Not for those with a weak heart, what do i do now????? Medical emergency ;)

[Pineapple]

For future reference, here is a humane way to euthanize small birds and small mammals (will not work on cold-blooded animals): http://www.alysion.org/euthanasia/index.php

With quail you can also get a big, heavy, pair of scissors and decapitate them very quickly (less than one second) but that's more "involved" and requires a steady hand as well as adequate scissor power.

 

[Ida Brown]

Awwww - she looks to be doing really well! If you could see the state of one of ours before we pulled her out and isolated her - very bloody! Very aggressive roo and then the two golden girls carried on (and we still have to watch them now - we decided the roo had to go and he's in the freezer).

Then she kept scratching out the scabs and making a mess of them - at one point I was wondering whether she had actually pulled out her own eye, as it was all a horrible grey mass of swelling (I had to go away for a couple of days to my eldest's army passing out and obviously she wasn't thoroughly checked for a couple of days *sigh*). Throughout all of it she ate and drank well and was a feisty little thing. I seriously considered that she needed to be culled - but as she seemed so chipper aside from that...

She started to heal. *Then* she had a prolapse and, at that point, I seriously considered that that was enough and she had to go.

BUT she is now in in with the other girls and one young roo in our new bigger pen and she's doing really well. Looks a bit like frankenstein's monster (a bit of scarring and her feathers are just coming through), but looks aren't everything and she's hanging out with the whites, sunbathing in the corner (the golden pair seem to keep themselves separate a bit).

They really are incredible creatures!

Before putting her back, make sure there isn't any tempting red that might attract pecking. Looking forward to hearing that she is successfully back with the others.