Raising quail
This year, 2018, marks our first attempt at hatching, brooding and raising any kind of bird on our homestead and we decided to start with quail. After a somewhat troublesome incubation and even more nerve-wracking brooding it was time to move the quail to their teenage nursery pen.
The 35 birds were growing at an astronomical speed and quickly becoming crowded in their baby brooder. They were only 3 weeks old but already looked like a decent tennis ball in size - a massive change from the tiny hatchlings that popped out of the eggs! It was definitely time to move them somewhere else, however we didn’t have a place that looked suitable. It was February and Orkney was still being battered by storm gales and we had an unprecedented cold spell which froze our water pipes over which left even the local Orcadians astounded. Thick snow covered the ground and made it look unwelcoming, barren and miserable! The sheds we had in mind for quail felt too cold and exposed so we had to improvise.
Indoor starter brooder for poultry
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Outdoor metal shed for poultry
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And what an improvisation it was! We decided that a good place between warm indoors and cold outdoors was our porch. It kept the snow and wind out but was unheated. Besides, we were smallholders and the thought of our porch being used by animals sounded like a good idea. We decided to use the side panels from an Omlet Eglu chicken coop that our friends had lent us to section off a 4ft x 8ft corner in the porch, where we placed a bunch of wood shavings on the floor and a large plastic tote to act as housing.
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The system was a success! 35 quail went into this nursery brooder and all 35 quail eventually came out - not a single death! They were kept at ground level which made our two dogs a little insane each time they went in and out of the house, but it also made the birds accustomed to the dogs and prepared them for a life outdoors where the temperature was much lower than inside our house.
What I didn’t realise was that James was still going to be working away and it was going to be up to me to keep the quail clean. I did my best at first, but February was a tricky time for me, as I had just found out I was pregnant and the insanely heightened sense of smell, constant fatigue and dizziness was making most farm jobs impossible. I decided to prioritise my health and, whilst I kept the quail fed and watered, I left the cleaning bit slide. As you can imagine, this made the porch (and most of the house) stink!
It was so bad that I couldn’t go in there and started to use the back door to get in and out of the house. The porch was off limits! I even forced all our visitors to use the back door as well. Perhaps it was a lazy and selfish decision but at the time it felt justified - I was alone and feeling extremely ill. Besides, apart from the smell, the quail were doing well.
However, it was so unbearable that never again will I have any animal living in the house with us - I now see that it was a silly idea to begin and definitely yet another thing I learned the hard way! It was the end of March when James came back home and we decided it was time to rehome quail and reclaim our house. This is when we put up the quail cage and kicked the 35 birds, aged 5 weeks outdoors!
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In the next chapter I will discuss the super popular notion amongst poultry keepers and give you my answer for the all-time-favourite question:
Are quail suicidal?
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