Hi all,
I'm planning on getting quail this June and am planning the coop/pen construction and design. I have a few questions and pictures to share.
First of all, here is my existing chicken coop for my 7 hens...not where I'd put the quail, just using it as an example of the type of design I'm thinking of replicating for the quail coop.
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The henhouse has roosts, nest boxes, a feeder, a waterer and a heat lamp (it gets pretty cold here in the winter) and the door opens into the pen area which has wire on all sides, including the "roof" of it...probably not necessary for those hens, but I wanted to be extra cautious about keeping animals out and keeping the hens in when I built it 6+ years ago. I let them out free in the backyard fairly often during the non-winter months.
I was thinking of the same type of design for the quail coop...a shed that can be used for housing them and keeping them warm/safe and would have nest boxes and roosts (do quail use roosts?) and feeders and so on. The shed would open into a pen area that would have wire on all sides like the chicken coop, and the pen area would have its own door like the chicken coop does. I would also incorporate evergreen branches into the pen area of the coop since I've heard they like those.
I know that this is not the conventional type housing for quail and that the typical quail housing looks something more like this...
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But since I live in a pretty cold climate and many nights are below freezing with lots of wind and such, I'm not sure how something like that would protect them. It also doesn't seem to give them very much room to walk around in and no real room to fly, plus I wouldn't be able to walk in and interact with them which is something I enjoy doing with the chickens.
I know it's not unheard of to have quail in the type of pen I'm describing, as I've found pictures of quail in similar pens, like these:
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I would most likely be building onto this existing (empty) coop to use as the flight pen area...it hasn't been used in a while and the wind blew away a lot of the tarp and other material covering the roof and sides which is why it looks kind of run down now, but I would fix it up first if it were to be used again.
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So I guess my question to anyone here who has experience with quail is, how safe is it raising them in a design like this?
If it turns out that them being on the ground is a big enough risk, I have a sort of radical idea to basically making the "ground" portion of the flight pen into one big sandbox...building a wooden frame similar to this but larger and surrounding the edges of the entire flight pen:
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...and at the bottom of the "sandbox" would be one or more large sheets of wood to cover the ground. Then there would be no ground with worms and such for them to be infected by and I would fill the "sandbox" area (floor of the flight pen) with cedar chips or mulch or sand or dry dirt or whatever would work best. If I were to implement this idea, would it be likely to work?
Any other tips/advice would be much appreciated
I'm planning on getting quail this June and am planning the coop/pen construction and design. I have a few questions and pictures to share.
First of all, here is my existing chicken coop for my 7 hens...not where I'd put the quail, just using it as an example of the type of design I'm thinking of replicating for the quail coop.
--------------------
--------------------
The henhouse has roosts, nest boxes, a feeder, a waterer and a heat lamp (it gets pretty cold here in the winter) and the door opens into the pen area which has wire on all sides, including the "roof" of it...probably not necessary for those hens, but I wanted to be extra cautious about keeping animals out and keeping the hens in when I built it 6+ years ago. I let them out free in the backyard fairly often during the non-winter months.
I was thinking of the same type of design for the quail coop...a shed that can be used for housing them and keeping them warm/safe and would have nest boxes and roosts (do quail use roosts?) and feeders and so on. The shed would open into a pen area that would have wire on all sides like the chicken coop, and the pen area would have its own door like the chicken coop does. I would also incorporate evergreen branches into the pen area of the coop since I've heard they like those.
I know that this is not the conventional type housing for quail and that the typical quail housing looks something more like this...
--------------------
--------------------
But since I live in a pretty cold climate and many nights are below freezing with lots of wind and such, I'm not sure how something like that would protect them. It also doesn't seem to give them very much room to walk around in and no real room to fly, plus I wouldn't be able to walk in and interact with them which is something I enjoy doing with the chickens.
I know it's not unheard of to have quail in the type of pen I'm describing, as I've found pictures of quail in similar pens, like these:
--------------------
--------------------
I would most likely be building onto this existing (empty) coop to use as the flight pen area...it hasn't been used in a while and the wind blew away a lot of the tarp and other material covering the roof and sides which is why it looks kind of run down now, but I would fix it up first if it were to be used again.
--------------------
--------------------
So I guess my question to anyone here who has experience with quail is, how safe is it raising them in a design like this?
If it turns out that them being on the ground is a big enough risk, I have a sort of radical idea to basically making the "ground" portion of the flight pen into one big sandbox...building a wooden frame similar to this but larger and surrounding the edges of the entire flight pen:
--------------------
--------------------
...and at the bottom of the "sandbox" would be one or more large sheets of wood to cover the ground. Then there would be no ground with worms and such for them to be infected by and I would fill the "sandbox" area (floor of the flight pen) with cedar chips or mulch or sand or dry dirt or whatever would work best. If I were to implement this idea, would it be likely to work?
Any other tips/advice would be much appreciated
