Pet Quail suddenly paralyzed in her legs

[rainbowseason]

I bought 2 female quails as pets roughly 2 months ago.

It's currently winter here in Australia. She's been laying eggs on daily bases even though it's winter. The temperature outside at it's lowest at night is 6-8 degrees Celsius.
She lives outside in a rabbit cage with 1 other female quail. Their cage is covered up by towels, they are not cold they feel warm all the time and don't seem to snuggle up. It is sheltered and quiet wind proof.

She lays her daily egg between 5-6pm every evening. Starting 3 days ago I was getting 2 eggs. I assume my other female started laying because the eggs were obvious different colors. It's like they have their own marking or design. There's a chance that they are both from her but unlikely. She doesn't display any calcium deficiency as her eggs are nicely shaped, shells are hard and nice colored.

She gets vegy/corn random kitchen scrap vegy from time to time but quiet rare. Mostly living on quail feed. I believe this is what is in her food.
Typical Analysis As Fed Dry Matter
Energy KCAL /Kg 2816 3200
Protein (%) 22.88 26.00
Calcium (%) 0.88 1.00
Phosphorus (%) 0.88 1.00
Fibre (%) 4.57 5.20
Fat (%) 6.60 7.50

I picked up her eggs around 6:30pm. She was fine, walking around eating drinking everything was normal. I picked up my 2nd egg around 8pm, I saw her again fine moving around like usual no problem.

I turned on the light around 11pm was doing a couple things in the living room when I suddenly heard flapping noises. I went to check and noticed both quail sitting next to each other. Puzzled about the noise I realized she was flapping because she couldn't stand up. She moved forward by flapping her wings I noticed 1 of her legs hanging out and thought oh my god she broke a leg. After picking her up and examining her I noticed both her legs were strengthless. She did not react to me touching her legs, I don't think they are broken. They were warm and just floppy, she's paralyzed all of a sudden I'm pretty sure. She doesn't make loud noise or anything I'm not sure how quails act if they are in great pain. They were my first quail pet.

It happend sometime between 8-11pm, they are usually sleeping and only get woken up by me turning on the lights in the living room. Usually they just wake up walk around a bit and go back to sleep.
I have no idea why she just suddenly went from laying eggs to sleeping to paralyzed in just a couple of hours in the middle of the night. She showed no sign of illness, she was puffing her feathers out a bit yesterday and cleaning them. I know when birds are sick they will act sick and puff up but she just looked itchy or was just cleaning. I did not hear any battle noise, they do not fight, They only push each other when I feed them to fight to get the food first. I didn't hear any loud noise or possibility of hitting the cage.

Anyone ever had paralyzed quail before? Does anyone know what could cause quail to suddenly become paralyzed. I want to know if this is illness or injury. It doesn't seem like it's either.

I will take her to the vet but I feel like if anyone has any clue how to take care of such quail or what may have caused this I would appreciate the help/ information.

 

[JaeG]

She may have got a fright, leapt straight up (as they can do) and banged her head. Either that or is it possible something tried to grab her through the wire? Rats will have a go if the gaps in the wire are big enough for them to get their snout through. Quail are tough though and, if you can make sure she is eating and drinking, there's a good chance she'll recover.

 

[rainbowseason]

She may have got a fright, leapt straight up (as they can do) and banged her head. Either that or is it possible something tried to grab her through the wire? Rats will have a go if the gaps in the wire are big enough for them to get their snout through. Quail are tough though and, if you can make sure she is eating and drinking, there's a good chance she'll recover.

Thanks for responding. It's not possible. I can see them right out the window. I was out in the living room just sitting there attending to my fish and shrimps. There was no sound of anything attacking, there was no sound of any cage bashing or fight. It was close to midnight it's dark outside they were quiet and just sleeping. They woke up and tried to move around because I turned on the light. After maybe 5-10min that was when I first heard the sound of her flapping. She was paralyzed at that stage. To me it seem like all was fine she went to bed and just woke up like that. Really bizarre, I really don't think it's illness but I also don't think there was any accidents