Quail smell

[Luke Camilleri]

Hi
I just wanted to ask if there is anything i could do to reduce the smell of their feces. I keep 12 quail indoors on a wire bottom cage and use paper to line the poop trays.
I was wondering if there is a way to reduce the smell. Maybe using a different bedding to line the trays.

 

[Kiki]

You could use dirt to help absorb some of the smell and clean the trays daily.

 

[le_bwah]

If you won't let them live on dirt/deep litter, you could try deep trays filled with it. When the poop essentially slow-composts in place, the smell is minimal (really only need to "spot clean" the egregiously nasty cecal poops ).

Remember that if the smell and fumes are bad for you, they must be horrific for the animals forced to live right above their own feces.

 

[TelfTheElf]

clean them out????

 

[Luke Camilleri]

Ok thanks i will try it.

 

[le_bwah]

Not going to say you are wrong or crazy, but I would personally never deep litter indoors. In a well aerated coop maybe... but you really need to allow gases to escape and ensure fresh air is brought in. Also, you need to build up at least 6-8 inches for deep litter to be effective IMO. That's likely not easily done with an existing indoor setup. Lastly, you need to stir it. Chickens often do the stirring when using deep litter in a coop. If you are going to attempt deep litter with quail, you need to give them access to it to scratch around or you need to regularly stir it yourself if it's just a deep container under the cage.

Not going to say that wire is a fundamentally inhuman substrate to raise birds on , but... I've smelled setups like that locally—reminds me of the brooder before I replaced puppy pads with pine pellets .

One could use their own compost to fill the trays (for that preexisting micro biota)—just enough to absorb moisture and begin the breakdown—and return it to the pile when it's "spent". OR, one could do away with trays and raise birds on a kinder, less messy/smelly bedding to start .

 

[DK newbie]

I'm pretty sure I've seen someone on here using soil with worms as bedding for indoor coturnix quail. Apparently it worked very well and the quail only ate the worms when they surfaced.

 

[BReeder!]

Line the tray with PDZ. Can be purchased at TSC.

 

[Luke Camilleri]

I clean them out every 3 days but after a day or two the smell gets quite bad

 

[Luke Camilleri]

Line the tray with PDZ. Can be purchased at TSC.

PDZ?