Modular Quail pen

[Nuchi]

I am going to try and keep this simple I have been doing a lot of research and I should of been keeping more notes and going back I am having a hard time finding the info on most of this.

Is 2 inch over 2 feet enough of an angle for eggs to roll out?
How big should the hole be for even a double yolked JMF jumbo egg to roll out without question?

I am doing triangle to baseball diamond shaped holes for food trough, to reduce mess. What size should the holes be for quail and how high up? I was thinking 3 by 3in at widest points. The troughs themselves will likely be converted PVC fence posts, as they are easy to clean and work with. But am looking at more cost effective things.

On a hot day on a dry diet or mash(clarify) how much water do quail typically drink?

If it works out well I will be posting some sort of DIY on it. There might be more I will edit if so but I think that is the main things.

 

[Nuchi]

Oh yeah whats the pros and cons between these horizontal water nipples.

And this style.

 

[Erkenstein]

Hi. 2 inches over 2 feet will work well. My roll-out has about a one-inch gap. If you are adding anything but full-sized birds, be careful that they can't squeeze out; I lost some younglings that way and now block off the gap with 2x2s that I remove to retrieve eggs.

My birds lay most of their eggs in the sand box, though, so I still end up opening the cages to retrieve them.

 

[Erkenstein]

I'm going with cups rather than nipples because the nipples will drop water into the litter trays and I want the trays as dry as possible.

 

[mdees88]

1" in 12" slope will work. I have a 1.5" gap and it works well. I made it tall enough so an egg could pass through even if it was standing up longways. Any large (JMF jumbo) birds that are 6 weeks old will not try and escape. At least mine have not.... I block them off for younger birds until they start laying.

 

[Erkenstein]

I measured my roll-out gap again and it's actually 1.5 inches as mdees88 recommends.

 

[Nuchi]

Thank you so much for the helpful info!

So this style should be better? I am going to be using using pvc pipe with gravity fed water supply. There will be around 100 or more quail on the one system when in full production. It also freezes here.

So something like 3-4" up should be for the adults food and water?

 

[mdees88]

The vertical nipples do drop some water when the birds drink from them but the horizontal nipples supposedly do not. I have 50 horizontal nipples but I haven't installed them yet. You can see in this video that they do not make a mess with the horizontal nipples.