i have quail....now what?

[okiegirl1]

wifey, you're gonna have the most spoiled critters EVER!!

You must have seen me eyeballing this at the store...
https://bunnyrabbit.com/equipmentpix/HideAHut.jpg
It's made out of hay so they can pick and scratch at it...even eat it if they want.

how cute is that???

BUt........couldn't you make one of these??
if you took raffia and wind it around small bundles of hay, then make like a rag rug thing, but tubular shaped?

I'm always looking at making stuff myself. They hardly ever look as nice and store bought, but I'm sure critters don't mind.

 

[okiegirl1]

http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2148/img00127s.jpg

First, I know nothing about quail, (or most critters, for that matter)
but is it ok for his little feet to be falling thru the bottom?
I'm thinkin you said something about taking the cages outside and sitting them on the grass, so it's probably no problem.

 

[Wifezilla]

I laid a layer of hardward cloth over the wire and it was a horrible mess by the end of the day. The lady I bought them from had a small piece of newspaper down so they had some opportunity to get off the wire. Again, horrible mess in no time.

For now, they can get off the wire in the dusting hut or in the basket (aka the quail cabana). Not a perfect solution, but apparently people who raise them in cages leave them on the wire all the time.

Mine will only be on wire until Spring. Hopefully they will adapt to outside time in their "tractor" while I work on the large quail pen.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

i LOVE the quail cabana!! and the pix!!!!

ok note to self: get quail

 

[okiegirl1]

i LOVE the quail cabana!! and the pix!!!!

ok note to self: get quail

that's what I was thinking.

It's already wifeys fault I want ducks, NOW I want quail too!
ya know when my daughter was really little I would always tell her "we don't say I want, I want, I want" but here I am doing the same thing!

 

[Wifezilla]

 

[freemotion]

I am staying AWAY from this thread!

 

[Farmfresh]

When I had mine I allowed them to be on the litter like I do with the chickens. I had the cage in the barn or it would have been a huge mess because they LOVED to scratch in the shavings! The plus side of that was their bedding did stay drier for a longer period of time. The down side was they loved to kick bedding into their water!

I ended up with large exterior mounted bird fountains like they use for parrots.

 

[Wifezilla]

It been an interesting week adjusting to my new charges. I am getting to know them individually as well. Snowball is a COMPLETE SPAZZ. If it is possible for a quail to have ADD, she has it!!! She is very active and runs all over the place in the cage, jumps on stuff, pecks at things and then starts all over again. She has 2 settings... "bouncing off the walls" and "dead asleep". There is nothing in between for this girl. When you talk to her she makes chirpy noises at you and sounds like a little cricket!

Her cuteness has kept me from trying out some quail recipes with her as the star. She is THE WORST food waster! She doesn't just eat her food, she digs to the bottom of the feeder like she is a kid looking for the prize in the bottom of a freakin' cereal box! I had to take the chick feeder out of the cage all together. Even with a spill over tray, I swear she was wasting half the feed. Actually, Snowball would dig all the feed out on to the spill-over tray and then Lucy Lu would scratch in the spill-over tray and scatter the feed everywhere. They were quite a team

I have foiled their evil plot to cover my den floor with game bird feed by putting in a taller feed cup and mounting it a little higher so they have to stretch to reach the bottom. It seems to be working so far.

More on the crowd later

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

Sounds cute!

I've been wanting quail for awhile. Had a few last year, but they were little cannibals! Later when reading about them, I figured out I'd had 1 female and like 5 males, so what I thought was cannibalism was just too many boys having fun with the only gal!