We’re up to our eyeballs in quail. I love it. I can’t get enough of these amazing birds. The sound of the tiny crows from the little roosters who stand up straight and tell the world how big they are. The blustering flight of a fat hen out of the cage when I open it to clean. She’ll buzz a short, frantic escape to the barn floor, and sit there panting. I’ll reach to grab her and she’ll put all her effort into another short burst of flight. Then I’ll snatch her up, sometimes cornering her against the round bales. Into the safety of the cage she goes, her heart beating frantically against my fingers.
The peeping of the impossibly tiny chicks in the galvanized water trough that we use as a brooding box, and the way they skitter across the pine shavings, hardly bigger than a pine shaving themselves.
The gorgeous blue eggs we get from the Celedon hens and the speckled brown eggs from the Jumbo quail hens who have just started laying!
We were quickly outgrowing the four cages I built last month. In July, I bought 40 quail of a new variety, Jumbo Cortunix, which are supposed to be bigger than the Celadon blue-egg variety. These came from Purcellville, Northern Virginia. I will keep 12 for breeding and will butcher the others for meat, part of the unfortunate reality of raising animals for food. In the meantime, we needed a place to put them while they grow.
Enter our youngest (and tallest) son, Jacob. And enter some fancy chicken tractor plans I bought for $10 online. Although designed for broilers, this was recommended for quail as well. Quail will flush when startled, and need either a very low pen that prevents them from getting up speed and breaking their necks on the roof, or they need something tall enough that they can flush up five feet or so without hitting anything. I though this pen fit the bill, and I also liked that I would be able to stand upright in it myself. So I bought the plans and set Jacob to work interpreting it and cutting out the pieces.
There was a ton of information about why the author chose the materials he did, and there was great explanation about carpentry tips and tricks, like how to make half-lap joints with a chisel, but when it actually came to putting all the pieces together there was just this diagram and not much help with assembly. Great! You’ve cut the pieces, now all you need to do is put it together! You did it! Congratulations!
The roof was made of metal conduit which was supposed to make the structure lighter than if we built a wooden frame. And Jacob got to bend all that conduit with a fancy conduit-bending tool.
In the end, I think it turned out pretty well. It was supposed to have wheels on the back to help it move easier, but we never got to that part. As it is, it’s almost too heavy to drag.
The very first night we put the quail in their new spacious house, a black snake got in under the skids. This has been the Year of the Black Snake, both at our farm and at our house in town. We relocated no fewer than four snakes from town to farm this spring, and there are at least that many out here already. (There are videos of several of the captures and releases if anyone wants to check out my YouTube channel.) I found the snake relaxed against the inside of a skid with a quail-sized bulge in its belly. I was so mad I hit at it with a stick and chased it out before I thought to film it!
Generally, I’m happy to have black snakes on the farm because they eat mice, rats, and voles. Of course if there are delectable quail within easy reach, I guess the mice and voles are less appealing. But so far, we’ve elected to let the snakes live. I almost changed my mind when later on I found the SAME SNAKE, the quail bulge still there, curled up in the machine shed on our work bench! Again, I was so distracted I forgot to take a photo.
So on the very first day of the quail relocation, we lost one. Another one flew out when I was feeding them and headed for the tall grass and walnut logs. It took two days before we could catch him and put him back inside–but at least he lived!
I think we lost another one or two when some animal ripped through the chicken wire on the back on the cage. Found a lot of feathers but no body and no blood. It was a small hole so a small predator–maybe a mongoose or a rat? We’ll replace the chicken wire with hardware cloth.
To predator proof a free-range quail pen I realized was almost impossible. I ended up digging the foundation into the ground and tamping the soft dirt around the outside as tightly as I could. That sort of negates the idea of it being a moveable tractor, getting the birds to fresh grass every few days. Already the inside of the pen is soiled and we need to dig it out and move it. So much for an easy-to-move free-range system!
When they are not at risk from black snakes, rats, or other predators, the quail are the happiest little guys around.
What about torrential rain and thunderstorms? Maybe they’ll get washed away in the fall floods?
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