Susan Skylark
Songster
Keep quail they said. Nice cute peaceful birds they said. I don’t know who they are but they’ve apparently never had an active breeding flock! I only have 20 breeding birds in a group pen, besides the masked butt pecker life in the breeding pen is pretty chill. My nicest biggest bird pecks everybody else on the rump, most lack tails and have a bald patch just above it, it is not mites and while several birds have molted this spring, it isn’t molting either, just a pushy hen that I’ll have to cull when I get some nice replacements. The only trouble is my 4H kid has a poultry show in a month and while otherwise healthy they look rather pathetic! I solved this by thinking my 6 week old chicks can hang out in the rabbit hutch away from the villain, otherwise we’re stuck with the new hatch that’s not even a week old. You may remember Peaches from a previous color post, he’s one of 6 of those six week old birds. He was getting beat up by a hatchmate who was put in another pen. Then Peaches beat up (very nearly scalped) his brother so that bird went in another pen too. 6 birds, three pens! I need two males and two females, preferably not bald, scalped, or naked! At least it is a podunk show with about a dozen birds total so the competition won’t be too stiff and 4H focuses more on the kid’s knowledge than the bird anyway. Maybe I should just invent a new breed, it works for turkens and sphinx cats, it just isn’t genetic! Bald butt quail, anyone interested?
