INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[PeacefulWalls]

Make the cage from 1/2" or 1/2"x1" material and attach 1/4" or screen wire or cardboard temporarily to the inside bottom 4 or 6". Attach it with wire ties for easy removal.

That will make a nice cage and keep the little buggers from escaping while they are small. When they get bigger, you can remove the screen wire.

Making a cage from hardware cloth can be done easily using the zip type wire ties to attach the various pieces together. It won't work for rodents, since they will chew through them. But it works great for birds. No special tools. Won't rust. Strong enough. Change your mind and you can snip them off and reuse the wire. They are cheap.

John

Great ideas -- thanks!

 

[pbirdhaven]

It's good to know about the gnats. So far I haven't noticed any but will certainly be staying aware now. Have cursed the previous owner for planting the bush honeysuckle because it's everywhere here, but maybe that's a good thing.

 

[Old Salt 1945]

Just want to clarify -- is 1/2" hardware cloth too big for quail chicks, then? We should get 1/4" instead?

Here is how I would build the cage.

Assume final cage: 24x18x36".

Using 1/2" x 1" hardware cloth, 36" wide, cut

2 36x18
2 36x24
2 18x24

Use fine file or heavy duty sandpaper to remove the razor-sharp edges from the cut wire or buy a gallon of peroxide and several gross of band-aids.

Using zip wire ties, assemble the pieces into a box.

Cut out what ever size door opening(s) you want. For quail, they are usually put in the top. If you put the doors on the side, you will have to put the quail you catch back in the cage while you chase the ones that escaped while you were catching the one that you have to put back so that.............. Even when put on top, don't make it too big or you will have to put back...........

Cut the doors from the same material, making them 1 or 2 inches larger than the door opening. Attach them with wire ties as the hinges. To receive an "A" for "Neat & Tidy", orient the door 1/2"x1" openings the same as the cage material. If you don't, the quail will be traumatized and when they escape into the wild, their friends will laugh at them.

To make the latch, bend a coat-hanger wire, or preferably something a little springier as follows:

Starting at one end, at about 2", bend it 90 degrees.
At about another 2", bend it around a broom handle a couple of times.

At this point, the wire should still be sorta, kinda in a straight line, except for the tail from the first bend hanging down.

At about another 2", bend it 90 degrees the other way from the first 90.

This should make kind of a half swastika with a curly-que in the middle.

Then bend a hook on the end either to the right for a right-hand latch or to the left for a left-hand latch.

Cut off the extra.

John

 

[Old Salt 1945]

I was reading my instructions for the spring latch and decided I probably couldn't make one with those instructions.

A picture being worth a thousand words, voila! I bent one up with soldering wire for an example.




Attach to the cage door with wire ties in the spots marked. The little hook hooks over one of the horizontal wires on the cage.

The spring depicted will be for a right-hinge left-latch door. For right-latch, reverse the spiral and hook.

Try it. You'll like it. It's free.

John

 

[Old Salt 1945]

Got my Add-a-motor automatic door opener working. Now my feathered piggies don't have to wait for me to drag my lazy carcass out of the rack, slurp up my coffee, and meander out to the barn. It opens automatically at 8:00 am. It closes at 9:30 pm because when I set it for 9:00 pm, it trapped all the chickens out in the yard. I still have to go out and manually open it and catch all the ducks and toss them in. They haven't caught on that lights out is at sundown. I also have to go out and toss all the ducks out of the henhouse each morning. Dumb ducks!



Note the nite light. Don't want the little dears stumbling around in the dark.

Rooster Cogburn knows when to hit the roost. 7:15 pm finds him here. Can't let him in with the rest of the chickens. He would probably kill them.

His food and water is attached to the 2x4 wall support. He very seldom eats anything. I think he lives on mostly bugs and handouts from the neighbors. He roosts on top of an old parts cabinet in the barn. He will attack anyone who hasn't kicked him. He doesn't attack me, anymore.

I moved the 2-week old chicks (Wyandotte, Cochin, Jersey Giant) to the henhouse. There is a partition sectioning off a 4'x8' area for them. Heat lamp 24-7. Hay bedding. Seem happy. Picture before I moved them.


The nipple watering buckets are working VERY well. As are the new version feeders. Both are simple to make and very cheap (as am I). I can show how I made them, if anyone is interested.


A random thought.
I was talking to my brother-in-law yesterday. I reminded him of when he was a student at Rose Hulman Polytechnic in Terre Haute. He had borrowed a double-barreled shotgun from me. He would get up early throw on his hunting clothes and a big floppy-brimmed hat, with the shotgun over his shoulder and walk across campus to a nearby lake and go duck hunting. He overheard comments to the effect of "there goes that fat guy hunting again".
I offered him $100 to re-create the scene so I could get photos. He declined.
Things have changed a lot since 1976.

