Quail being incubated by broody hen - questions

[QuoVadis]

I have a few questions about hatching quail.

I recently set 17 Jumbo quail (A&M and Brown) under my broody bantam hen, Jane. Jane is a d'anver and has been by far my most stubborn broody out of my flock of bantam hens. She spent all last summer broody, and try as I might I could not dissuade her, even though I tried to tell her being a mother when there is no rooster around is impossible! She had been broody again this spring/summer, but was getting more sneaky, and hiding clutches of eggs in the run instead of the nest boxes. So when I found someone selling fertile Cortunix quail eggs on Craigslist (for hatching or eating) I thought I'd give her something to hatch.

I was always interested in quail, and I may or my not keep them long term, but either way they will be easier to get rid of then chicks, and I don't have to be worried about being stuck with noisy roosters, which are a no no since I'm in the city. I am aware of the risks, but Jane is very small and though she has never been a mom before it was not for lack of trying. So far she seem to to be devoted to the eggs, covering them, not breaking them, etc. Is there anything to look out for, or do to help her be a better mom to quail chicks? She is nesting inside a portable cat carrier in the run, and I can either keep it closed up, or move it when it gets closer to hatch date.

My main concern is that I did not realize it when I put them under her, but when I calculated out hatch date the chicks are due on a weekend I am gone. (16 days comes out to be on a Friday of a weekend I'm gone Friday afternoon-Sunday afternoon.) What is the best way to prepare for that? Any ideas of how the prepare before I leave them? Any general ideas to help this arrangement work as well as possible?

 

[GitaBooks]

Broodies certainly can be stubborn! Its nice you are giving her a chance to be a mother.

I myself don't have quail, but I have done some research, and I have experience with bantam broodies.

My chickens go broody in a variety of places. Its very nice that you got your mother and eggs into a crate where they are safe from predators and other chickens. Make sure she gets a chance to exercise her wings, eat, drink, and use the bathroom once a day. Sometimes they get up, sometimes they don't, but its good to give them a choice.

These chicks are tiny, but a small, dedicated mother will keep them warm, safe, and content. However, there are some things you can do to help. Set up a crate that has a solid floor, to prevent then getting caught in the wire. Put down something they can easily grip, such as an old pillow case or the like. Make a hay nest for them in a corner. At the other end put the food and water dishes. This pen should be around the size of a large dog crate. They can stay in here for a few days, since they aren't that active at so young an age. If you want you can put the carrier into the larger pen and just leave the door open so she can leave when the chicks hatch.
She should lead her chicks away from the nest and to the food when they are dry and ready. Make sure the waterer is very small, shallow, and easy to get out of. Put some pebbles in it or get a specially made quail chick waterer, but make sure the mother can drink as well.
They may stay on the nest a day or so, since they have a yolk to sustain them.


I hope it all works out. Good luck!

 

[kingmt]

You need to ether wash the eggs with an antibacterial soap & move them to an incubator or distroy them. You can speed up the date by slightly increasing the temperature or decrease it to push it back. They usually come a day or two early for me anyhow. Your chicken can't raise quail. They will die a sickly death & if by some chance one survived it could cause a outbreak.

Quail are noisier then a chicken rooster so unless you keep them inside your likely to have the same problems that you'd have with the chicken rooster.

 

[HeritageGoose13]

You need to ether wash the eggs with an antibacterial soap & move them to an incubator or distroy them. You can speed up the date by slightly increasing the temperature or decrease it to push it back. They usually come a day or two early for me anyhow. Your chicken can't raise quail. They will die a sickly death & if by some chance one survived it could cause a outbreak.

Quail are noisier then a chicken rooster so unless you keep them inside your likely to have the same problems that you'd have with the chicken rooster.

None of this is true at all. Chickens have raised quail for literally thousands of years. There are entire breeds of bantams that were developed for this purpose: look up the nankin. Quail are much quieter. The thing about the outbreak is completely false. I don't know where you heard that but it's ridiculous and makes no sense at all.

The broody will take care of them and it will be fine.

 

[kingmt]

It comes from a person that rolled the dice & lost all of his quail. It is common knowledge that chicken carry all kinds of diseases that quail are not immune to. If they do survive they become a carrier that affect other quail. Since the OP says she might be giving them away. There go the outbreak. You might want to do a little research yourself. You can start right here to see it is well documented in this forum.

