Show me your quail pens!!!

[quailtrail]

My quail coop! My first time building something of this size, and it turned out fairly well. I had to add in some "unique design features" due to some measuring inaccuracies... but all in all, I like the way it turned out! The green roof plan is borrowed from the kippen house chicken coop plans and is planted with strawberries. The bottom storage area houses all their feed and supplies. The design works well for my limited space on my urban balcony! my quail have a view of Seattle's space needle.

love it!!!!!

 

[SavageChick]

That's pretty impressive, especially for a balcony habitat! I love how you phrased the "unique design features" - Ha! My first attempt at a pen had plenty of unique features for sure - more like "vastly unlike the original plan" - but yours turned out really great.

 

[SallyKay3926]

Thanks for sharing where your birds/eggs were bought from. I have looked at James Marie, I will look at the Stellar site. the weight of your birds, that's really nice to know for a beginner.
I have been "thinking" on the drip water system and had decided to do the 5 gallon bucket trick at a higher level with gravity feed. Good to see yours works.
I picked up a tip from a lady that does the same 5 gallon drip line with her chicken tractor. She adds 1/4 cup of cider vinegar to the 5 gallon of water. Keeps the water nice all week, she says.

 

[patrickschick]

Do your quail lay in nests?

Mine lay right on the wire.

All you Coturnix breeders with your birds housed outdoors, are they outside yearround? What kind of winters do you have. Ours typically get down to the teens with up to 30" of snow. Dare I put them in an unheated building?

Mine are in an unheated area. The only thing I did last year was add a single heat lamp in there to cut the chill

1 1/4

And the water lays in there?

 

[siD69]

Please help me out on this thread tooooo....

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...ils-are-not-laying-eggs-help-me-figure-it-out

 

[LJpnw]

One of the many quail pens my family / friends and myself have built. We have built quite a few of this design. Everyone who has one loves it. This one was designed to fit standard lumber and parts from Lowes / Home depot so it could be easily duplicated. We have built many other styles that were designed to use free or left over materials. We prefer to build out of used materials since there is a giant surplus of used stuff in western WA.




Here are some pics of other Tractors we have built.

Below is one of a few 4'x10' duck tractors we built out of a bunch of free 2x4x10 boards & rolls of 6' tall by 50' long welded wire fencing. You could grab the eggs from the nest boxes through the welded wire in two spots where we bent it to make room and you lifted up the front of the tractor to put the 5 gal waterer in there. During the day the waterer is placed under the end of the tractor to let the ducks free range and at night they return to the tractor to be locked in so they can be safe from predators. No ducks have been killed by predators in these tractors to date.

P.S. This design could be easily made for Quail. Just use 1/2"x1" welded wire instead of the 2"x4" welded wire we used. Again all the materials used to build the duck tractors were free. And we sold one of the duck tractors for $150. Cant beat that.



This pic below was to show how we planned for the duck tractors to be dual use. You could easily just slip in roosts if you want to use it for Chickens or Muscovy ducks that like to roost.

This coop below was built for ten laying hens. Its actually a tractor and coop. It was still light enough to be easily moved by one person. You could house up to twenty hens in it if you wanted if you let them out to free range every day. There is a door on the rear to open and let them free range. This coop could be used for quail if you covered the upper arch on each end with chicken wire. The lower sides and ends were already covered with chicken wire. We built a few of these and as you can tell we got our hands on a bunch of free camo tarps so we put them to good use. You can see the small rope handle used for moving the coop. Thats how light it was. Not bad at all.




The below are of a chicken tractor we built to house two hens in a small yard. As you can see it works great. It is super light and is easy to move. Not super strong and only basic predator protection but again it was built from free materials laying around.



Below is a simple rabbit cage i like to use to clean up hard to reach areas in yards or for defending fruit trees from invading ants. Just keep moving this pen around the base of the tree and the ants will keep feeding your birds. And the poo will do your tree wonders. I take the bottom of the cage and flip it on top and use it as the roof. This puts the birds on the ground and keeps them dry.

 

[coturnixquails]

My pen is a modified rabbit hutch. There was originally a small door on the front that we removed and replaced with hardware cloth for more light.
We also built an insert for the bottom made of hardware cloth and a PVC border.
With even MORE hardware cloth we built a screen for the top and put a few "S" hooks on it for security in case a bird decides to fly into it

We keep the top closed most of the time because there is SO MUCH darn rain where we live. It is open in these pictures to show detail.






Chex lol. I threw that in there for the ladies to hide in for the time being.



Here are some pros and cons with the cage design:

Pros

-Good weather protection
-Easy to take all the pieces out for cleaning
-High off the ground
-Pull out tray underneath hardware cloth insert

Cons
-Bad lighting --> I added a construction type light on the side for all the rainy days, but it sucks

Looking for something else at the moment.
-Cleaning takes a long time
-Overall too small for more than five or six birds
____________________________________________________________

THANKS FOR LOOKING

 

[Julbrod]

Here's mine. My hubby got it for me for my birthday. I think it's so pretty but not as practical as pretty. I think I'll build a second one soon!

 

[quailtrail]

Here's mine. My hubby got it for me for my birthday. I think it's so pretty but not as practical as pretty. I think I'll build a second one soon!

love it!!!!!

 

[patrickschick]

Here's mine. My hubby got it for me for my birthday. I think it's so pretty but not as practical as pretty. I think I'll build a second one soon!

I like the idea! A pair of bobwhites?