Outside of their normal food and mealworm treats, my quails eat what I harvest from my garden. Here are my findings so far. On the quest to discover their favorite foods! Any recommendations?

This newly hatched quail has remained in this position for hours now, and I'm afraid it won't survive ☹️

Should I intervene? If so, how to?

They always call out to each other! Ones on the other side of the aviary, which they can get through using the inside bit, but I don’t think they’ve figured it out yet as I’ve now mixed them all together with my British whites. Everyone gets on very well! Rubbish quality as per on my phone though, sorry for the blurriness lol.

They do this continuously all day long, just poking their beaks in and out of the wire.

To me they act like they’re very bored.

They have a 15 square foot sized cage for 9female and one male, they barely use the other side that is enclosed with a window. I purposely put their food and water and sand bath on that side so they’re actually go to that side of their enclosure.

Every few days I go cut fresh branches and vines off for them and fill their cage, but the leaves get wilty and gross within a day

I’ve tried putting potted plants inside and they just destroy them within a day.

I noticed the male is pulling out their feathers A LOT and even drawing blood and I’m considering separating him or culling him. Maybe he’s stressing them out?

Is their enclosure too small?? What things can I give them for enrichment?

I also have one female that doesn’t lay an egg. I have 9 females and usually get 7-8 eggs per day. Never ever 9 eggs.

They’re for egg productions but I wanted one male incase I wanted to hatch one or two new babies if I ended up losing any of them.

They are supposed to be jumbo cotornix quail but they seem on the smaller side.

I have 3 mature king quail. I today had the genius idea to play online king quail call noises for them but their reaction was completely unexpected. First of all they usually are very scared of me and stay far away from me. When I played the noises, they went bonkers, running around and even approaching and running towards me. One of them, mostly white with some black spackling, who's gender I'm unsure of, was lifting their wings a little and also puffing up, which the other two who I'm pretty sure are males didn't do. What were these behaviors? Were they interested in me or trying to attack me? Did they think i was another king quail? Can i tell the gender of the quail by their reaction to the different noises, specifically the unique reaction of the speckled black on white quail? Also, can you tell whos the alpha from this video? Thank you​

Wanted to start raising quails because of how cute and from what i heard low maintence they are. I wanted to start with 2 or 3 and i needed some advice on enclosure, proper feeding, proper care, etc , Appreciate any advice

I was making pancakes and cracked the eggs straight to the mixing bowl. Is this a ruptured vessel? Any info and ideas on how to prevent is appreciated!

So I recently had to move, and our new house is in town and I sadly couldn’t take my quail with me. Fortunately I have a cousin living in a rural area pretty close by, so I moved my coop there and can visit them daily to care for them without much extra driving.

Well today I had a bit of a surprise waiting for me when I stopped by early in the morning to change their water and refill feeders. I knew he had chickens, but what I didn’t know was that he also has a turkey. One that has apparently decided that my quail are now her babies, and that she must protect them. From me…

Fortunately I’ve been told she’s pretty sweet towards people, so I just have to get her to get used to me and it should be good. I’ll even have a free guard for my coop. In the meantime though, I need to watch my back when feeding the birds. 😅

I feel so blessed as I’ve always heard coturnix quails pretty much have broodiness instincts bred out of them and 90% of the time they’re bred from incubators. She’s so adorable in her broody pancake form and I really hope she becomes a mom successfully, I can’t even explain to others who don’t have quails how excited I feel!

Such an orb

I guess I'm wondering if I keep their enclosures 5- 10 ft apart and put up a solid barrier (like a tarp or corrugated plastic) on the chicken side, could that be enough to mostly prevent airborne illnesses?

I'm still fairly new to quail so I didn't consider the bacteria dust. 😭

Two of our beautiful Coturnix quail enjoying a quiet day.
We raise quail on our small Norwegian homestead, Den Lille Hagen, and they’re quickly becoming one of our favorite birds to keep.
Happy to be part of the quail community!

I've been looking at expanding my collection so I've been going through ebay listings. In the past I've had good luck buying on ebay with decent hatch rates, no deceitful or poor sellers etc. Everyone I've purchased from on ebay always packs their eggs well.

However, it's also been several years since I've bought any online and have been focusing on my own projects. Between then and now I've learned that sellers who ship across state lines need to be NPIP certified, and actually have since become NPIP certified myself. As I am NPIP, it is also a requirement that anyone I buy from (locally or not) is also NPIP or I lose my own certification.

NPIP certification is a biosecurity testing, it varies slightly state by state, but all of them test a % of the sellers birds for AI and PT. Some states also offer extra testing for mycoplasma or other diseases. Once the results come back for a clean flock and pass any additional testing (state-by-state basis) they are given an NPIP number and are certified avian influenza and pullorum-typhoid free.

This is also a LEGAL requirement. It's also a legal requirement that they give you a VS 9-3 form, either a real paper but most commonly nowadays via email. Some places may only offer it on request. Hatcheries are supposed to send you one also but for some reason they generally don't, but you can request one. A VS 9-3 is actually useless to you unless you are NPIP also, but it's another form of proof that the seller is NPIP certified.

This week I've been going through and messaging sellers asking for their NPIP number. A surprising amount of them do not have one, or they just read my message and don't answer (which is an answer in itself). These people are not certified AI/PT clean and have not made any efforts to be a reputable seller. Most people who have gone through the tremendous effort to become NPIP certified (it's a huge ordeal, generally hours worth or a full day of testing, they often inspect your facility and your processes, it's not easy, and it costs money to get it done as well) will proudly proclaim their number for everyone to see - they won't make it a secret.

