Who does self-sustaining quail?

[streetmutt]

Do quail eat duckweed? I grow it, but I don't think my tilapia will want to share!


You don't need a lot of aeration for duckweed. I have had it growing in non-aerated tubs many times.

The main problem I see is you have to have way to fertilize the duckweed that won't make the quail sick. If you make it deep enough outside the cage to have a few minnows in there, that should work. The minnows will need a bit of aeration but they'll fertilize the duckweed, you just have to remember to feed them every day or two and do a partial water change every 1-2 weeks. You don't want the quail drinking yucky water anyway and you'll have to add water since they'll likely drink some. Seems like it would be a very easy to care for system, report back if it works!

Some say they do!

'Course my quail are so spoiled who knows!

I'm gonna remember to pick your brain re: growing duckweed. I'm starting with a tub system with minimal aeration to start since it will be the easiest to start -- plus it will give me insight I can use into designing an on-cage system. My design now likely has huge flaws.

My plan was to enrich the water with quail manure but I like your plan of minnows. Will that also keep mosquitoes out if the water? What do minnows eat? They won't eat the duckweed? Anything I can get for them that will keep my system on my property?

The hope is the cage system would be inconvenient for the quail to drink the water, so perhaps I need to abandon the thought of a square holder but something with a deep bottom and shallow inside pen ... Back to drawing board!

 

[streetmutt]

Can the minnows thrive on algae and the dried earthworms (chopped up of course)? Because then I have a very easily produces system!

 

[Quail Jailer]

I don't really have a feed system since I'm limited by yard space. I just feed purina gamebird chow or king pheasant crumble because GMO free feed is still out of reach for me. With the high protein requirements it is very difficult to feed quail naturally with what most have available.

As far as bugs are concerned, it is recommended that you don't feed more than 3 large meal worms per day per quail because of fat content, different bugs may have different mineral contents however but finding them will probably be tricky. Most info you can find on feeding bugs relates to crickets and mealworms. In the wild, they survived much more on seed and grain such as millet and milo and vegetation, than they do on bugs. Also in the wild they get exponentially more exorcise so they have less un processed fat. It isn't so much their body weight you worry about but fatty hearts and livers.

here is a link regarding feeding mealworms to reptiles but the same principles apply.

Don, I had a falling out with my purina dealer so I'm switching to bluebonnet, they are closer to you so maybe even cheaper.
I'm still awaiting my first shipment but its really top of the line versus cost, but I'll report back.

Otherwise I'm watching this thread with interest, I'm really lucky in as much as I have lots of room for farming, an underground spring that feeds my pond. so all of the "self sustaining" ideas make sense for me.

 

[flg8r]

Minnows survive on just about anything including mosquito larvae but they shouldn't eat the duckweed. I have duckweed growing like mad with guppies (fancy minnows) and they won't touch it. I don't think you'd want to put quail poop in the water because the quail would be ingesting it.

 

[streetmutt]

OK I feel pretty good about this! I just need three items to complete my system: tub, aerator, and minnows. I'm so excited! Thank you ohio for the duckweed suggestion, it makes perfect sense. I still plan on heat-drying the earthworms so I can keep my minnows and water healthy, keeping a healthy duckweed and then healthy quail. From what I've started researching the earthworms can be a minnow food source along with mosquito larvae.

The other thing I'd like to include in this is chia. I am picking up some seeds today and want to sprout and also grow chia plants with. I figure the grown plants will supply freshly sprouted seeds, so that system can become more closed (quail>manure>compost>chia>seeds>sprouts>quail). It's a good excuse to add it to my existing edible landscape since I've wanted to anyway I'm in the right zoning for it to be a perennial and have the longer growing season needed for seeds I think.

My future plans include having a self-sustaining horse farm, so why not start with quail?! Plus my duckweed research has led me to some interesting claims about feeding duckweed to livestock, including horses. I was planning an aquatic scape for the future farm, so now I can add my new endeavor into duckweed into those plans (or not). But for right now I live on .14 acre in an HOA neighborhood ...

My little "farm:"



Here it is dead of winter when we had collards and cabbage keeping everything green:



We're about to add another bed between the front circular bed and the porch bed too. So that's where I'm planning my chia! (and amaranthe! and about 60 other varieties I need space for lol)

Our watering system is about to go off the grid. We just need our rain barrels set up, the soaker hoses are already in place.

 

[cotquail]

Go black soldier fly on the dung and you will feed the quail some special.You can feed their black gut and white gut back to them high protein as well. Their waste (unedibles) are high in protein as well. Remember that what goes in comes out and at harvest you usually have 50 to 60 percent waste. heads wing tips feathers, feet, gut and such rather than waste it develop a highly aerobic compost, cook it to get rid of the hazard and grow to feed their voracious appetites. A old Cherokee proverb stated that "the greatest peril in life is that you have to take life to sustain life". Kudos to you for taking the responsibility.Good luck learn from your mistakes.

 

[fiberdrunk]

Fascinating thread! Quail do like duckweed (at least my button quail do). I bought some newts from a petstore and they came with a little duckweed floating in their bag of water. It quickly overtook the 10 gallon aquarium I put the newts in. So, I've been feeding it a couple times a week to my buttons and they absolutely love it. There are quite a few YouTube videos about duckweed. One tidbit I picked up was that if you're worried about cleanliness of the duckweed (especially if harvesting from a pond), you can transfer a batch of it a few days prior to feeding into clean water. It's a "self-cleaning" plant, so to speak.

Besides duckweed, I raise my own mealworms in Sterlite drawers (there are a lot of YouTube videos for this, too). The beetles go into one drawer with the bottom cut out and a screen put in its place... the eggs and newborns fall through the screen to the drawer below to prevent cannibalization. It's a nearly hassle-free way to raise them.

I look forward to reading more of your experiments!

 

[streetmutt]

I'll look into it, thanks! Great idea!

 

[annelions]

What about tilapia instead of minnows? Tilapia need a grow tank anyway while they're minnow sized, the larger ones can be fed to you or used in the garden. I don't know what minnows eat, but tilapia will eat ANYTHING. Including the duckweed, if big enough. As far as I know, they're like chickens in that regard. Very hardy fish, too.

 

[flg8r]

The tilapia will eat the duckweed in a matter of minutes, even as babies, to the point where there is nothing left. The minnows can fertilize (naturally/cleanly) the duckweed without eating it.