I didn't believe it myself when others warned me. My quail were doing great & population like crazy. My small start went to a couple of meals a week in no time but I thought it would be easier to keep my quail cages in the chicken coop. They did well for a few weeks then started dying. Most of them were wiped out pretty fast but a few actually seemed to pull through until it got colder & they died off one by one. My cages weren't even on the ground but the chickens could still get to them.

Baby quail have a hard enough time getting started but are really hardy once they are a little over a week old. When people refuse to listen to others with experience they have to learn another way.

 

[HeritageGoose13]

It comes from a person that rolled the dice & lost all of his quail. It is common knowledge that chicken carry all kinds of diseases that quail are not immune to. If they do survive they become a carrier that affect other quail. Since the OP says she might be giving them away. There go the outbreak. You might want to do a little research yourself. You can start right here to see it is well documented in this forum.

Yes, that can happen but I wouldn't call that an outbreak. It's not an outbreak unless its on a huge scale, one or two small flocks of quail/chicken getting sick is not an outbreak.

Baby quail have a hard enough time getting started but are really hardy once they are a little over a week old. When people refuse to listen to others with experience they have to learn another way.

What makes you think I don't have experience? Like I said people have been using broodies to hatch out quail for years. What do you think people did before there were artificial incubators?

 

[kingmt]

I wasn't actually meaning you but in general including myself with the experience comment. & believe me I learnt the hard way. I was really upset that I had caused this problem & killed all of my birds because I didn't listen.

To the small timer that losses all of their start roil probably consider that an outbreak. However I was talking about on a larger scale. Not saying it is likely that 2 to 10 birds could cause that much damage but they could.

What if a sick bird ended up in a farm store that had 100 birds that may sale that many in days to a people only buying maybe 6 at a time? It took a few weeks for my first one to start dying. There could be major damage in no time.

I'll give you another example of another lesson learned. Or at least I Hope I wanted this time. My kids wanted rabbits to raise for meat & they finally gave in bought them on a whim. My first mistake that I knew better but did anyway was bought an animal I knew nothing about. I did & an doing is reading as fast as I can to learn as much as I can as fast as I can. But I was in their store again & bought 3 more rabbits that all looked fine. As I was telling the lady with far more experience then me that I'd have to go home that night & build a new cage to be able to keep the new quarantine until I knew they were safe. And continued to ask her how long she thought would be a reasonable amount of time.

She responded that it necessary that she knew all these animals were perfectly healthy and the rabbits didn't get sick as easy. Being really tired I went ahead & moved my rabbits I had already bought from there into one cage & put the new ones in the other cage connected to each other. They share a wire wall. As I was handling them to move their cages to clean out from under then the younger rabbits felt thinner then two days before when I got them. As I was finishing I noticed one of the new ones dead that liked fine & was eating minutes before. I separated the new ones at once not knowing what happened or why. Then hurried of to work. On the way home I was talking to my wife & was told another had died. So I swung by the store. They wanted to replace the two I lost so I went back to pick them. The second rabbit I pulled out of the cage had wet poop on it's butt. I told the last they were sick & I didn't want any of them. She wanted to know why I thought they were sick & while I was explaining to her one a few cages away fell over dead. As we looked through the cages they all has runny poop in their cages.

She said they would take care of it & refund my money for the last rabbits I bought. As I was running around the store getting supplies I needed I seen they weren't going to pull these rabbits. I went to talk to the manger which told me that the week before he had bought done that didn't look very healthy but they had already sold. I finally convinced him to pull them of the floor. I spent my whole day yesterday cleaning to try to protect the rabbits I still have with the one ququarantine. Again I had to rush of to work. I'm just getting in & haven't been to sleep in a couple of days.

This store move a bunch of rabbits so that is what I call a outbreak. Oh & the cages they are using isn't even theirs' they are borrowed from one of their breeders.

 

[dc3085]

There is so much good science that gives clear reasons for keeping biosecurity between chickens and quail that this question should have died off years ago. If you check the byc archives youll find at least once a week someone asks 'can i keep quail with chickens, or can i use a bantam to brood quail'. Im not kidding when i say this question has been asked hundred if not thousands of times on BYC.

