- Aug 11, 2011
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Well, lost our first quail to a rat. I foolishly wasn’t taking their food out at night, and it figured out how to get in the smaller cage that the “rejected” hen lived in. I suspect it had been eating her food for a while actually as there’s no way in retrospect she could have been eating so much on her own.
It tunneled under the main coop but didn’t get in, so we packed the other quail up in their temp cage and brought them inside, then dragged the coop (it’s an a-frame lined with 1/2in hardware cloth) out into the yard so we could flip it and check for damage. So far so good, it didn’t try to chew anything. We reinforced the wire on the bottom before putting it back.
I’m going to start removing the food at night from now on and trying to make sure there aren’t any missed eggs (we keep ours on the ground on about 4-6in of wood shavings so sometimes they get sneaky and lay them deep) but is there anything else I can do? Was also planning on giving the pen a once over to make sure they’re not chewing the wood more frequently. Should I reinforce the frame in some way to keep them from chewing through it, maybe wrap the frame in HWC?
We live in a major metro area in a townhouse with houses close by and a ton of neighborhood cats. I’ve been jumping out of my skin every time I hear our male crow after dark, and have run out there with my phone flashlight to make sure everything is ok, but I haven’t seen any sign of it since. We found the dead hen Sunday, and I do remember the roo fussing a bit that night.
It tunneled under the main coop but didn’t get in, so we packed the other quail up in their temp cage and brought them inside, then dragged the coop (it’s an a-frame lined with 1/2in hardware cloth) out into the yard so we could flip it and check for damage. So far so good, it didn’t try to chew anything. We reinforced the wire on the bottom before putting it back.
I’m going to start removing the food at night from now on and trying to make sure there aren’t any missed eggs (we keep ours on the ground on about 4-6in of wood shavings so sometimes they get sneaky and lay them deep) but is there anything else I can do? Was also planning on giving the pen a once over to make sure they’re not chewing the wood more frequently. Should I reinforce the frame in some way to keep them from chewing through it, maybe wrap the frame in HWC?
We live in a major metro area in a townhouse with houses close by and a ton of neighborhood cats. I’ve been jumping out of my skin every time I hear our male crow after dark, and have run out there with my phone flashlight to make sure everything is ok, but I haven’t seen any sign of it since. We found the dead hen Sunday, and I do remember the roo fussing a bit that night.