2 months by mistake. I'm convinced he would give me some wonderful blueface chicks for my project.

 

[The Birb King]

They are pretty easy to raise and breed. I currently have 5 males and 2 females. I lost my 3 older females a few months ago to disease they are pretty fragile so I was thinking of hatching some more eggs in hopes of getting more females as my 2 poor females are bald from the males I need to seperate them soon. Mine live in a section of my chicken coop currently but I'm going to move them into my barn back in their old cage soon. There is really no point in eating them if you ask me they are too small. And they are very hard to tame. Mine will eat out of my hand, but they do not like to be touched or held. My youngest 3 I even spend a bunch of time with them as babies and held them a lot, but they are still a bit skittish. They are really just ornamental pets to watch its hard to tame them. I have really enjoyed raising them for the past few years though, and they eggs are so fun to hatch!

 

[Nabiki]

FYI, button quail do best in pairs, so you may not have as many extra males as you think. They are beautiful, make charming noises, and are fun to watch. If you put them in a place like you describe in your living room, they will probably get plenty of human activity around them, so they won't be as flighty. Don't expect them to be tame, though.

 

[T3rrorToff33]

FYI, button quail do best in pairs, so you may not have as many extra males as you think. They are beautiful, make charming noises, and are fun to watch. If you put them in a place like you describe in your living room, they will probably get plenty of human activity around them, so they won't be as flighty. Don't expect them to be tame, though.

Well that's what I want to put to the test. I had a button quail hen that would come up and snag treats out of my hand and almost never take flight from being spooked, compared to my 2 I still have after she passed, theres a definitive variation in temperament which could very well be encouraged by selective breeding. basic idea is to see which quail are most "brave" once mature, and separating those into a breeding group and doing the same with the offspring later on.

this may be fully unrelated but that quail was also cinnamon, I want to start out with a mix of colors for aesthetic reasons (cinnamon, blue face, redbreast, silver with piebald is what im thinking) and I would be intrigued by noting down the colors of the ones that make it into the breeding group, I will have a sample size too small for gathering valid data, it'll just be a lil interesting to see i think

 

[Nabiki]

Oh, you can definitely breed for temperament. I do with my coturnix, and I remember that it only took about 60 years to breed a line of domestic foxes.

 

[T3rrorToff33]

Oh, you can definitely breed for temperament. I do with my coturnix, and I remember that it only took about 60 years to breed a line of domestic foxes.

The insane part about the fox project is that they were working with the foxes in quite questionable conditions, especially the fact that the experiment wasn't initially for making pet foxes, they also bred another line of foxes to be more fearful and aggressive.

I'm not a fan of the Russian fox experiment because it cemented the idea in people's heads that just because the foxes were more trusting of humans doesn't make them domesticated , and the foxes still make lousy pets because they're essentially lab animals that were interested for 60 years. It definitely is a proof of concept but just really don't like that it's now selling the idea of pet foxes to the public.

I feel like button quail are in an interesting spot just like fur farm foxes where they've been selectively bred for their appearance with temperament and tolerance with humans being left to rhe side for decades. Good thing about quail is that they have a much shorter generation time than foxes, so getting quail that don't break their necks when you reach in to clean their food bowl shouldn't take 60 Years at least

 

[Nabiki]

I get upset about the domestic foxes because so many people think, "Oh, cute!", get one, and treat it like a dog.

Foxes aren't dogs. Quail aren't chickens.

 

[Gigachad poultry]

I actually made an article about button quail I can get the link to it!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/keeping-breeding-and-raising-button-quail.78697/

 

[T3rrorToff33]

I actually made an article about button quail I can get the link to it!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/keeping-breeding-and-raising-button-quail.78697/

is it possible to seperate specific pairs and have them rejoin a bigger group later? or would that be too stressful. because as far as i can tell they can do well in bigger groups with enough space

 

[Nabiki]

If you're putting your pairs into a large enough enclosure with plenty of hiding places, there shouldn't be a problem.