Diseases like MG, corzya, blackhead and many others cannot be tested for, vaccinated against, or cured. Chickens can carry all of these disease (and many more) and never show a single symptom. Chickens are resistant to these diseases, they will cause mortality in quail. You can put quail and chickens together and you might be lucky and not have any problems. You can win at russian roulette too but there is a bullet in the gun the whole game.

 

[QuoVadis]

Thank you Gita, that was the kind of information I was seeking! I didn't really want to get into the diseases question because I have already read about it. That said, there has to be something missing in our modern practices - either chickens have diseases they didn't used to have (or are more widespread), or quail have lost thier immunity, because bantams were traditionally how quail were hatched. If we went back to only incubating quail under chickens I am sure they would eventually become immune.

I don't have a large scale quail operation to protect, I am just seeing what will hatch out and how they do and giving my hen something to hatch. If I hadn't brooded these eggs I would have eaten them, like I did some of the rest of quail eggs. Also I am not an expert on diseases but it seems obvious that a adult quail brooded by a hen would have a stronger immunity to chicken diseases than adult quail that come in contact with chickens. Maybe this is part of the reason mixing them has a bad rep... Most of the horror stories I have heard were of adult/young quail getting exposed to chickens, not being hatched by them and then havingn issues.

And to address one concerning wouldnt sell sick quail, and if I do sell healthy quail I certainly won't hide that they were raised by a hen.

Thanks!

 

[HeritageGoose13]

I wasn't actually meaning you but in general including myself with the experience comment. & believe me I learnt the hard way. I was really upset that I had caused this problem & killed all of my birds because I didn't listen.

To the small timer that losses all of their start roil probably consider that an outbreak. However I was talking about on a larger scale. Not saying it is likely that 2 to 10 birds could cause that much damage but they could.

What if a sick bird ended up in a farm store that had 100 birds that may sale that many in days to a people only buying maybe 6 at a time? It took a few weeks for my first one to start dying. There could be major damage in no time.

I'll give you another example of another lesson learned. Or at least I Hope I wanted this time. My kids wanted rabbits to raise for meat & they finally gave in bought them on a whim. My first mistake that I knew better but did anyway was bought an animal I knew nothing about. I did & an doing is reading as fast as I can to learn as much as I can as fast as I can. But I was in their store again & bought 3 more rabbits that all looked fine. As I was telling the lady with far more experience then me that I'd have to go home that night & build a new cage to be able to keep the new quarantine until I knew they were safe. And continued to ask her how long she thought would be a reasonable amount of time.

She responded that it necessary that she knew all these animals were perfectly healthy and the rabbits didn't get sick as easy. Being really tired I went ahead & moved my rabbits I had already bought from there into one cage & put the new ones in the other cage connected to each other. They share a wire wall. As I was handling them to move their cages to clean out from under then the younger rabbits felt thinner then two days before when I got them. As I was finishing I noticed one of the new ones dead that liked fine & was eating minutes before. I separated the new ones at once not knowing what happened or why. Then hurried of to work. On the way home I was talking to my wife & was told another had died. So I swung by the store. They wanted to replace the two I lost so I went back to pick them. The second rabbit I pulled out of the cage had wet poop on it's butt. I told the last they were sick & I didn't want any of them. She wanted to know why I thought they were sick & while I was explaining to her one a few cages away fell over dead. As we looked through the cages they all has runny poop in their cages.

She said they would take care of it & refund my money for the last rabbits I bought. As I was running around the store getting supplies I needed I seen they weren't going to pull these rabbits. I went to talk to the manger which told me that the week before he had bought done that didn't look very healthy but they had already sold. I finally convinced him to pull them of the floor. I spent my whole day yesterday cleaning to try to protect the rabbits I still have with the one ququarantine. Again I had to rush of to work. I'm just getting in & haven't been to sleep in a couple of days.

This store move a bunch of rabbits so that is what I call a outbreak. Oh & the cages they are using isn't even theirs' they are borrowed from one of their breeders.

That's a lot of trouble, I am sorry to hear that. I am all for biosecurity, it's just that this is a somewhat different situation. The rabbit situation involves multiple clearly sick animals being shuffled around. The person who created this thread is merely involving their own birds so the risk level is much lower. Plus I figured the OP was familiar with those risks. I hope your remaining rabbits are okay and that you get some much-needed sleep.