So you would use some grain or seed for bait? Where would you get a bird funnel cage trap?

Not legal here in Georgia to trap quail or any game bird.....and most non-game birds.

The live quail is the bait inside the cage in a separate compartment.

A lot of feed and grain stores as well as gamebirds farms sell them.

I would use a recall trap, which is just a wire cage with a wire funnel going in. The funnel goes from the ground outside the cage into the box, where it ends about 8" from the floor, sticking into the cage about 8". The small end of the funnel should be just large enough for the bobwhite to squeeze out.

To bait it, you just put a single bobwhite, usually male in the trap. He calls in other bobwhite. The trap catches well anytime of year Bobwhite are staying in coveys.

Dog trainers and preserves frequently use them to get set birds back. Wild birds readily go into them too.

Keith

The traps generally look something like this:



You can make it completely out of wire, but a lay a board on top or something else to provide some shade and cover from predators. Thick grass works to cover it too.

I looked for a decent video of somebody building a recall trap, but couldn't find one. There are a lot of videos of Johnny houses/recall pens, but those aren't easily portable and overkill for catching wild bobwhite. Johnny houses work great for keeping and receiving domestic bobwhite. They are mostly an above ground pen, with a trap attached that can be opened, to let quail into the main pen and securely closed to keep predators, like weasels and rats out.

Keith

I don't know where the information is that I was reading but I always wanted to raise quail with banty chickens loose on the farm. They adopt them as their own and teach them foraging and etc. That always seemed like a good project.

Unrelated but there was a guy here, in Ohio even I think, that had a big post about raising them and showed his boxes. They were narrow like two feet wide and long like ten feet long with a screened top with natural scratch and debris in them. Lined up like garden beds in his barn I think. Thats how I see it in my head I guess but I'm not sure. Seems like Keith C knew the guy but I'm not sure about that either. There was lots of info in that post about successfully raising quail.

That is me. The boxes and quail in the pictures are mine. In a good year I raise and sell tens of thousands of coturnix quail and thousands of button quail. I've raised them since 1995. I've raised and sold lots of bobwhite, in many colors, Gambels, valley and blue scale quail too, but don't have any right now.

For anyone interested in learning more about raising quail and homesteading, Quailcon, the International Conference on quail and homesteading is on Labor Day Weekend in Miamisburg, Ohio. It"s a 3 dag event with camping available on site. We get a few hundred people from all over the US and other countries. The main focus is on coturnix quail, but there's a large numbers of classes and presentations including hands on butchering, cooking, other livestock,, selling plants, medicinal herbs, first aid, marketing and more. I"m a paid expert at it every year. Last year I taught and spoke for around 14 hours.

https://myshirefarm.com/quail-con/

Keith

My quail just started laying eggs today.