Are quail suicidal?
It was March and our quail were 5 weeks old when we finally rehomed them to their permanent cage. They are meant to reach full maturity and be table-ready as well as start laying eggs at 8 weeks. At 5 weeks, they were still teenagers, but fully feathered, nicely grown and gradually accustomed to colder climate. Also, the storms had passed and outside temperatures were reaching 10 - 15 C. It all was so perfect.
Now is a good time to address a biggest concern that many of our neighbours warned us about and that keeps coming up in various internet discussions time and again. Are quail suicidal?
|
|
|
Are quail suicidal?
Let me say that I realise all homesteaders have different experiences and I am not saying that my opinion is above anyone else's, especially considering this is the first time I’ve ever hatched and raised birds, but what I’m about to say has been my experience and is a strong basis for my option. So, are quail suicidal?
My answer to that is categorically NO! I personally think that the question doesn’t even make sense: why would any animal find unnecessary ways to die? I believe it is arrogant to believe that any animal species didn’t do well before people came along and built them housing, gave them food and started to control their breeding. I realise some species have been adapted to human needs - are heavier or grow faster than they did before intervention - but the thought that any species deliberately find ingenious ways to die is just silly. Don’t you agree?
My experience has shown that quail are not at all suicidal and I fail to see where this reputation comes from. I believe that, because of their smaller size, quail might be more difficult to care for than larger poultry varieties and a few fatalities that we had to date were due to my inexperience as poultry keeper rather than due to quail having some innate animal instinct to seek out death or general lack of intelligence.
|
|
|
Are quail really suicidal or is that just a myth?
That said, I think quail are less domesticated than chickens are are a little more skittish and get easily spooked of handling or when approached. I went into the cage once, to replace their water and top up their food, and one just launched itself upwards (as they often do when spooked), flew over my head and out of the cage. I thought of catching it but it ran into the rose hip bushes and was nowhere to be seen. James found it dead a few weeks later, which doesn’t surprise me as there are rats and crows on the farm and no food left outside the quail cage.
What was unexpected is the relapse of cold winter weather in late March - the snow came back, the winds picked back up and it was freezing cold. We tried providing quail with more hiding places, insulated boxes and such, but they are very independent birds who like to make their own nests and didn’t take to using the new shelters. This meant that one morning I unfortunately found majority of them taken by the frost and dead. We only had 4 left: 3 girls and 1 boy.
|
|
|
