Quail-friendly plants

[Pineapple]

You guys are probably annoyed at my incessant quail questions!

At this point, I'm planning to build my cage off the ground, on legs. In most of the pictures I've seen (mostly on this forum), I've seen that usually underneath is growing grass. Is that the best option? Could I grow some kind of flower that would benefit from quail poop? Could I grow some kind of tall grass that would reach up through the cage and provide cover? What about vines growing around the enclosure?

These are ideas that are shooting through my head, so if they won't work, please tell me! Thank you!

 

[Ntsees]

My educated guess is that the grass growing underneath the cage isn't intentional. The bird droppings make the ground fertile for plants to grow. Also, some of the "grass" may be the bird seeds growing after which they were fallen from above. I feed my birds canary bird seed mix and seeds that aren't eaten sprout.

 

[TwoCrows]

It is best to keep the grounds underneath the quail cage as clean as possible from droppings as these droppings WILL attract predators to the quail cages. A problem you don't need. So make sure you can clean up regularly beneath the cages.

 

[Pineapple]

This sounds like a stupid question, but how do you clean the bare earth? Rake it and wash it?

 

[iamkingtim01]

I tried raking the ground to break it up and then watering it to wash away the poop. All this did was sow in the seeds and help them to grow. Now I have perminate "grass" under my pen. My rabbit likes the growing seeds and the wild squirrels eat what they can of the non growing dropped seed.

 

[TwoCrows]

Pineapple...I guess I was not thinking about this at the time...But you will need to build into your cage set up a catch tray directly beneath the wire floor of your cage that acts as not only a tray to catch the poop, but as a baffle so that night time predators cannot grab and rip off toes of the quail. Countless threads started here of people waking up in the morning only to find missing toes and even legs missing, from critters of the night having ripped them entirely off. (toes hang out the bottom of wire cages)

It cannot be stressed enough to over build your cage. Use only heavy duty wire, 1/2 hardware cloth, no chicken wire, and nothing flimsy. These night time predators have a LOT of time on their hands to pick, pull, chew and pry, and will work until they get a tasty meal of quail. So always build, and over build to protect your quail.

 

[Pineapple]

Ah, I've seen a lot of cages on here without catch pans so I didn't realize they were required. I actually have a lot of 1/4" mesh leftover from another project, so I plan to use that. I don't know what kind of predators could grab toes through it, but I imagine a raccoon or cat probably could...

 

[red golden]

If at all possible put a couple of strands around the legs of your pen and zap the predators thats what i have on all my pens. If they get past that i have a 17 caliber waitin.

 

[red golden]

Electric fence strands charged i meant.

 

[Pineapple]

I live in a densely populated urban area (where quail are legal, I've checked) so I imagine squirrels might be the biggest threat, as weird as that sounds.

I love this forum. It's so helpful.