Button Quails?

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I keep 5 button quail in the cage with my bonded pair of parrotletts. They are no problem at all, there are 2 males & 3 females (that's what hatched).

Chicken can be good to clean up also, but they would need to be seperate from parrots. At least my African Greys didn't like them & would pick on them alot.
 
ohiogoatgirl":3i97pivc said:
funny i thought i read that quail eggs are harder to ship and incubate then other eggs? maybe it was shippin the chicks i was thinkin of...

bluelove, do you mean coturnix quail? sounds like "co-turn-nix" i'm pretty sure so i can see how that would sound like cortex lol.
Click to expand...


Ya, lol...I am gona blame the lazy NMO accnt....crayon=crown, orange=oyange ect...
 
Holy mackerel! I didn't expect so many replies so soon! Ill have to reread everything lol but I just was thinking a pair of button quails because I know they can stink and smaller poops is better in a house. I have an indoor aviary and the breeders around my area think its a good idea they just don't know where to get them. And since buttons are so small I thought expense might be less. I figured I'd do it with a couple hidey holes and it be like Australia lol Australian parrots and Australian soft bills. I think chicken would be a bit too big, if I had chickens I'd want egg laying hens. Ill definately read more of what you guys said after work though.<br /><br />__________ Fri Jan 11, 2013 3:21 pm __________<br /><br />To Ohio goat girl, idk about them anymore. They sent pics and the babies look ok but the parrents don't look well at all :(
 
Well the place to go for button quail is http://www.zebrafinch.com/newbuttonquail/mainquail.html . Garie Landry imported or discovered every mutation we currently have. He is the expert on button quail. However most of his info is more on breeding and genetics than care. There is a button forum that is nothing fancy http://www.voy.com/13979/ . You can get an incubator for about $40 to hatch quail eggs yourself and sell the extras or Garrie does ship live adult birds but it is probably slightly costly. Shipping chicks is common and how most people get their chickens but quail chicks do not ship well. They require constant food and water unlike chicken chicks who can go 3 days after hatching living on the yolk they absorbed.
 
Oh ok. It said that he is no longer shipping live quail. Only the eggs. Though I have no experience with in Incubatif :/
 
It's not too hard and quail are very hardy. They ship well and are more forgiving of mistakes in temp and humidity than chickens. You just need an incubator and thermometer with humidity gauge on it which you can get in the outdoor thermometer section or plumbing section. I have a weather station one that connects small individual sensors to one view station so I could run 4 of them at a time. It's being used on hedgehogs now. You add water to the bottom tray and turn the dial back and forth until it says the right temp and humidity. Then add eggs and add water as needed. Turn the eggs 3 times a day. When doesn't matter. You can wait 10 hours one time and 2 hrs another. Whatever is convenient just so long as the embryo doesn't rest too much on one side and get stuck. Or get a turner with quail rails for another $40. You can also leave them in the carton and prop up one side then just switch which side is propped up but in a still air incubator the air at the top is hotter than the bottom which can cause problems with this method unless you measure everywhere.

If you do decide to attempt it a hovabator from online is better than a little giant from the feedstore by a lot for the same price.

My eggs from Garrie
SANY0919.jpg

The massive 200 egg, 2 incubator coturnix hatch for meat birds that shows the digital thermometer and hydrometer(humidity measurement), secondary thermometer to measure the top of the eggs, and 3rd sensor to measure the chicken eggs area. The most complicated setup I ever ran because to fit the eggs the cartons had to be tipped like I said before. So the hottest and coldest point had to be measured instead of one measurement like you have with just setting them on the wire or in a commercial turner.
SANY1486.jpg

The result
http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/aq ... il/brooder
They are so fast only video could really capture them and I don't have many stills of buttons. They come out like you took a pic of a race car as it went by.
 
Akane that is so cool!

We had buttons for years and really enjoyed them. The lady we got them from bought eggs, incubated them, and turned them loose in her aviary.

Like chickens, generally when there are more roosters than hens there could be picking.

With handling, they are very personable and they didn't smell any worse than a parrot does (just that 'bird dusty'). Chicken poop smells much, much worse.
 
Aww akane! What cute little peeps! And amazing info thanks! And I'm sure it wouldn't smell that bad. Since I store my parrots food(what's not in the freezer) in the aviary (in air right containers) along with a radiator looking heater thing since i have a 55 gal tank with hermit crabs which need humidity and stuff. when I walk in it smells like a fruity rainforest lol!!

Truly great info though thanks again. Do you sell? Just curious is all.
 
I no longer have quail. They don't tame well and are quite messy. I only have a lineolated parakeet now so no need for a big aviary or lots of mess. Quail poop is very smelly stuff and when you are breeding them and get 3 or 4 pairs going it is a lot of work to clean the tanks.
 
Oh ok. Well still they are super cute and I don't plan to have a lot. Just a pair. So if they breed ill replace the eggs with other non fertile ones and that way maybe hatch some later depending on how old they are just to keep it going and just get a non related one after that to breed with the one I'd keep. Or something like that :)
 
Shelbers, I had a finch aviary once, and I had a pair of Button Quail. They laid eggs all the time but never set on them.

They were cute little birds and I liked them. :)
 
Quail rarely incubate their eggs in captivity. All quail are incubator hatched. You need a really special setup and a lot of luck to get quail to set on eggs and even then they tend to lose interest right before the chicks hatch.
 
Chickens will hatch quail eggs but then you have to remove the quail chicks immediately to artificially brood because they won't follow the chicken.
 

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