Quail drinking lots of water/ watery poos

[Heather Christensen]

One of my quail is drinking way more water than the others, and her poos are coming out watery, but otherwise normal. I think its been the case for a while, but when I separated my 4 into 2 cages (2 in each cage) it became apparent - one cage was going through water at more than double the rate of the other. And I noticed it was always the one hen always drinking water, and running over to the water tank when I re-filled it. And then I noticed, a lot of the poop in that cage is like, just kind of soft, and then the bedding surrounding the poo is just wet, just water. She seems otherwise well, and nothing wrong with the other well far as I can tell. Is she sick? Is it a parasite, a stomach bug, just weirdly obsessed with water?

 

[JaeG]

If she's acting otherwise normally I wouldn't worry too much. It may just be a strange obsession. Some of my Buttons somehow manage to spread their water from their waterer into their bedding (which makes them smelly) despite it being up on a block of wood.

What kind of waterer have you got? Is there a way of putting it up on or over a grate on a tray that would catch any spillage? That's what I'm thinking I'm going to have to do!

 

[Heather Christensen]

If she's acting otherwise normally I wouldn't worry too much. It may just be a strange obsession. Some of my Buttons somehow manage to spread their water from their waterer into their bedding (which makes them smelly) despite it being up on a block of wood.

What kind of waterer have you got? Is there a way of putting it up on or over a grate on a tray that would catch any spillage? That's what I'm thinking I'm going to have to do!

When I first separated them into 2 cages, they had 2 different types of water dispensers. The one with the water-obsessed quail had a hamster water bottle type thing, and it did spill a LOT onto the bedding when they drank. So I kind of chalked up the difference in how fast their water ran out to that. But I switched them to the same kind of waterer that the other cage has - it's a type designed for pet birds in cages, like a water tank with a tiny little bit of open water at the bottom and it clips onto the bars of a cage. It works super well and its the only think I've found that both keeps them from getting poo in the water and doesn't cause lots of water spillage. It works well for my small number of quail, but if you've got more than a half dozen you'd probably need a lot of them, as they don't come with a very big water tank.

Anyway thanks for your input, Maybe she is just wierdly water obsessed. She's also more obsesed with greens than any of the others, she jumps on top of lettice and doesn't give anyone else a chance! And I recall when she was a chick she always had food (that super fine chick crumble) stuck to her beak, I'm guessing because her beak was always wet from drinking water when she went to eat. I hope thats all it is. At the very least its kind of inconvenient as her poos are so watery, her cage gets smelly faster than the other one.

 

[BobDBirdDog]

Young chicks think water is a novlety and will visit it a lot, so the bird might have formed a habbit, but other than that I would say its probably nothing as well.
Good observation on your part and be careful in mentioning the watery poop without mentioning the higher water consumpion, otherwise it might start up a noise of comments about coccidia!
A quick look, if her feathers are all ruffled then she is sick, but if she looks normal, check her weight in compaison to the others, feathers can fool you to health sometimes.

If something is stuck in the craw that might be a factor, and just as a thought open her beak and look at the back of the throat, thats if she happens to acts like she is gasping and chokeing on something, it could be red worm, but dont let my post alarm you.... probably noting.

Monitor her food intake and make sure shes eating well just to be safe.