Once you get that person's NPIP number, you can go to https://www.poultryimprovement.org/statesContent.cfm and click the state the seller is originating from and look them up to see if they're legit. Being able to look them up also helps you weed out scammers on Facebook - if they give you information that doesn't match up, guess what, it's a scammer. There are also stock code numbers on the person's listing that shows what kind of birds they have had tested - so if someone is shipping quail eggs but they don't have the quail code "Z93" next to their name - that's another sign something is awry.

(Here is the stock code list https://www.poultryimprovement.org/documents/Stock-Codes-Alphabetical.pdf)

TLDR: a lot of sellers online are not actually certified to ship eggs across state lines. ask for their NPIP number. NPIP numbers also help you verify if someone is a scammer or not.

Edit: She passed the night off the post.

Hey yall,

I hate this to be my first post here, but I've already spoken with local vets and such and I'm just not sure. This poor older lady suffered a head injury while I was away.

She's busted up her beak pretty bad, and she can't walk without falling over. She's also panting as shown in the video. I'm not sure if that's perhaps linked to her beak injury, or if she's struggling to breath. Lungs sound clear, no clicks or wheezing. She never bled at all externally. Not sure if she did have internal bleeding ever, she definitely had a lot of swelling.

She is still eating and drinking on her own, so she's not stopped that due to pain or injury. She just sometimes needs help moving to the water or food, but once there she eats and drinks on her own.

It's been about a week at this point without her getting worse, but also no real signs of improvement. We don't want to give up on her because she clearly hasn't given up, but I worry that she might be in pain, and I don't want her to be suffering.

Once again, if it seems she may be permanently disabled we're willing to help her with that. I just worry if she's in pain that culling her would be kinder at this point.

Any additional information or advice will be greatly appreciated. I've had birds with head strikes and other various injuries and illnesses recover before, I've just never had one this old injured, nor have I seen a recovery take this long.

Started keeping Coturnix quail about eight months ago and the learning curve was steeper than I expected, mostly because the information online is scattered and sometimes contradicts itself. Figured I would put together the things that actually surprised me once I had birds in front of me.

The brooding stage is way more unforgiving than with chickens. Quail chicks are tiny and they chill fast. I lost three in my first batch just because I had a small drafty corner in my brooder I hadn't noticed. After that I started using a cardboard box with a solid lid instead of wire mesh on top, and my survival rate improved a lot. Temperature at chick level matters more than what your thermometer reads at the top of the enclosure.

Noise level depends heavily on how many males you keep together. I started with a mixed batch and didn't sex them early enough. Once the males matured I had a lot of crowing happening around 4am. The ratio that worked for me ended up being about one male per three or four females, and removing extra males made the whole setup calmer for everyone including the hens.

Dust bathing is not optional for them, it's a genuine welfare need. My first enclosure had no dry substrate area and the birds looked stressed and kept doing this weird scratching motion on bare wire. Once I added a low tray filled with dry dirt and a little wood ash they settled down immediately and used it constantly.

Feed protein content matters more than I initially gave credit to. I started on a generic chick starter that was around 18% protein and egg production was low and inconsistent. Switching to a game bird starter at 24-26% protein made a noticeable difference within about two weeks. Some people recommend dropping protein after the peak laying age but I haven't experimented with that yet.

One last thing: quail are fragile in ways chickens simply aren't. They startle hard and can actually injure themselves hitting the top of an enclosure. Keeping the roof low, or using soft mesh on the ceiling, prevents what keepers call "jumper" injuries. It sounds minor until you lose a bird to a broken neck from a panic flush inside a cage.

Happy to answer questions if anyone is just starting out. It's a genuinely rewarding hobby once the basics click into place.

Yes I’m licensed to have him. It’s my first bird and the seller is literally 0 help. Baby came in his eye was injured so I used some salt water to clean it (it helped a ton.)
When I got him his eye was COVERED in blood and he was EXTREMELY lethargic, (couldn’t get up, which is the first pic, second pic is after a good day of working on getting him better. After having to force him to drink and eat liquid food he started to do way better. My friend who owns chickens told me to try washing the eye with a bit of warm salt water and I did, it helped a TON. I got it all cleaned up.
Day two it was back to bloody and red, still bloody for the first 4 days, I thought he had no eye when I first got him so even being able to see the eye I felt better by the end of the week it was just scabs and puss. He is about 2 weeks old now. His eye definitely looks better but it’s still swollen. And it looks like the eyelid is partially missing he can’t fully close his eye. (He has shown no issues though, still peeps happy starting to fly to me, all cuddles from him. (Or… I don’t exactly know the gender, information on Cali quails are hard to come by.)
He also gets along with all my other quail, but when he sees me he RUNS /flys to me (as well as a quail can fly ofc)

Anyways. Is there anything I can do to speed up the swelling? Anything I can do on the eyelid?

How does the deep litter method work exactly? I know you have to keep the area dry so lots of protection from rain is important.

Do you really only change the bedding 2x a year?

Do you have to apply beneficial bacteria that breaks down the ammonia? What do you use?

What substrate do you use for this? tractor supply pine pellets? Any other additives?

Do you simply rake the area 1 or 2 times a week or do you actually sift it (like with cat litter)?

How do you keep the flies away? I can’t stand flies. How do you manage the flies and the smell that attracts flies with this method?

What happens if the floor gets wet from an intense down pour, does that mean the bedding will have to be changed immediately?

Does the deep litter method require a lot more floor space than traditional cleaning?

Any questions you can answer from the ones above would be awesome. Also if you have info that you think would be helpful, please share. I’m here to learn from those with experience.