Professional designer builds new pens with custom feeders and watering system!

[RichardandTresa]

 

[Sill]

Hello all,

Sorry it's been a while, I was (and still am) sick... really sick... been in bed for 4 days (impossible for me as I am always up and working... intense vomiting and diarrhea with 102+ fever... lost over 20 pounds! It looks like I can insert some photos so I will try... not much I can add narrative wise as I am still just hanging on to be sitting up ... sorry...

Let's see how may photos I can insert:

Great! They're here!

These are of the feeders:

The white parts are 2" PVC plumbing pipe and fittings (Shortened T and cap couplings to fit the door mount. The clear parts are custom vacuum formed parts (I have a complete shop specializing in plastic fabrication with two vacuum formers)...












Let's see if I can add more!

Here are the auto waterers (Great watching the quail use them but I haven't taken photos yet... both the feeders and waterers are outside the cages providing more floor space... There's no food waste at all as the quail really need to put their heads in deep to get the food. any shaking of their heads still doesn't throw food outside.

The rectangular object in the middle of the water trough is the float connected to a brass rod that connects to the valve. This can be used with gravity fed OR direct hook up to a hose!












OK... so far so good... Here are some photos of my pen set up... The smaller cages to the left are for breeder quads, the longer cages to the right are grow out... only the top half is completed so far... there will still be four more cages added to the bottom. the whole thing is on ball bearing rubber wheels in a breezeway and able to roll out onto our back porch... shaded So far, its been way hotter in the breezeway than the porch! TOTAL SURPRISE! We also have rabbits and know they are very sensitive to heat...

How hot is "Too hot" for Coturnix quail? We get concerned about 90+, but we are also influenced by how little heat our rabbits can take? Any advice on this subject would be greatly appreciated! Summers here can easily reach 105+

Thanks!

Richard

I'd love to see pics of your quail using the waterers and feeders. Are your cages going to be "outside" as in accessable to predators, even in the breeze way? You might want to cover where your quail will be sticking their heads out of their cages to eat and drink. Predators are opportunistic and a snack of quail head would be tasty. I had a road runner try to pull one of my quail out by her wing through 1/2X1 wire. If she had been able to get her head out it would have been missing.

CotQuail:

THAT... Is the most awesome design I've seen in a long time! Beautiful lines, simple and it makes all the sense in the world....

Are you ok if I take my inspiration from you to develop a plastic version? Of course, it will be a while... I am still sick! (Starting to get nervous about it... stomach cramps have subsided and fever is gone but I still have diarrhea and I am not one to get sick... hardly ever! (Of course Tresa tells me this is my body complaining about working all the time... lol! (she could be right)...

Just got a new client project and I didn't finish the home brewed evaporative cooler I began before I got sick... Cooling the animals? Ha! It's our turn!


The vertical garden? Yes, it is... Horizontal tubes that will be fed by a large aquarium pump in a 700 gallon partially submerged fish tank (raising catfish)... The fish wastes feed the plants (150 to 200 2" basket pots hanging in holes along the top of the pipes... the water fills the pipes just enough to wet the hanging roots from the pots but not enough to drown the roots... travels to the other side, and then drops down back into the fish tank ("Aquaponics")


Still wondering about actual #s regarding quail and heat and danger levels.... We have rabbits and at 85 degrees, for sustained time, the buck can go sterile for up to 90 days... at 90 degrees, we're looking at possible fatalities, definitely at over 100 degrees... Our quail have been in the shade with osculating fans in 90 to 95+ degrees, today is supposed to be 105 and our august heat waves can be over 100+ for days on end... We're giving them frozen treats in glass bowls, the have sand boxes, constant water... but still wondering about any specific temp guides...


I've got to be short here... so much to catch up on... I'm going to throw in some photos to share...

Creative poop tray cleaning? Working on that... A very small autonomous robot (miniature tank tread/bomb disposal type), silicone cover to protect from additional bird droppings. It has an IR system (cheap) that turns it around when it reaches an edge of the pan. then turns and continues... Kind of like one of those auto vacuum robots.... It can hold up to two BIC lighters and blasts/incinerates anything in it's path (can't use wood shavings with it)....


Would you like one?

Ha! So would I!!!!!!! (Oh wait, my sense of humor is coming back... I think I'm getting better!

OK... just going to add some photos... Indoor tank system is an active aquaponics (with highly filtered (own design) back up) system that will become our Tilaplia breeder tanks.

I live in "The Valley of the Sun" and we get temps past 110 for highs for a good three months a summer or more and lows in the 90s. My quail do fine on wire as long as they have ventilation, shade and terracotta pans of water to wade in to cool off in if the temps are going to be less than 110F. If it's going to be hotter than that I will also put the misters on from 2pm until 5-ish in addition to the pans of water. I try not to coddle them by putting the misters on when it's not too hot. I would rather they acclimate to the heat in case something happens to the misters or I am not there to turn them on when it gets to the higher temps. I've not lost any quail to the heat yet, but have lost chickens and the chickens also have pans of water plus the cool ground and not wire like the quail. I'd say that coturnix are more adaptable than chickens when it comes to heat when they get the chance to get acclimated to it. It's 92 degrees this evening and my quail are not even panting.

 

[Sill]

If you don't mind, please post your design for your aquaponics filters. I'm in the process of putting in a "small" trial system before putting in a larger one. It's always good to see what others have done.

 

[cotquail]

quail scratch box layout

 

[RichardandTresa]

Hi Sill,

THANK YOU!!!!

