Quail as pest control?

[GBov]

I have been toying with the idea of taking a batch of baby quail, pinioning them and free ranging them in a small section of my veg garden. As they are the only things I have found that eat shield bugs it seems to me that if they cant fly a low fence will keep them in and hot wire the varmints out.

Have any of you done something like this?

 

[Zass]

Hawks will take them. You could cover it with mesh maybe..

 

[CochinBrahmaLover]

They aren't going to fly away anyways. They're ground birds. I've had quail get out and all you had to do was chase them to grab them (which certainly was fun, I was happy they did not fly).

I actually had about 4-5 quail in our garden 2-3 times. Worked quite well. Not sure how good of gardeners they are, but they stayed in there, never tried to fly out, and never were eaten. We only had Ravens as predators though and they prefer chickens tho.

I would put mesh over it.

 

[Dood]

My quail fly very well

I have jumbo coturnix and tried free ranging them in the back yard but they had zero homing instict and never came back to the coop at night and when trying to round them up they'd fly over the 5 foot fence and into the pasture

Cooper's hawks are common in our area but they never went after the quail and prefer the song birds in the cedar hedge and around the feeder

We did have a 5' garter snake eat one but barely, the poor snake was immobile for 5 days - the kids kept checking on it and thought it was awesome watching the snakes huge belly slowly shrink

 

[wamplercathy]

Depending on the wildlife in your area this sounds like a good fit. We lived in town for awhile and got to watch hawks take the feral cats. Daughter was upset, I couldn't stop laughing. :lol: :lol: I might have been more sympathetic if only they would have eaten mice and stayed out of my garbage cans. :evil:

Wouldn't the quail eat some of the veggies? I know our chickens would. :?

 

[gash]

Chinese Geese are weeders, you could get some Guinnea Fowl to ward off vermin/eat rodents, bugs, other unwanted little crawlers/watch dog, etc..

Good luck!