Ready Made Breeding Pens

[JordanCDollar]

Hey all,

I've been absent for a while, but I've moved on to 3/4 of an acre and I have my funds together to start raising my meat quail. I have a design for my main quail pen, but I need a breeding pen. I would prefer to buy rather than make. I was going to buy the GQF three section breeding pen, but then I got to looking at non-quail specific breeding pens on Amazon...

Has anyone bought a ready made multi-section breeding pen that they like. I would like to stay under the approximate $150 that I would be spending on the GQF cage. I could go for something sturdy where my breeders would live outside (has to be sturdy, I have fox, raccoon, and coyote), or something more decorative that could live in my enclosed porch.

Any help appreciated.

 

[dc3085]

Hey all,

I've been absent for a while, but I've moved on to 3/4 of an acre and I have my funds together to start raising my meat quail. I have a design for my main quail pen, but I need a breeding pen. I would prefer to buy rather than make. I was going to buy the GQF three section breeding pen, but then I got to looking at non-quail specific breeding pens on Amazon...

Has anyone bought a ready made multi-section breeding pen that they like. I would like to stay under the approximate $150 that I would be spending on the GQF cage. I could go for something sturdy where my breeders would live outside (has to be sturdy, I have fox, raccoon, and coyote), or something more decorative that could live in my enclosed porch.

Any help appreciated.

My breeding cages are homemade so I can't help much on a design, but a bit of advice I wish I had gotten....You will have to empty each turd tray every 2-3 days. Forever. Might not sound so bad now but next year you will still be emptying turd pans every three days. Not to discourage you from breeding cages just fair warning. The cages do simplify life in other ways like ease of feeding watering and egg collection.

 

[JordanCDollar]

Thanks, I am hoping to have 3-4 pens for 3-4 roos and their hens. Ideally they would be in a single row and share a single pan or stacked 2x2 only having 2 pans. That's not overmuch work in my opinion.

 

[dc3085]

Thanks, I am hoping to have 3-4 pens for 3-4 roos and their hens. Ideally they would be in a single row and share a single pan or stacked 2x2 only having 2 pans. That's not overmuch work in my opinion.

Yeah that wont be bad. I have two stacks of 2x2 with 5 to a stack Translates to 100 poop trays a month

One thing that will help make sure you get cages that allow the tray height to be adjusted (or have the farthest distance from wire floor to tray) that way if you need to leave town for a couple days the poop doesn't start coming up to where they can reach it. I don't know where you are located but there is a guy in central california that sells stacked breeding cages. If nothing else you can check out his design.

 

[bonnie in indiana]

I keep them in ready made rabbit pens and hang them in the barn. works for me.

 

[Reedgirl20]

I also use the hanging rabbit pens, 36x24 inch cages. I got them used from a rabbit farm that shut down for only $10 per hole.

 

[Chicken-Farmer]

I built my cages to be 6' x 3' and then sectioned each cage into 3 2'x3' sections. 1 male 4 females. Automatic waterers outside cage and one feeder per cage that are tall and don't take up much room. I find that with 4 girls my males don't pick on them and the cages are very spacious. I hang my cages so that raccoons and opossums aren't a factor. The birds poop falls into flower beds that I built below each cage using cheat treated fence boards from Home Depot. 6'x4'. In each flower bed I have black soldier fly larva that compost the contents at a staggering rate. No smell and free compost! Black soldier flies are natural down here in Alabama and I attracted them initially with some feed that I put in water and allowed to ferment. Once the soldier flies were attracted they started their own colonies in each bed. The black soldier fly larva have a pheromone that keeps other flies out of the area. It's a win win! The larva can be fed back to the quail, but mine don't seem to like them. I just let the larva do their thing in the worm beds. The grown soldier flies only live for a couple of days, they don't have any mouths to bite, and their sole purpose is to breed and lay eggs for more larva. They are pretty incredible insects. Each worm bed has thousands of larva in it, and I can actually see the bed contents churning like water with all the worms. When I butcher quail from the growing pens all the feathers and guts go into the beds as well. Within a few hours everything is gone. Bones, guts and feathers. Last year a wild rabbit got stuck in a chain link fence and died. I put the carcass into one of the bins and the entire rabbit was gone in one day!
Up until the point I built the worm beds dealing with the amount of poop was very time consuming and the ammonia smell was pretty bad especially on wet days. Now the worms naturally aerate the bins and the ammonia smell is gone. My quail pens now have a earthy compost smell like a garden, no stink.

Chicken-Farmer