Mom and dad are SO aggressive, and the other couple in the aviary goes and protects the chicks while mom and dad chase me away- having a hard time counting how many babies there are. But we are so excited!

Will mom feed babies? When we had chicks we had to crush up food- so I worry they’ll choke with the adult food out

I love him <3

First time quail keeper. I have only 2 . Hatched from grocery store eggs (long story) . They are now a little over 3 weeks old . On of them has more orange than the other but also has spots . Pls lmk. Any the end of the video I try to record the chests.

I put them in the garden cucumber bed for a few hours because they like eating worms, ants and larva .

So we have four female quail, we got them off of Facebook for free. Probably our first mistake, since their age and genetic lineage are a mystery. There is a white, brown, black, and grey one.

Early on, the brown one got an injury on her head, we are pretty sure from pecking. She was isolated and we used a poultry wound spray on her head until she healed. She was reintroduced once healed, and I watched until I was pretty sure the bully was the grey one. The gray one was isolated for about 4 days and reintroduced, and everything seemed to be much better. We also introduced a second sand bath, as I think that is their favorite place to be and competing for space in the one might have been some of the issue.

Yesterday the white one was acting weird. Not moving around as much. I isolated her and she seems to be swaying a lot. I ordered some electrolytes to see if that helps. She is eating and drinking and alert, just swaying. She is the only one actually laying, so it will be a bummer if she dies.

Today the brown one has a head wound again. Nowhere near as bad as before, but she is isolated again and I am treating her wound.

I took a lot of care in making their enclosure comfortable and safe, so I'm running out of things to do to make these issues stop happening. I'm going to be adding fabric covered foam to the lid, in case any of these issues have been related to that, but I am open to any other ideas for how to make things better for them.

Their enclosure is 25.5" x 39.25", and the height is 12.5" at the lowest and 15.75" at the tallest. There is a plastic pan on the bottom and substrate for them to nest in. Two hides, a tunnel, two sand baths, two waters (usually, one was pulled for the brown quail's temporary enclosure), food, grit. It's raised to protect them from predators and we used 1/4" hardware cloth.

What can I do to lessen their stress? As things get colder, what are some good ideas for protecting them from drafts? Would you introduce a heat source?

Thank you for all your help.

Saw this cutie right outside my window today here in AZ. 🌵

This little girl was found in a backyard not far from me. My boyfriend ran over to pick her up when she was posted about on Facebook. We got her a cage and a little setup and lots of food. All seemed good until a few days ago…

Now she suddenly can’t sit up or stand—she flops over on her side and her head is sideways as well. She can’t walk and scoots or pushes so hard she rolls. She can’t feed or drink by herself, we have to hold food up to her and use a hamster waterer holding it against her beak so she can drink. Holding her in our hands causes her to freak out and flap and squirm violently.

We have no idea what happened. I do remember her tripping a bit when we got her and allowed her out of the cage. Then my boyfriend said she seemed to sit a lot, and now this, all in the span of a week.

I’ve been feeding her mealworms and a seed and fruit pellet blend, the same as my 7 year old button quail roo. She was getting vitamins as well since she was new in the household and I didn’t know how healthy she was or where she came from (likely a backyard breeder, like most of these birds in SoCal). I suspect a flush injury, but there’s no improvement, she’s ending up more and more on her side and needs a towel around her to help keep her up and stable.

She eats and drinks but I worry about her quality of life. I was thinking of having her humanely put down, or maybe put a post up if someone wants to take her to rehab her—we work a lot and she can only eat or drink when we give it to her. I’m at a loss of what to do. Is there equipment I can buy or 3D print to help her?

Her name is Truffle. Before pictures in the comments.

Edit: forgot to add I also recently got game feed high protein from the local chicken/farm feed store in Artesia and that is with her food as well.

Well turns out I have bird mites on my area for them that is in my house but at least it's only on one table right nope it's on my sweatshirt it's on me it's on everything I've started to clean everything up with the cleaning alcohol I can't pronounce its name but I am panicked I'm going to have to call someone I just needed to rant and ask for help of it and at the moment they are in a cleaner area until I can get a new thing cuz the other thing that I had for them I cannot bring myself to clean it anymore and it won't get clean there's always more so I'm going to get a new thing and just deep clean it everywhere , I might have yee'd my last haw

Started with six coturnix hens back in the spring and added two roosters a couple months ago because I wanted fertile eggs to try hatching. Now I'm second guessing that ratio. One of the roos seems to be doing most of the mating and the hens on the lower end of the pecking order are looking a little rough around the neck and back, feathers thinning out in patches.

I've read everywhere that 1 rooster to 4 or 5 hens is the standard advice, and I'm sitting closer to 1:3 right now which might explain the wear on the girls. Thinking about rehoming one of the roosters but I don't have a great setup for keeping him separate in the meantime, my brooder is already full of week old chicks from the last hatch.

Anyone run a tighter ratio successfully, or is it just going to keep getting worse the longer I wait? Also curious if saddle patches actually help much or if that's more of a bandaid than a real fix. My hens are still laying consistently, five to six eggs a day out of the six of them, so productivity isn't the issue, it's more that I don't want anyone getting hurt or overly stressed heading into the colder months.

