few months ago a good friend of mine give me a 4 coturnix as a gift, golden coturnix,very tamed and friendly, i keep them in the garage and fall in love with them. next thing i know they started laying eggs, tasty little eggs! my wife love it! my son love it, they're easy to take care of and cost little to nothing, so i sugest to get more quails, my wife ok with it. here we go! i did a little research on the internet and get 50 jumbo brown coturnix hatching eggs from ebay, a nice hova bator, built a nice brooder, waterer, drinker, chick food...placed the eggs in the incubator, poor some water in the bottom ... and forget it... 18 days later 49 quails hatched ! what the hell? i expected less than 50% hatch rate ! i rushed to homedepot to buy more woods and wire to build bigger cages, 3 feet wide and 8 feet long, my wife impressed ! 3 weeks later my baby chicks ready for grow out pen, i decided to raise them with the old quails, 25 on the top cage and 28 on the bottom cage, i fed them with 28% turkey starter and place the newspappers under the pen to catch their dropping, hummm! i noted that they poop alot ! but doesn't smell that bad! i cleaned the cages and removed their poops every 3 days but my wife suggest to clean every 2 days because the poops are started to building up ! the garage begin to smell a little ! so i decided to clean the cages and removed poop everday, ran out of newspappers ! i used saw dust and sweep the cages's floor with my broom, the garage getting smell like amonia now! i agree with my wife to take them outside, i enlist my mother in law to help me carry the cages outside, 3 of us strugling to move them to the backyard but we did it, went to homedepot for more ply woods and build around my cages, it look nice ! look like a chiken coop now ! my wife worry about the HOA people but i don't care! i love my quails! my compose pile getting smelly so i bought a big 50 gallons trash can to hold their poops, my trash can is full so i buy an other one! i started to notice that they shed alot too ! feather everywhere in my yard! more than several times i accidently dragged some quail poops inside the house with my shoes! my wife has enough! she told me to down size the quails ! i said "no"! she told me to get rid of the quails! i said " no" !, she said " it's me or the quails" !!!! i just found out san diego really cold at night... outside !
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