John

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Quote: Thanks!

Quote: Thank you John, I had forgotten them, have had several barn cats and my pug neutered/spayed there.
http://www.lowcostclinic.org/
I added the website.
http://www.lowcostclinic.org/Prices.pdf
For the price list

 

[Chic-n-farmer]

Here is how I would build the cage.

Assume final cage: 24x18x36".

Using 1/2" x 1" hardware cloth, 36" wide, cut

2 36x18
2 36x24
2 18x24

Use fine file or heavy duty sandpaper to remove the razor-sharp edges from the cut wire or buy a gallon of peroxide and several gross of band-aids.

Using zip wire ties, assemble the pieces into a box.

Cut out what ever size door opening(s) you want. For quail, they are usually put in the top. If you put the doors on the side, you will have to put the quail you catch back in the cage while you chase the ones that escaped while you were catching the one that you have to put back so that.............. Even when put on top, don't make it too big or you will have to put back...........

Cut the doors from the same material, making them 1 or 2 inches larger than the door opening. Attach them with wire ties as the hinges. To receive an "A" for "Neat & Tidy", orient the door 1/2"x1" openings the same as the cage material. If you don't, the quail will be traumatized and when they escape into the wild, their friends will laugh at them.

To make the latch, bend a coat-hanger wire, or preferably something a little springier as follows:

Starting at one end, at about 2", bend it 90 degrees.
At about another 2", bend it around a broom handle a couple of times.

At this point, the wire should still be sorta, kinda in a straight line, except for the tail from the first bend hanging down.

At about another 2", bend it 90 degrees the other way from the first 90.

This should make kind of a half swastika with a curly-que in the middle.

Then bend a hook on the end either to the right for a right-hand latch or to the left for a left-hand latch.

Cut off the extra.

John

I am going to add my 2 cents on to John's Quail Cage Instructions.

My only experience is with Coturnix and Japanese Painted Button quail, so these observations come from that,

I would avoid using 1/2" x 1" hardware cloth at all. We recently had our first raccoon trouble and found that they are fully capable of reaching through that size and ripping a snack off of a poor sleeping quail.

1/2" wire solved that problem.

Quail startle extremely easy and their reflex is flight. They explode from the ground with great force. They can break their own necks, on the cage roof, from that force. For that reason cage height should be quite tall or really short. I have found that 10 inches in height keeps my quail calm and they don't bounce of the ceiling.

For the bottom of the cage I use 1/4" hardware cloth. I think it is easier on their tiny feet. The drawback to that size is that not all the droppings fall through. I also like to put boards in the cage so they do not have to be on wire all the time.

God Bless the inventor of zip ties!! How did I ever survive without them? You can use the handy rabbit wire clips on the 1/2" cloth, but they won't fit on the 1/4' cloth. Use zip ties like John suggests. Cheap and fast. (The zip ties. Not John.

)

Coturnix quail are terribly messy eaters, in my experience. They seem to stick their entire heads down into the feeders and shake them, Food just flies out of the feeders! Do your homework on the feeders or be prepared for a startling amount of waste.

Be aware that chicken math applies to quail, too. They are mature and laying at 6 weeks of age. The eggs hatch in 17 days. It would be real easy to get carried away in no time.

 

[Too Fast]

Back again! Got the roosts in quick tonight.

2'4" up. 14" from the wall. 18" from the ceiling. 13" from each other.

Good? Bad? Otherwise?

I'd say good. The roost will be indoors, right?

This is why I asked, I don't know how lax or strict we should be since we only have a backyard. Thanks for the welcome...I've mainly been lurking cause I don't have much to say until my chicks arrive. My DH is now freaking out because we don't have a coop built but I told him they have to be fully feathered to spend the night in the coop outside. We do have some lumber but have to get more to really start building.

I'm with the DH. You better get the coop built, quickly.

 

[Too Fast]

When I used to hunt deer, I found that doe-in-heat scent did an excellent job of repelling my wife. She still mentions that incident occasionally. Available at your local hunting supply store. Try some, everyone (except buck deer) will hate it and give you wide berth.

John

Yes I've seen some funny videos of men getting beaten up/mounted by some bucks after they've used some of that doe-in-heat spray.

 

[Chic-n-farmer]

It's good to know about the gnats. So far I haven't noticed any but will certainly be staying aware now. Have cursed the previous owner for planting the bush honeysuckle because it's everywhere here, but maybe that's a good thing.

They don't seem to stay all summer, but while they are here they are a real threat. I read on the quail forum where someone lost 70 quail in a day.