In our garden there is a space which cannot be used for anything. The house had an extension in the past and designed it decided to leave a 130x130cm of open area.
We always wanted (still do) some chickens but we need a lot bigger garden for them to have a good mooch etc....and this is what we thought;
"Quail are smaller than chickens....a LOT smaller, in fact. Let's get some quail!!!"
So we got an old hutch from our friendly rabbit, Bruce, and built a run.
We've done a bit of research on how to keep quail - apparently they don't like damp.
Well the UK weather has been awful this summer, so we had to postpone getting the quail and somehow waterproof the run and the hutch.
We got a huge piece of plastic sheet which got pinned onto the old wooden window frame to the wall on the other side. Gaffertaped the bits that leaked... We collected BUCKETS and BUCKETS of rainwater too.
Anyway, we went to a quail supplier in Leicestershire, and here they are!
Dougal
Mr Rusty
Zebedee
Ermentrude
We got them when they were 6-7 weeks old, but Zebedee seemed a lot smaller than the rest of the crew. This kind of became an issue later on...........
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The more you interact with them the quicker they get used to you...
This is Zebedee. I noticed that she always had a feather sticking out on her head.
And then noticed that some of them have a lump on their nostril (you can see one in the photo above)....... A few days later, Zebedee's lump got bigger and started bleeding a bit. We put "quail nose lump" type of words on google and didn't find anything about it. Found some photos of quail which had lumps on the nose, but the owner of those quail didn't seem to ever find the cause or solutions.
So we took Zebedee to the vet which has one of the best avian specialists in the country. The first thing he did was to rip the scab off Zebedee's nose!!!!!!!!!!! Blood was everywhere and I nearly fainted. His suggestion was this.....
When quail are pecking on the food off this kind of feeder, their nose might be banging on the ledge of the plastic! Zebedee did spend a long time eating compared to the others...
As for the wound on her nose, the vet suggested that we put Savlon on her twice a day.
We kept Zebedee in the separate box while her wound was healing. I even went to buy a hot water bottle for her, in the middle of cold/wet summer!
The real problem started then....................
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