Chick, chick, chick, chick, ch... ehhhh Quail!!

Since our Vernon trip this summer with a refugee quail chick on board on the way home, the kids are totally in love with quails. Little Chirpy didn't live longer than 3 days, I think it had something to do with too much heat from the light.......

 

 

Anyhow, after Chirpy passed away, we promised we'd get some new Quails.
(okay, okay, "I" promised ;) )

After a search on Craigslist we discovered there was a lady in Langley who was selling them and that's where we got our 4 Quails from.
 "Noisy (was he ever noisy), Jumpy (jumped straight out of Kylians hands onto the floor) Chirpy the 2nd and Goldy (the only white one, well, back then it was yellow)
These Quails are 3 weeks old, standing next to a chicken egg.

Goldy

 

Noisy 

After a few weeks of growing we discovered that we had 3 males and 1 female, and that doesn't quite work as males tend to fight, a lot.
 Noisy (hehe) and Jumpy got traded in for Cutie and Tiny.

 

 

The rabbit cage became a little too small so a bigger one was needed. The hunt for a cupboard started and we found just the perfect one across the street from us.

 

 

The cupboard changed into a Quail coop ;)

 

 

When they started laying eggs, we all thought it would be very interesting to see them hatch....

 

 

At first we started off in a trofast container, with a towel around it, thermometer, humidity meter, water bowl, light for heat inside, but that didn't really keep the heat in well enough.
The inside should really be at around 100-101F and at 50-ish humidity, it changed to much from hour to hour.

 

 

Some further youtube searching learned us that a Styrofoam cooler would work better.

 

 

So that's what we did, a home made incubator, with home made egg turner, the works, and it worked.

An old microwave rack with some string attached to both side. We made holes in either side of the cooler and poked the strings through, that way we didn't have to open the cooler and let heat escape when we had to turn the eggs. Eggs best get turned at least 3 times a day, to make sure the chicks don't stick to the side of the shell. When that happens, they won't grow properly.

Our quail eggs need turning for 14 days, then you stop turning, drop the temperature by one degrees at around 99 and up the humitidy to 60-70, they should hatch in the next 3-5 days.

 

 

Yesterday we had our very first chick. There is still a lot of movement in some eggs, so we're kind of expecting more to hatch yet.

 

If you look closely, you can see 2 of the eggs move, that means that there is a live chick in there.

Isn't that interesting?

 

 



Quails are perfect company to take for a stroll, not sure if the egg is because of stress or out of pure relaxation...



 

This is just pure bliss, Sophy reading a book to her (their) little Quail chick <3

 

 

But Sophy is as happy as can be ;)

~~~ edited~~~

And then we had two more!! Oops, the one fell over.....

 

They are already eating, drinking, pooping and making lots of noise.

After hatching, Quails can do without food for the first 24 hours.
They can go under the heat light outside the incubator once they are all dry.
That temperature needs to be at 90 the first week, 85 the next week, 80 the third week and room temperature until they are older. Unless they are with the mom, then they can stay out in the cold and will snuggle up with their mom to keep warm.

This is the inside of the egg. You can see the sack which protects and feeds the chick.


 

This poor chick didn't make it :( It was still moving in the morning, but tonight there wasn't any movement at all, so we (Yannick and I) opened it, to see how a chick is all rolled up inside.