![]() ![]() They are constantly making irritating noises and scuttling across the floor of the cage. They are filthy, prolific, and have pretty much no personality. I like to call them the rats of the bird world.Breeding pens are 6 feet long x 2 feet wide x 1 foot high.Chicks are very easy to raise together with their own kind.All of our breeders are also kept in this building. After they are off of the heat for a few weeks, they are moved outside to the quail house (a free standing house with less heat than the basement).The heat lamp is attached to a dimmer switch so we can turn down the amount of heat as the chicks get older until it is turned off completely. All of these brooding pens have wire bottoms with a heat lamp at one end and feed & water at the other end. normals, silvers, or buffs), males and females are separated into different pens because the males want to breed with the females. Once we have enough of each variety (e.g. They should be raised with their own kind in 2' x 6' pens for the next 7-9 weeks because larger varieties of quail tend to pick on them since they are smaller. After a few days they are separated into a 2' x 4' baby pen for about a week. They start out in our round 18" brooder pen with a mixed assortment of button chicks.Depending on the colour phase, they can range from yellow to gold to brown with stripes. Chicks are the size of bumblebees after hatching.Incubation for Button Quail is 16 days.Once the chicks are hatched, about 10-12 chicks are put in a wire mesh hatching basket for a minimum of 8 hours.Make sure both water trays in the Sportsman are full because they really like humidity. Temperature 99.8☏, humidity-wet bulb 90+.Eggs are set in a Sportsman Ratite hatcher and turned by hand 3 times a day.Eggs are collected twice a day and set daily.They lay a tiny olive egg either speckled or not.In natural light, they do not have a set time to start laying, as they will start laying at a few months of age regardless of the light situation. If they are put on light, they start laying eggs usually in February and will lay either every day or second day until they lay a few hundred eggs.They start reproducing at a few months of age and will lay virtually year round if adequate light is provided. We fed our breeders and young adults 20-25% starter crumble & our tiny chicks 25% Turkey Starter crumble.The three varieties that we used to raise were Normals (Chinese Painted), Silvers, & Buffs. There are many different colour phases of the button quail.(from The Quails, Partridges, & Francolins of the World, Paul A. Distribution: Extensive - China, India, Sri Lanka, Africa, & Australia ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |