I get a lot of questions about quail by PM, phone, or just on the forum. I haven't posted about them for a while. Angela just sent me a PM on my pen set up. After I typed it up, I thought it might be useful for some other members too, so I'm posting it as well.

Here's what I sent Angela.

You need to raise bobwhite a little differently than coturnix quail. Bobwhite are susceptible to coccidia and enteritis. Coturnix pretty much aren't.

If you don't need them to fly well, you can do them in pens like mine to 6 weeks of age.

My pens are 8' by 4' by 2' high made of 1/4" plywood. The plywood has 2" by 2"s attached to the edges of both the short sides, on top, bottom and sides. The longer sides only have 2" by 2"s on the bottom and top. They are 1" 1"2 inches from the end, so that they can slip in the sides and screw together. The top 2" by 2" is 3/4 lower than the top of the plywood, so that the lid can fit tight and flush when closed.

They have 2 piece wire lids that are anchored by hinges to a 2" by 4" that sits in a notch in the middle. The framing of the lids is 1" by 4"s scabbed together. There is a block attached in the middle of each lid, so they can be opened by lifting up on it. I have 1/4" for the wire.

There's holes 18" from the end, drilled through the center on both sides of the 2" by 4" large enough for the plug end of a heat lamp to pass though. When brooding chicks in a pen I put a 250 watt bulb on 1 side and a 150 watt on the other. Day old chicks need a hot point of 95F to 100F with enough space from the heat source to get to 85F. They'll pick their comfort zone.

For bobwhite, you need the pen to stay dry. It's best to have concrete, wood or a wire bottom.

I have 9 pens like this. Not all are in use right now. The oldest pen was made in the 1960's by a friend's mother, for chickens. The others were made in 2012 and 2013.

I'll send you some pictures tomorrow.

Keith

Some other information.

I have used these same pens for chickens, guineas, Hungarian partridge, Chukar, many species of pheasants, peafowl, turkeys, ducks, geese and many quail species.

I used to use hay on the bottom, but stopped because hay mats together and is hard to shovel out. I also once lost an entire pen of bobwhite when they ate poison hemlock in the hay and basically fell asleep to never wake up. I now use wood chips for the bedding. For quail and partridge chicks, I cover the wood chips with Bounty paper towels, with the rougher side up. Precocial birds, like all of the above, are biologically programmed to peck at and eat anything of the appropriate size, that looks like food. Quail and partridge chicks are small enough to stunt or even starve if they fill their crops with bedding, such as wood chips, sand or corncob.

I put feed at the hottest point and water at the coolest points. For pheasants and smaller, I fist put the feed straight on paper towels. For pheasants, I just put the feed on singular paper towels at the hottest points. I put out more feed, in more spots than needed at first, to make it very easy to find.

I like quail lip waterers for pretty much all just hatched birds except geese and ducks. They are red caps with a 1/4 gap around the rim, that screw onto mason jars. They make it hard, but not impossible for the chicks to drown. Never let the young birds run out of water. There is no kindness in them and they will trample and push each other to get to the water, if they have been out, when you put it in. This can cause some drowning and worse, wet chicks, that will pile up and suffocate each other.

There's usually a little over 1% mortality rate at about 72 hours, which is usually from issues pulling in the yolk sack, through their navel, during the hatch. Otherwise, as long as the temperature parameters are met, they aren't too crowded and there's plenty of food and water, mortality is minimal until point of lay, when a small percentage of hens prolapse when laying.

I'll add more tomorrow. I hope this helps some people.

Keith

Bobwhite are mature at around 20 to 24 weeks, they can fly before that, but a fast dog will often catch them. If a dog catches a quail, it can become dangerous, because the dog may start jumping on the rise and be accidentally shot when a shooter tries to hit a low flying quail. I had a dog out of NFC Rawhide's Clown, who was shot like that before I got her. After building her confidence up, she was still only good for about 2 birds, before she would go back and lay on the hood of my trunk. One of her pups became a champion by about age 2.

