Kiwithebuttonquail
In the Brooder
- Oct 17, 2020
- 6
- 19
- 15
So I've got 4 button quail. One was hatched April 4 and the other tree sometime in June or July I think? They started laying like a week or two ago. There was a big ole fight and the one we believe to be male got pretty well stabbed in the head, there were some nasty looking wounds around his ear, one other had a nice hole in her side under the wing, but nothing so bad as his. We isolated him and covered them in blue kote and he's doing just fine. BUT, after the fight I picked them all up and gave them a once over and noticed that a few of them have almost no feathers on parts of their bodies! You wouldn't tell to look at them, but picking them up and looking under their wings, they have clean little sides and armpits. No red or scaly or scratchy looking skin, looks pink and smooth. They are on aspen shavings with a sand dish that has diatomaceous earth in it. I sprinkle some DE at the bottom of the shavings too when I change them out.
If it were mites the skin would look irritated, no? Could they be molting? Stress from the fight? I also read somewhere that coturnix quails actually aren't as fully feathered as you might believe, especially in the summer. But they are buttons and I only read that in one place.
Also, underneath their skin their organs look purple, almost like a bruise. Is that normal? it looks similar on all of them, thought the bare skin is not in the same place/amount on each one.
If it were mites the skin would look irritated, no? Could they be molting? Stress from the fight? I also read somewhere that coturnix quails actually aren't as fully feathered as you might believe, especially in the summer. But they are buttons and I only read that in one place.
Also, underneath their skin their organs look purple, almost like a bruise. Is that normal? it looks similar on all of them, thought the bare skin is not in the same place/amount on each one.
