To breed or not to breed

Looking online at other web sites which discuss raising quails is a bit disturbing. There are a truly depressing number of posts about the inability of Japanese quail to breed naturally, and how the birds only need about 1 square foot (??!!) of space to be perfectly content...

We originally believed much of the information on the web, and thought that quail really were unable to hatch and raise their own chicks - the instinct having apparently been "bred out of them" in order to get as many eggs as possible for human consumption. Pretty much every website tells you what wonderfully productive layers these little birds are, but at the same time, we are also told they cannot hatch their own babies and anyone wanting to breed them will need an incubator.
And presumably because quail are small, considerably smaller than a "standard" chook (such as an Australorp or an Orpington), it is thought they don't need a large coop, and can be happily kept in cramped conditions in wire cages a bit like rabbit hutches.

Overcrowded quails in a non-natural setting

 Hmm.

Having watched our birds wander around our garden for a full year now, it seems abundantly clear that the breeding instinct is well and truly present, and the single most likely factor in a non-breeding bird is the tiny enclosures in which they are often housed. Putting a dozen or more birds in a small aviary or cage, with little or no access to natural soil, and grass, and insects, and no ability to stake out territory, or pair with a suitable mate, or find a hidden place to lay a clutch, and with the eggs removed each day...it's not really that surprising that the birds don't go broody!

Not everyone has a big backyard or can build a massive quail enclosure - but many people across Tasmania, and elsewhere, already have enclosed veggie gardens. It would be fantastic if more quails were living in gardens like this, instead of being kept in tiny hutches. A "chook tractor" design would also work - anywhere that gives the birds greenery and insects and light and places to hide.  A brood of naturally-hatched quail chicks being raised by their parents are one of the most delightful things you'll ever see!

Goldie and her first little one

A broody quail does not behave like a broody chook. They do not stubbornly sit on a single egg, becoming aggressive if you approach the nesting box, making it clear they want to start a family...

Cartoon image courtesy of Footrot Flats (copyright Murray Ball)

Based only on the behaviour of our females, quails seem to choose a nest site which is relatively secret and away from the rest of the flock. They lay at least 5 eggs before beginning to sit - we had one mother sit on 6 eggs, one with 12, and another waited until she had 14 in her nest!  If you are collecting the eggs each day, the females won't ever start sitting. Their nests aren't anything fancy, but they are usually quite well hidden.

Goldie - our first broody girl - in the grass under a nectarine tree

We had one sitting under a grass tussock, right up against the net - we ended up putting a board along the net to protect her from marauding cats who could easily have taken a swipe at her. Another was beautifully hidden in a clump of thyme - we only realised she was sitting when we noticed her sneaking back to her nest, very slowly and carefully, trying not to be seen. We had another nest under an artichoke, and one in the grape vines. This last one was quite exposed, and we ended up placing a board over her - held up by bricks - to protect her from sun and rain. Once they are happily sitting they aren't easily disturbed, and she wasn't at all upset by a strange construction being placed around her. They arrange the grass into a circle, and build it up a bit to help keep the eggs in place, but they are not master nest-builders by any means. Their main form of protection is their camouflage - a streaky brown and cream bird sitting motionless in a clump of green and brown grass is almost impossible to see.
They will stay completely still unless the other birds come too close - particularly the males - and then they will fly off and drive the males away. During Spring - when most of our birds started sitting - the males can be particularly aggressive, pestering the females almost continually. We ended up putting our dominant male in solitary confinement for a while, just to give the sitting mother some peace. Once the chicks were hatched, the male was allowed back in the garden with the others, and he didn't give any more trouble. The mother didn't give him a chance - they are very protective of their chicks.

Apart from space, privacy and comfort, a male to fertilise the eggs, and patience and determination on the part of the mother,  quails don't seem to need much else to breed. We really believe that any quail will go broody, given enough room. Have a go - we'd love to hear from other people who may have found the same thing happen, or are interested in trying to raise chicks naturally.

