Our first quail..

[draggar]

First - do they ever stop popping?

I've posted this over in the chickens area (along with several other questions) but I figured I might be able to get an answer here.

We got 4 quail in mid December - they were young then (I don't know how young they were when we got them - maybe a month old?). We got them to be egg layers (and I hope we got all females).

Right now I'm feeding them about 1 cup of flock raiser a day and I try to keep their water fresh and clean. When should I move them over to something else (layena .or starter?) or should I keep them on the raiser all the time? I'm assuming I shouldn't give them scratch / cracked corn but what about things like alfalfa pellets and/or crushed coral?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Wifezilla]

First - do they ever stop popping?

No

Right now I'm feeding them about 1 cup of flock raiser a day and I try to keep their water fresh and clean. When should I move them over to something else (layena .or starter?)

You need to feed them game bird feed. There isn't enough protein in regular chicken food.​

 

[draggar]

You wouldn't happen to have a link to game feed?

I'm assuming I should be able to get it at the feed store (where I get the chicken food, too)?

Edit: I just called the feed store. They have a blend and a maintenance - which one should I get (I'll assume maintenance since they're in a hutch?)

 

[draggar]

Another question - is it OK to give th quail crushed oyster shells (for calcium, like we can for chickens)?

 

[jenjscott]

You are going to find a lot of opinions here on feed. Many people on this board like to feed more protein than what is available in the game bird maintenance or layer feed, so they feed unmedicated starter forever. You can feed oyster shell, some crush it up smaller, or you can judge the need for it by the hardness of the egg shells. The maintenance tends to be really low in protein, not sure about the blend.

 

[draggar]

We had two eggs Saturday morning. One seemed normal (brown with spots - hard) and the other was a "soft" egg - the shell is very soft (we've seen this with our chickens form time to time). One quail popped and landed on it - crushing it.