Rabbits & Quail

[TheBeardedNerd]

Hey folks! Just a quick question that I hadn't seen covered before in the searches of the forums but does anyone have experience with keeping Quail and Rabbits together? I have a large concrete barn with dirt floors that we keep our meat rabbits in so they are out of the draft for winter. Would I be able to use this same barn as an aviary for quail? Can Quail get sick from coming in contact with rabbit feces?

 

[Binki]

That's a tough call, especially having a dirt floor partially saturated with rabbit stuff, of course the quail would dust bathe/end up eating it.

I would also be concerned of the rabbits physically hurting the quail - have you ever seen that video of the rabbit destroying that snake? Yikes!! Voracious

 

[Weehopper]

One day when I went out to feed my rabbits

(I had many as I was showing at the time), I discovered something interesting in one of my buck's pens. A half eatin song bird (maybe a chickadee, I don't remember for sure now). Feathers all over the inside of the cage. No other animal in that pen than the rabbit. Go figure...

 

[TheBeardedNerd]

The rabbits won't be on the floor of the aviary with the quail, and yes I know Rabbits and other rodents are known to be opportunistic and eat birds. The room can be divided to have the rabbits on a separate side if they need to be. The rabbits are in hutches with wire floors. I've grown out 4 week old pullets in there with the rabbits in the past with no issues. It actually made cleaning a lot easier because the birds would scratch through the rabbit droppings spread it out and stopped it from becoming too concentrated in one spot.

I just didn't know if there were other things to be aware of when it came to housing them in the same area, such as disease.

 

[Dani xxx]

There is a guy on utube called food for thought who raises both rabbits and quail opposite each other as far as I can tell ! X look at some of his videos

 

[TheBeardedNerd]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm getting some quail shortly and I'll test a group of them on the floor of the barn and see how they do. If necessary I have the equipment to build more hutches.