Tips for keeping quail comfortable in excessive heat waves

[maycwindu]

Hi All,
Where I live, it commonly gets above 100 degrees by midsummer. The quail are able to tolerate it alright, but they're constantly gular fluttering (just a ornithological term for bird panting) and quite uncomfortable.

In the evening, I soak some patches of their aviary soil so it's a nice cool retreat for them to dig under. I'm also trying to encourage them to step into a pan of water by tossing rice krispies into the water. The quail will wade in after the treats. I don't think they really correlate the cooling effect with the water, though, so they don't use the water pan unless I have a treat floating in there. Maybe after a lot of repetition, but something tells me quail kinda don't get water. As an aside, if any of you have any anecdotes of quail water bathing I'd love to hear them.

When I'm away in the afternoon, they have to stay in the coop, away from the water pan and cool aviary soil. Is there something I can do to help them keep cool in the coop? They do enjoy a slice of cold watermelon, but that only goes so far.

 

[Nabiki]

I freeze two liter bottles and put them in with the quail. Just don't fill it completely!

 

[le_bwah]

I freeze cake pans of water and put the resulting ice blocks near where the birds like to splay out. They never touch it (except to peck at it sometimes) but the meltwater keeps their wallowing spots cool during peak heat. Nabiki's got a great idea with the bottles. I wonder if you couldn't design them to "leak" slowly onto a rag, get some evaporative cooling going.

They work great for keeping the birds cool, but I swear a "wading pool" passed staph around my flock as we had cases of bumblefoot come and go with the soilable water (no matter how often I changed it). They never truly bathed in it, but would stand and flutter their eyes like they were falling asleep, sometimes drink from it. Also, as I should have expected, they pooped in it.

It's 100 degrees Fahrenheit here today and we're just getting starting. I do a box fan + water mister setup that makes things noticeably cooler. If you can hook up any fan to their coop (PC cooling fan maybe?), that could take the lethality out of a heat wave.

Best of luck!

 

[eveliens]

My coturnix love to sit in "pools" as do my button quail. The coturnix also love to get sprayed down with the hose (when I am hosing down the bird area - they run over to get under the spray), the weirdos. They don't really bathe in water though, since they're ground birds and use dirt instead.

There are good suggestions already. You might look into making a "zeer pot" (2 ceramic pots, some sand and water) to cool the area as well. Mine won't do anything with iced water bottles but put I do put "freezer pops"/freezer sticks (plastic sticks with coolant in them) in their water to keep it cool all day. You could also try a litter tray with sand or dirt in it for them to roll in. That's how I'm keeping my growout button quail cool since they're not in the aviary.

 

[Dandichook]

Seconding Nabiki's water bottle idea! I use smaller individual serving bottles though and if I put them into their dust bath areas the quail will cuddle up to them. Some of them seem to like standing with their chests resting on top of the bottles, which they can't do with the larger ones, so I think it might be a good idea to do both sizes if you have the space.

We have been testing a little fan attached to a portable solar panel on one of our coops as well. It's not the strongest fan, but the air movement at least keeps it a little less stale feeling inside their coop.

 

[GypsyGen]

My mom lives in Sacramento. We used to bury the ice packs in the eco flakes and she had a mister set up for the really hot 100+days she’d also sometimes freeze melon and put that in there for them to peck at while it de thawed.

 

[Blue Penguin]

It got pretty hot where I'm at recently and I dumped some ice flakes on the ground and one looked like she knew ice was much and cool so she stood on it for a bit.

I currently have two tarps covering half the enclosure for the side with peak sun hours and that seemed to help.

 

[The805Project]

I’m dealing with this now! Texas here, and we’ve been getting 100+ F days consecutively for a month now! Doing ice in trays, usb chargeable fan inside their enclosure, refreezable ice packs, electrolytes in water but they’re still panting what seems like all the time. I’m constantly going out there to check on the. Their enclosure is on the west side of the house in constant shade except for from 3-5pm they get direct sun then. Installed shade cloth over their enclosure today but my thermostat inside their cage still said 106F. I just hope they don’t die

 

[le_bwah]

We put up sun shades around the aviary that keep the worst of the late sun off. But a fan on an extension cord plus a dinky little hose mister have been doing their part, too. Keeps the gals from panting, even on the 100+ F days.

Wishing luck to all you folks in hotter locales!

 

[The805Project]

We put up sun shades around the aviary that keep the worst of the late sun off. But a fan on an extension cord plus a dinky little hose mister have been doing their part, too. Keeps the gals from panting, even on the 100+ F days.

Wishing luck to all you folks in hotter locales!

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Your enclosure looks amazing! I wish I had the room to do an aviary! I have two rabbit but hutches so far but one day I’d love an aviary set up