Hello

We are a small family (mum, dad and two kids) plus 17 quails (at current count!) sharing a corner of southern Tasmania with a mob of wallabies, possums, bandicoots, sulphur-crested cockatoos, currawongs, a variety of honeyeaters, wrens and numerous lizards and beetles and other creatures. This blog is an attempt to keep track of our ongoing quail-raising saga...and we thought it might be informative for others wanting to keep, breed and enjoy quails in an organic, semi-natural environment. Our quails live in a fully netted organic orchard-vineyard-vegie garden, with plenty of weeds, flowers, veggies, mature fruit trees and grape vines. We have battled attacks from hawks, butcher-birds, neighbourhood cats and the dreaded rat. We started with four King quail (Coturnix chinensis) who were, sadly, far too small to be kept safe, and ran straight through the net, never to be seen again...with one remarkable exception, who you will meet later...

We then bought much-larger Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) and, after many struggles to turn the garden into a predator-safe area, are happily raising healthy birds in an environment as close to free-range as you can probably get.