Quail with droopy wing, some swelling in joint

[TeePants]

If it’s homestead harvest watch out for cement balls on the feet, and if you have a gravity feeder it gets clogged.

Cement? Should I cancel and order something else?

 

[FloorCandy]

Cement? Should I cancel and order something else?

I ordered a bag last year, the birds poop around the feeder, feed mixes with poo and made these cement shoes on their feet, it was a real pain to get them all clear, and I fermented the rest of the bag to prevent it. It also got stuck in my gravity feeder, and I would find them super hungry every morning and I had to shake the feeder.

 

[TeePants]

Woof. I'll cancel and see if there's a gamebird flock or layer feed by our local feed company.

 

[FloorCandy]

Woof. I'll cancel and see if there's a gamebird flock or layer feed by our local feed company.

Hudson feeds gamebird pellets from chewy were what I stumbled on after the homestead harvest, and I love it. I still feed the inside birds Hudson, even tho the one who needed it has passed, the poop doesn’t smell nearly as much as with the regular feed. It’s about $32 for 50 lbs, which is pretty good for shipped feed.

 

[TeePants]

Awesome. Waiting to see if Amazon lets my cancellation through, but I’ll order the other stuff now.

I put that girl back in the pen last night. Had to run errands all day so I asked my partner to check on them and she didn’t, came home and she’s plucked bald on the head and they nipped her ear.

I put her back in the hospital cage and sprayed the area with a poultry topical antibiotic, and I pulled the smaller brown male and he’s in his own cage (but on wire for my sanity, lol). I am worried it’s the yellow male and not the little brown one giving them all grief, but that’s the one my kids like.

Is it likely that he will stop terrorizing the females if I deal with the brown male, if it is him? I guess the thing to do is keep the brown male out; I’d hate to process him as he’s one of the celadon carriers, but I’ll do whatever needs doing so that the hens are safe.

 

[FloorCandy]

Awesome. Waiting to see if Amazon lets my cancellation through, but I’ll order the other stuff now.

I put that girl back in the pen last night. Had to run errands all day so I asked my partner to check on them and she didn’t, came home and she’s plucked bald on the head and they nipped her ear.

I put her back in the hospital cage and sprayed the area with a poultry topical antibiotic, and I pulled the smaller brown male and he’s in his own cage (but on wire for my sanity, lol). I am worried it’s the yellow male and not the little brown one giving them all grief, but that’s the one my kids like.

Is it likely that he will stop terrorizing the females if I deal with the brown male, if it is him? I guess the thing to do is keep the brown male out; I’d hate to process him as he’s one of the celadon carriers, but I’ll do whatever needs doing so that the hens are safe.

I had a lovely male named Prince, his pattern looked like purple rain haha. So lovely with blue eyes, white and purply gray Italian tux. I left him with 3 of his lady hatch mates, was waiting to Id a couple more for him. then one day, at around 7-8 weeks, he scalped 2 over night and the other had been worked over less severely but was still injured. I thought, what this boy needs are some big experienced ladies to put him in his place, he was exceptionally small. I took some jumbo sized adult ladies who had been around the block, in with him. For 2 days it seemed ok, on day 3 hubby woke me up and said he thought we were gonna have to cull one of the girls she was injured so badly. She was fine after a few days, just scalped and pecked. The other 2 were also scalped pretty severely. I put him in male jail, hoping a couple weeks would get him sorted out, and next thing I know, he was the youngest and smallest and was king of male jail. He was killed on night two of the possum situation, but he never showed any signs of being less of jackass.

 

[TeePants]

Yikes! Well, I have not seen the yellow male attacking the hens. However, the little pharaoh celadon male (who is in quail jail inside by himself) I have seen pecking at one or two of them.

I guess I just wait and see if any of them are injured and then I’ll know it’s the other guy? I hate that but I’m not sure how else to do it, heh. I sat outside for half an hour today to see if the remaining male behaved himself and I didn’t see him do anything besides sunbathe.

 

[TeePants]

An update: removed for sure all but one male in the pen; currently have five females to the one male.

I tried to reintroduce the droopy wing female today (I pulled her June 16th) and she got really beat up, in the span of maybe an hour? I was checking on her, but I guess something happened between check ups.

Is it likely I won’t be able to reintroduce her at all? It seems that way. Did I put her back in too soon? She still had a bald spot but the injury to her ear had healed, and I had perhaps erroneously assumed I could put her back in once everything was scabbed over and clean looking.

Now she’s missing more feathers but more significantly has what appears to be a massive bruise on the back of her head, and her eyes are swollen. I feel awful.

At the risk of sounding callous if she’s destined to be lonely in my office or beat up constantly in the pen, I’d rather cull her now with the last extra male we’ve still got waiting for his turn. (He’s isolated by himself)

Also - are five females enough for one male? I was really hoping for more than that, but I’m nervous about buying adult females elsewhere and trying to introduce them at this point.

 

[Nabiki]

Five hens are enough. If you want to introduce more, you can take everyone out of the pen, rearrange things, then put the new birds in followed by the old ones. That works for me most of the time. There are always exceptions.

 

[TeePants]

Thanks! I decided to get an easier-to-clean house pen, and am going to give her some more recovery time indoors. However, I found that when I intro’d her even after the ear had healed, it seemed like she was getting injured anyway because the male tried to breed her and she has no feathers left to grab onto? Is that normal or is my male a jerk?

Should I keep her inside until her feathers grow back? Assuming they’re like parrots, that would take weeks surely. I can’t imagine she’ll enjoy being in isolation for that long. I am also not opposed to processing her with the last extra male if that’s less cruel.

She is not even remotely tame and is petrified of me, which is part of why I’m concerned about how well she’ll handle extended isolation. Is there anything I can do to get her to warm up to me?