quail-bob white

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I just brought home 4 pair of young quail. I have them in a rabbit hutch borrowed from a friend. Would like any ideas for a cage to keep them in. I plan on keeping them in a cage and trying to incubate the eggs. Any info would be appreciated. Thank you Lisa

-- Lisa Scruggs (lisafrm1@aol.com), October 29, 1999

Answers

Welcome to the interesting world of quail!

As I raise larger numbers of birds, I use cages that are six feet long, three feet wide and three feet high, with two feet of one end enclosed on three sides and the bottom to give them a place to get out of the wind. The two 4Ft long open sides and the bottom are covered with 1/2inch hardware cloth(rabbit wire). The end that is not enclosed can be covered with wire or wood. Put the door on a long side, next to the enclosed area so that you can reach any eggs they lay. The cages are supported on legs that put them three feet off the ground. I use pressure treated 2x4s for the legs and untreated wood for anything that will come into contact with the birds. I put the feeder in the enclosed area and the waterer on the wire floor. The roof is made of 1/2 inch plywood covered with shingles. Slope the roof away from the side you put the door on or you will be standing under a waterfall while you feed and water your birds. When preparing to incubate the eggs, save no more than 7 to 10 days egg production (hatch rate drops off pretty quickly after the eggs are ten days old, although I have seen a few 21 day old eggs hatch). You didn't say why you wanted to raise quail, (meat, eggs, sell chicks, fun, etc.), but if you want to raise them for meat or eggs, you may want to think about raising Jumbo Pharoah Quail. The are easy to raise, start laying at 6 to 7 weeks, are ready to butcher at 8 weeks, lay year round (about 200 to 250 eggs a year), and , unlike bobwhites, don't seem to turn cannibalistic when crowded or under stress. I hope some of my ramblings will be of help...Good luck!

-- Layne King (lking@paytechonline.com), November 01, 1999.


Last week I attened a full day's seminar put on by the Virginia Game Department in cooperation with the Forestry and other departments. This was a fee seminar and included free lunch and a field trip to a farm where they are planting hedgerows and a field set aside to try to bring back the native quail. Anything done to benefit quail also benefits song birds. Anybody interested in quail who also has land might want to check with your local conservation or game of forestry people to see if such a seminar is offered in your area because the one I went to was an excellent seminar! Oh, and we got lots of nice hand-outs, too! We were shown a very good video wheich was made in Mississippi.

One of the tings I learned is that quail are not very bright. If you set up the perfect habit and then release pen-raised quail, they call that the "train wreck" restocking approach because when they did it with radio-collared birds, they were all dead by 3-4 days at the most! Hawks and other predators got them all!

That said, as to pen-raised quail, I had Pharoh-D quail. I bought the babies at the size of bumblebees and used an old printer cover for a brooder for them. I had them in my home and when they got big enough to be in a cage I have them in a big metal rabbit cage I bought at a pet store -- the kind with the tray that you put litter in and then pull out to clean. They did very well in this. The lady I bought them from raised quail in rabbit cages set along a shed or barn wall. She had them covered so rain could not get in, but they had plenty of light and air. I can't remember how many she had per cage, but they don't set their eggs. They were very prolific egg layers (in this case, Pharoah-D quail, larger than the Bob-whites) so she had eggs to eat, eggs to pickle, and she incubated quite a few.

I really enjoyed my quail -- lots of fun to watch -- but they never got tame the way chickens and ducks do. If/when I get more, I will be sure to keep them in rabbit hutch type cages rather than big open cages, not so much because I like to keep critters confined, but because they are so small and so dumb and so vulnerable to predators!

-- Elizabeth Petofi (tengri@cstone.net), March 24, 2000.


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