Stupid Quail Question

[cuntryuppiechick]

The eggs taste far better than chickens. If you keep just a couple of females it only takes a quick minute to check their food and water and once in a while clean out the cage. They are not at all pet like. If you start them indoors and see them a lot you can teach them to sing very pretty. Make coo and chip noises and play music with flute type sounds. My dh hates them and doesn't care if I process them. The A&Ms can run a bit to the aggressive side. Other varieties might be a little more personable and much nicer to look at.

 

[Lynn Manes]

I think my senior male must be an A&M as he is pretty much all white. He's a mean little sucker, and always tries pecking me when I open the pen door and then he shows off by chasing down a female for his "dirty deed". But if he gets too rambunctious and falls out of the cage he sits still til I pick him up and put him back in the pen. We put those 6"black flower pots you buy plants in for the hens as laying boxes, but I just recently added a dust bath so I'm usually finding 2 of the 3 daily eggs in the dust bath. He won't let me pick them up without a fight but guess who wins. I just pick up a pot,plop it over him, grab the eggs and let him loose. He sort of stands a second there stunned that I got one over on him. I am hoping however to get 2 more white males just bc it's so easy then to tell the girls from the boys& I'm lazy. Plus if the A&M males are like mine he's one heck of a good breeder so there will be lots more babies coming our way I'd like to know first what A&M stands for and secondly if I'm breeding a white to a brown can I get any whites? Or will I need a white pair? So far the babies have all been brown like the hens.(28 total).I would say if you want an easy pet that the only interaction with you is to try to peck you, then go for it. The brown quail, both genders, are more gentle and I can pick them up or simply just pet them where they stand, even my 3 senior hens which I bought.

 

[Stacy Honeycutt]

They are more like fish in terms of a "pet" just fun to watch and listen to.

 

[JaeG]

Coturnix/Japanese quail (of which the A&Ms are a colour mutation) can be very friendly, and many find them friendlier than chickens. Some will always be more cautious but they all have individual personalities and some enjoy interacting with you, as long as they've had lots of exposure to and handling by humans as they grow up. They can be kept in small cages like a guinea pig/rabbit hutch, though they won't use a coop/house so need protection from wind and rain. They need 1sq/ft space per bird and you need to keep one male to about 4 females in close confines. In larger enclosures you can get away with a lower ratio of girls to boys. They are the most adorable babies and very cuddly initially. Their eggs are cream coloured with big, random spots all over them.

My girls stand in the way as I clean out their cage because they are so nosy (and I might uncover a bug), and I've also had them fall out the door by accident. I just quickly grab them and pop them back in and they certainly don't look to escape (my cages are raised off the ground because of rats).

Quail don't have a homing instinct like chickens do so they do need to be caged securely. They can flush straight up and get some serious height and are capable of making it over a fence. But they'd only do that if they got a fright. It's best to have their cage a foot in height or 6ft+ as they can injure, even kill themselves by hitting the roof of the cage. At 1ft they won't have built up enough speed to do serious damage, and they should've slowed down by the time they hit 6ft.