That's the kind of reference info I was hoping for. Our extreme highs are rarely past 105 and maybe only for a couple of weeks in August. The Breezeway they are in can be completely closed off More like a large hallway between shop and house with access to the shop through a sliding glass door sized opening. Roof with ceiling make it feel like a room. Double doors at both ends. We're in the city. Only seen one raccoon in 10 years... We open up during the day for the breeze (favorable wind direction). and close up every evening. Our real predators are local cats. (I OFTEN set twin Have-a-Heart traps with cat food... The local pound knows me... lol!)

Funny about the terracotta... Tresa has been placing frozen Pyrex baking pans with frozen treats for the birds... They sit in them until the treat has defrosted and then spend the rest of the day sitting in them like their sand boxes.

The gardening, we've (Tresa) has been doing for years. We just added the Aquaponics, Chickens and Rabbits this spring. The quail are also new to us this year. (first time for all the animals)... We care about all of them and only dove in on each after TONS of hours (weeks/months) of researching forum websites and other sources, taking notes, bookmarking pages etc... collecting info especially for creating habitats searching for patterns for concern and then designing away before building.

The quail pen set up is on wheels. It stays where it is for the most part and we open the breezeway doors facing our back yard patio. We have digital thermometers hanging on their cages and pull them out (Still under shade) the length of their pens into the patio just to gain a little more cooler breeze.

I'm going to post some photos here of the filtration system.

Why the filter? (Not really needed if you have enough grow beds). These tanks are indoors and we wanted the best water conditions possible for the fish, because they will be our breeders... the plants filter wonderfully, but... We also anticipate over stocking (Larger fish, hatching babies etc plus the limited lights available to the plants... ) We originally planted spinach but then realized that they have a short life span... water quality dropped, so I bypassed the grow beds more and ran through the filter which helped a lot. (This like everything here is another well informed, experiment! lol!) Tresa swapped plants for house plants that grow all year round.

The concept:
There are sump tanks for each tank with "bio-ball" filter media (check out Ebay for good prices and look up their function on the internet). THe pump is in the sump tank and runs water up to the canister filter (4" Plastic plumbing pipe. with one side capped (drilled and tapped for water exit) and the other side screw on for replacing the mechanical (sponge) filter part. the rest of the canister is made up of more bio balls and ceramic bio media) each side of the canister has valves to shut off water with adjacent hose connector type fittings... I can unscrew the fitting, remove the filter with no leaks.

From the filter the water exits to a "tee" with two seperate valves control directional flow. One goes back to the fish tank to an manifold that disperses the filtered water back through the tank. The other goes up to the grow bed to water/feed the plants. The exit from the grwo bed is through a "siphon valve" (look up on aquaponics forums... easy and it works (this is for a an ebb and flow (fill and drain) type of grow bed... There are lots of different kinds... this is what we chose)

Hopefully the photos will explain more... Let me know if you want more info... Just know I may not get right back to you... Just completed our back door evaporative cooler (IT WORKED! Tresa and I sat on the couch in amazement checking the house thermostat counting off the degrees falling! I should have been recovering from being sick, but more importantly, the clock is ticking on a deadline for another client prototype project... (I won't disappear though!











Best,
Richard

 

[RichardandTresa]

UPDATE:

Was browsing through threads (always looking for more info) and found my original thread here...

It's been a while, but we've completed our quail pen rack, our freezer is filling up and we're up to about 30 eggs per day! (It's in the upper 30's and winter!).

We also added two more large pens and 8 individual "Quail Jail" holding pens. (These are about 1' square and where we hold roosters that are fighting or injured birds to heal... usually the ones that make it to the "Quail Jail" are actually waiting for the "bus" to go to "freezer camp"! LOL) I also modified our little giant incubator (look it up somewhere in here... I posted photos and described how and why). We're averaging about 50% hatches without culling "suspect" eggs or candling... I need to learn more about increasing ur hatch rates as I want to eventually introduce JMF Jumbo meat quail.

All in all, we're so happy we got into Quail and with all the info I've learned here, I have to say we're doing pretty good!

Attaching some photos.


Completed Battery

"The Claw"... Used to extract eggs from the backs of cages

Additional pens. Quail Jail row of cages go on top (not yet installed at time of photos)

Custom Sand Box. Plastic molded in clear allow us to see if eggs have been laid in them and the angled edges of "The Claw" allows us to reach into the corners

That's all for now... Must get back to work.

Best,
Richard

 

[RichardandTresa]

Ooops! The photo of our additional pens had the row of individual Quail Jail cages in at the time. Those were replaced with another pair of large pen cages and the individual Quail Jail cages were mounted on top of that... 4 breeder pens, 6 grow out pens and 8 Quail Jail cages. Two of our grow out cages have been filled by additional breeder Quail (1:5 hens)... The addition of the breeders has helped supplement the eggs we haven't been getting from our Chickens due to Winter lighting and cold.

OK... NOW, back to work! LOL!
Richard

 

[cotquail]

Looking good, heh we use the claw too.

 

[RichardandTresa]

HA! HA HA!

How funny! And ingenious! Why didn't I think of that?!?!?!? (And here I am, an award winning toy designer!) What a great idea!

And here I was going to ask (before I saw your photo), Wow! Someone else designed a "claw??? Another company produced one???? When I saw you photos I just had to laugh at the simplicity and effectiveness!

I won't tell you how long it took to design and build mine! LOL! (Of course, I desinged and built the sand boxes that required the same inside angles to match the outside angles of our claw so they could reach into the overhanging corners...

Still... I LOVE yours! (If I ever break mine, I'll have to find one of yours and try it out...)

Just thought of something... Does the "Snarling Dinosaur face" on your freak out your birds? LOL!

Great job! Thanks for sharing! (I'll have to make sure Tresa sees it...)

Richard

 

[cotquail]

Yo, it's actually a Lobster Claw, my quail are always freaked out when someones around that doesn't look like them.Cheers ,Happy thanksgiving