Blowin' in the wind

It's a bit strange seeing quails being blown across the ground like a flurry of autumn leaves, but that's what our poor birds have been subjected to these past few days! We've had wind gusts well over 110km/hr (70 knots for any sailors reading this) for the past two days, as well as heavy rainfalls and even snow on the mountain. The quails have coped with it all in style, despite being literally blown over as they come for their morning seed-feeding. We're not sure exactly where they hide at night (under the cabbage leaves? In the rhubarb?) but they are always there in the morning, looking remarkably dry. We have nest boxes set up under some of the trees, which they are happy to shelter in during the day, but they never seem to use them at night, and they certainly never lay eggs in them, much preferring to hide their eggs in random patches of grass or under the grape vines...
The net is looking slightly stretched and saggy, and will need checking tomorrow when the weather is calmer, but nothing has actually collapsed. Thank goodness! Winter is coming...

http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/calm-after-tasmanian-storms-likely-to-be-fleeting/news-story/544801d827e7ce2b7fa0a82b16737c2f

Peas in a pod

Finding the right names can be hard work, but we are pretty happy with our choices for Snowpea's brood. Introducing:
Green pea, Sweet pea and Chick pea (we hope these are the girls)
Broad bean and Soy bean (boys, we think...)
Millet, Mulch and Mildew (the dark brown ones - gender unknown)

May they lay, breed and live happily in our garden for a long long time!

Marvellous millet

Feeding a large brood can become quite a bit of work.
Despite having a very large, and very productive garden, we still find we are feeding our voraciously hungry flock extra seeds a couple of times a day. They obviously work up quite an appetite scrounging around for insects and greenery, and demand supplementary seeds to be handed out.

Spick enjoying extra seeds

We initially brought quails into our garden to help us control pest insects - once we had everything fully netted we were protected from possums and wallabies and cockatoos but we also no longer had robins and wrens hunting the aphids and thrips and slugs etc. So in came the quails. They don't scratch up seedlings, and they do eat some insects - but they dislike slugs and, as they don't really fly, they don't get any insect above ground level... They do, however, give us wonderfully creamy and delicious eggs - when we can find them.

Ripening finger millet

Proso millet (we think). This is a favourite food

And they eat! We buy large bags of seeds from a local pet shop - marked as "budgie feed" it seems to be a mixture of millet, linseed and poppy seed. Our birds love the millet particularly, so we planted some, to see what would happen. It grew beautifully. There are two different types; a delicate frond-like millet (we think it's proso millet) and a stubby darker seed, possibly finger millet. Once it began to ripen we found the birds leaping up to pull down the fronds.
They also eat sunflower seeds, and we've always grown sunflowers - mostly for their beauty, but we do use some of the seeds. Interestingly, the quails don't seem to eat the sunflower seeds until autumn - if you offer them sunflower seeds in spring they ignore them, but in autumn and winter they go wild, attacking the flower heads with gusto and gorging on the seeds.

Sunflower heads drying before harvesting

Chicks enjoying a captured frond of proso millet

Their favourite treat are meal worms. We've tried breeding these, but with only limited success. We give them to the sitting mothers, and to the chicks for the first couple of weeks. They will literally go mad over them, fighting each other - a tug-of-war between two tiny chicks over a meal worm that is longer than their head is a sight to see! The adults eat them easily, but the first time we gave them to our chicks we thought we'd choked them - the worms would be gulped down, then the chick would stand motionless, gasping, and occasionally the worm would be brought back up...it looked agonizing, but they always came running for more.


They also love it when we rake back our compost heap and they can scratch around for worms and earwigs and whatever tiny beasties live in the rotting soil. They might not be the pest controllers we had hoped they'd be, but they are a lot of fun, and excellent company in the garden.

What's in a name?

All of these little ones look just the same...

Most of our quails look fairly similar, and telling them apart can be tricky. We name them, trying to keep them individual, but even that can be complicated. We have some strong "family lines" - eg. Fig had a son called Fog; and Speck had a daughter called Spick, who then had a son called Spock, and so on. If Fog has any offspring we are a bit worried about continuing this process - will the chicks be Fug or Fag???

Some are named after fruit and veggies from the garden (Snowpea, Apricot, Plum, Melon, Nectarine, Hazelnut) and a couple were named in honour of their breed - Pharaoh quails - so, Rameses and Wadjet. Unfortunately that line died out quite quickly...
Others are just quirky individuals - like Blork (don't ask!). 

Unidentified chicks "this one" and "that one!"

Now we have our new 8 chicks - almost fully adult and in need of names. At the moment they are simply "that one", "the big one", "the little dark one", "the bully" and so on. We are thinking - as their mother was Snowpea - we might contine the theme with Greenpea, Sweetpea, Chickpea, Broadbean, Soybean, Mange-tout, Legume etc...but we also think we might need leg bands to work out which one is which!