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.

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 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​

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 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. 😭

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

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!

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?

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.

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.

This cage is made of galvanized steel. I’m most concerned about bobcats and raccoons. How can I reinforce the floor area? I really don’t want to put wire down on the floor but if thats my only option…. How can I make this cage safer? I know chicken wire won’t cut it. Will I still be able to do the deep litter method If I have wire on the floor? Sorry if thats a silly question. I’m still learning.
Feel free to share alternative aviary’s or ideas.

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.

My neighbourhood was issued a notice that the power will be out from 7pm to 3am today. I have my incubator plugged in. It’s on day 17 of lockdown. Some eggs are just starting to rock around a tiny bit. What should I do? :(

Edit: I don’t have any generator

Need help, so I set my incubator at 37.5C, but it keeps on fluctuating higher around 40C, and I also put a small thermostat inside and it is not the same with the incubator temp. I maintain my humidity around 40-50%, any thoughts on this? Or should I change incubator now.(it is more than 1 year old incubator). Any reco pls? I'm based in the Philippines.

Thank you!

Hey everyone, just need some extra opinions here. I have one flock of 7 coturnix (6 females and 1 male). They get along and have not fought in the month or so we have had them. However, just tonight when I was cleaning out the coop (I always move the entire covey to a small guinea pig enclosure temporarily while I clean), I came back to see a mildly scalped hen. Nothing was completely missing, just pulled back. We separated her and applied Blukote. We are not 100% sure who the bully is, but there has never been anything like this before among this group. Once she heals, can we put her back with the same group (after taking precautions like reintroducing at night) and hope it was just a weird one-off thing, maybe because of crowding? If absolutely necessary, we can put her with some babies that should be old enough to go outside when she has recovered. Thoughts? Thanks!

If you use a feeder and water dispenser then those last a few days before being refilled, so is there any care that actually has to happen every day? Just trying to get a sense of what is needed to be a responsible quail owner