I'm changing his name to Sylvester!

[HobokenChickenEmergency]

My son's cat, Ranch, pulled the heads off 2 of my poor quail!

I have them in the kitchen because their hutch won't fit in my bedroom with all dh's snake cages surrounding our bed. Once the quail graduated from the brooding pen/tank, I put them in their humongous hutch. They love it, for the most part. But the 1st day they were in it, Ranch lured them to the wire and popped off one of their heads.

I spent 2 hours twist-tying fabric up on the 5 bottom inches of wire on the sides. I figured, if the cats couldn't SEE the quail, they wouldn't mess with them. I was right, but somehow the fabric frayed right off the twist-ties (I think the kids helped). This morning, Ranch lured his little victims to the wire and popped off another head. Hmmm. I can either get rid off the cat and break my son's heart, or I can solve an engineering problem.

Really, the fabric was only a temporary fix so....I decided to exercise my brain. The first thing I thought of is those slats people weave through chain-link fences. Dh suggested cardboard, but that doesn't seem sturdy enough so I suggested soda straws. He tested out a spot, and it will work perfectly. Of course, it'll take about 2500 straws and probably 6 hours but it'll work, and it won't be as delicate as the pink satin was.

I'll post pics if I ever get done, just in case anyone else has the same dilemma in the future.

 

[saddina]

Before your hands cramp up...

We had a similar issue with bunnies. We got a roll of that garden border edging (stuff's 6-8 inches tall), that's used to keep mulch in garden beds, used a hole punch every so far and ziptied it to the cage for a guard.

http://images.google.com/imgres?img...v=/images?q=plastic+garden+edging&gbv=2&hl=en

 

[HobokenChickenEmergency]

Thanks for the idea. I would have used that instead, but dh liked the straws better. I kinda HAVE to humor him sometimes, since he's putting up with my poultry fetish.

He helped, too. We put on an oldies tape last night (because I'm the only one in the world who still prefers cassettes to cd's. LOL)and put in about 3/4 of the straws in an hour. I have a few more to go, but the kids are bugging me to put up their pool, so I'll have to wait to do the rest.

It looks pretty nice. Very colorful. I'll post pictures tonight.