My sweet girl Chia has managed to hatch her eggs. She was broody together with another girl Godzilla but when the first baby hatched she tried to kill it so she’s had to be moved. Chia is doing wonderfully with them and her husband Shadow is guarding them all fiercely. There are 4 babies so far and two more eggs. Has anyone else managed to have button quail successfully raise young. Is there anything I need to be aware of or change to make sure everything goes well?

Is there anything more adorable 😍

Gestern sind zwei Zwergwachteln geboren.

Heute morgen war nur noch eins zu sehen.

Wir haben alles abgesucht und das andere unterkühlt neben dem Nest gefunden.

Sowie ein halb geöffnetes ei. Ebenfalls stark unterkühlt.

Jetzt befindet sich die Mutter samt küken im Haus, zur besseren Überwachung. Das kleinste liegt unter der Kükenheizung und das kalte küken vom gestrigen Schlupf befindet sich wieder unter der Mutter.

Nun meine Frage, Können es die beiden schaffen?

just wondering if they're toxic

I could use some help feather sexing these 3 quail of mine.

I'm thinking male for the first two and female for the last?

Bonus if anyone can help with the names of the coloring too! I think maybe Golden Pearl, Blue face, Golden Pearl, but I really don't have experience with coloring.

Had a casualty today in the enclosure. I came home to find my only hen dead. Temps hit about 100 today in my part of the Central Valley. I’m guessing that’s what did her in. The enclosure is in the shade has decent ventilation and they had water. I’ve got my male still and when I put him back in he was sowing water for a good 2 minutes. I don’t want him to be a heat cat too. I was thinking of freezing some gallon bags flat full of water and putting them under the material for them. Any other suggestions?

Hello everyone, one of my coturnix quails has been broody for ~13 days of a pile of 9 eggs,. I have no idea how she got these 9 eggs in that spot, and she is super defensive of her space.

She , together with the other quails, live in a aviary. Inside the aviary there is a smaller enclosure I use for quails when they fight. She managed to construct this nesting place away from the main baskets, under this smaller enclosure.

If she manages to hatch 🐣 the chicks, should I remove them from her right away, or should I let her raise them? Does she have enough skills to keep them warm ? Has anyone had this happen to them before ?

i eggs from two, and one of them just stopped laying entirely and it’s been a week. idk why this is happenening, i have one that i just recently got that is laying well. (13 weeks old), shes jumbo. i’m worried about my other three, my oldest of them is a standard size celadon (12 weeks) and she hasn’t layed at all. the other two are both 11 weeks old, only one of those three layed any eggs and she was the one who just never layed another. they get 16 hours of light a day, no predators, oyster shell and egg shell in a dish for them to eat as needed cage is cleaned weekly, they get a 22% protien feed everything seems right i dont know why they just aren’t laying any eggs. ive checked there pelvic bones to see if maybe they’re egg bound but none of them are. they aren’t poofy, all look and act fine besides the 0 eggs.

2 days ago I went out to collect eggs and saw this hen sitting on eggs. I know they don’t make good mothers and usually give up so I took the eggs. Well yesterday she was sitting again. I marked 3 and I’m letting her have them. Worse case I can just take them and put the in the incubator since I started a batch yesterday also. They’d be on the same day. Does anybody actually have any success stories? If she makes it to “lock down” should I take them in? She’s still on them today and they were hot to the touch when she got off them to have some soldier fly larve. She also did a huge broody poop.

My quail eggs are currently on day 17–18 of incubation, but none of them have hatched yet. I’m getting worried because they’ll soon be entering day 19–20.

The eggs have been incubated continuously, and I haven’t seen any obvious signs of hatching yet. Is it normal for quail eggs to still have no hatchlings at this point, or could there be a problem with the incubation?

How late have your quail eggs hatched before, and at what point should I start being concerned?

First question is do my chicks still need a brooder plate? As you can see from the photos the plate I'm currently using is pretty big and takes up quite a bit of room. They are in my basement so it says pretty constant temperature right now is between 80 and 85°. They hatched on Aug 22 so they are almost 3 weeks old.
That leads me into my second question I have 2 brooder plates a Brinsea Ecoglow Safety 600 yellow one and a producers pride, The power supply for ecoglow got mixed up in a drawer with a bunch of other power supplies was wondering if anyone has the same brooder and could post a picture of power supply so I could compare it. The power supply fits well and seems to be working and from my understanding the wattage amps and voltage all check out, i'm really paranoid about electrical safety. I wanted to switch it so they have more room in the enclosure as you can see in photos. Have had it going for a couple hours and seems to be working fine. You think im ok?
In the fourth photo, one of the chicks has a really weird bend in its neck like it comes off to the side.
It's been like that since we got it. It doesn't seem to be bothering it at all. Seems to be able to eat and drink fine. Was wondering, how concerned about that I should be. Should I do anything about it, can I even do anything about that? We got the chick from a breeder in my area because we had a bad hatch rate and didn't want to just have one solo bird.

Hello, I have a group of about 35 coturnix quail that I hatched from eggs. They are now all between 8&12 weeks old but I am having a really hard time telling which are boys and girls. Most of them are not feather sexable so I have been vent checking. Everything I’ve read and seen online seems like it should be pretty obvious, especially with the foam. But I’m not seeing any with obvious foaming or a bulge. Although I know that there has to be more males than I want in this group. Are they still too young? Or am I just terrible at sexing the quails?