I would make your pens long and skinny, at least 24' by 4' by 8' high. 60' long would be better. Taller would be better too. Top Flite Netting works well for the top. It has some give if a bird hits it, so they are less likely to hurt or kill themselves. Heavy chicken wire works okay for the sides. Heavier 1" by 1" or tighter works better, but is expensive.

The birds need to get wet to fly well. Getting wet improves their feather oil production and makes them harder feathered. You could start the bobwhite in a pen like the ones I use and move them into a big outside pen at 5 weeks, as long as it doesn't get much colder than 65F. They probably won't be decent on the wing until 12 weeks or older.

If your area is wet, you could have a raised wire floor or build up a thick base with sand or gravel to prevent disease and parasite issues. 1/2" by 1/2" wire mesh works well for flooring for bobwhite. If the dirt hasn't had other birds on it before, you can sometimes get away with just dry dirt.

Put the pen where the bobwhite don't get harassed much by predators. Keep up on the trapping around the pen. It's easy to get wiped out in a night. Coon and mink give me a tremendous amount of repeat business.

To easily catch the birds, build a narrow plywood box sticking out from a long end of the pen. Cut a groove in the top, you can slide a piece of plywood in to block it. Have the end sticking into the pen, open. Make a small door on the outside of the box, not much bigger than your hand with a quail in it. Attach a piece of thin plywood on the other end, attached to the rail on top, with a hinge, so that it's lightly propped up. Put a slanted stop opposite it, so it can't fall flat on the top and falls back to the rail. Run a rope to it so that you can wiggle it back and forth to panic the birds. When you panic birds the birds, they will run into the box. Slide in the plywood to trap them and then pull out and cage or bag up what you need through the small hole. I saw this design in the late nineties at Fozzie's Gamebirds, near Tralfagar, Indiana.

If the birds are being used close and not being shot. Build a funnel trap, on an attached, but separate pen, because the other bobwhite will call them back. Keep it separate because mink, weasels and rats can make it though the funnels too

Keith

Thanks for the info. I hope to in the next couple of years build a coop for some quail and get a new pup.

If you are going to use the quail for dog training, you should look into a johnny house. A Google or YouTube search will give you several different options.

This pen has somewhere around 140, 7 to 9 week old, coturnix quail in it. They are just starting to lay reasonably well. The eggs are still slightly small. The quail are probably around 75% of their full adult mass. They have not been sorted yet. By hatch, there should be around a 52%/48%, male/female ratio. It's slightly easier for precocial birds to pass their genes with male offspring, so precocial birds usually have that ratio.

The single remaining light was switched from a 150 watt heat bulb to an LED bulb, in the last week. Once the hens are all laying well, I'll remove the light and the birds will rely on the 3 LED bulbs that are hung high above in that 78' by 28' section of barn. I provide 24 hour light. At least 14 hours of light is needed for quail and most other birds to lay well.







Here's the first collection of eggs from that pen for the day. The second collection will be slightly larger.



In about 3 weeks, I will catch out every quail in the pen. Every bird will be inspected. Every bird that is in someway defective will be culled. Any bird with a bad eye, bad toes, light weight, that's overly heavy, that is to small will be culled.

Females that aren't laying, which is easy to tell by looking at the vent, which should be stretched into a wide, bluish slit will be culled.

Males have a foam ball on the tail side of the vent. If you push on it, what looks like shaving cream comes out. It's a sugary substance than feeds the sperm in the female, so they can last at least 2 weeks after mating. It's put in the female, with the sperm, during copulation. Males that don't have any foam, or that have too little are culled. Males that have a very full ball aren't mating. They are culled too. Often those males are very fat. Males are next culled by size. Smaller males are culled. Finally out of the best males, I cull by color. I try to keep every color gene available in the US. I can potentially get over 600 apparent colors. Most apparent colors have up to 9 different genes responsible for them.

I keep 3.5 females per male, so males are culled much more heavily than females, since there's already more of them. Culled quail are all made into pet food.

I cull again at around 5 to 6 months of age.

Keith