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On the Friday after we got back from our honeymoon, someone *cough cough* hubby *cough cough* left the door unlocked on the quail pen. The quails got out, and Devin the puppy played with them until they were dead. Four quails gone. Disaster!
The next day, I saw Devin pawing at the deck and whining. I had the feeling there was something under there. I took a look, and sure enough, there was a quail stuck under the deck boards. She must have popped over our sprinkler hideaway, gotten down into the hole, and slipped under one of the support boards to get completely and utterly stuck. You may not have understood that, but I barely do either!
How did she GET under here??
After some mental anguish, we decided we HAD to get her out. A quail slowly dying under our deck? No thank you!
Hubby got the drill, and we started taking out one of the boards.
Out comes the board...
She was a thirsty thing, so we were able to tempt her out with some dripping water. Dripping water is very attractive to quails. If you’re trying to get them used to using a rabbit/guinea pig waterer, just squeeze it until it drips. It gets their attention right away! And shiny things. They will peck at shiny things.
Closer...closer...wait for it...!
Success!
For a trapped quail, she didn't seem too happy to be rescued.
So…this is one of the reasons we’re hatching some more (due date of 8/20). We’re a little short on quails these days, thanks to the puppy. BAD PUPPY.
We started building our raised garden beds this evening, until the drill ran out of juice. I wanted to work on the A-frame to show you, but it looks like the raised garden beds will come first! I bought a ton of seeds at Home Depot for our winter garden, so I’ll show you what we’ll be planting there.
DON’T MAKE MY MISTAKE: For goodness’ sake, make sure to shut your doors after you collect quail eggs! Yes, quail can fly, but they are not very good at it. Once they haplessly wander out of their cage, they’ll be only a hop skip and a jump away from completely helpless. Add a cat or dog into the mix, and you’re short some quails and up some fairly useless carcasses (unless you feed your pets a raw diet. Then they’ll still be handy).
My family came over for dinner last night – for my mom’s birthday. In honor of her birthday, we cooked up the quail. We used this recipe. Bacon-wrapped quail stuffed with goat cheese. Does it get any better than that?
This is how you make quails extra nommable!
Ready to go into the oven...
Out of the oven...I'm so proud!
Here's what our dinner plates looked like.
So that’s what you can do with your processed quails.
We also started getting eggs regularly yesterday, so we fried up a few for appetizers.
Here's a man-hand for comparison. They taste really good.
Suburban sustainability – starting to see the pay-off!
We processed some of our extra male quails last night. It’s my mother’s birthday this weekend, so they’ll make a great part of bday dinner. I won’t say it wasn’t difficult, especially given that I love animals, but I feel if you’re going to eat meat, might as well face up to the ugly side.
This is the method that we used.
Turn back now if you don't want to see birds turned into nommables!
Things have progressed quickly over this past month. I’ve got seven new quail babies, the 4-week-olds have been moved into their outdoor enclosure, and we’ve planted our seedlings in the garden. I’m very satisfied with what we’ve accomplished.
GARDEN
We grew all of these plants from seeds. MUCH cheaper than buying a seedling at the store. And you can get that wonderful smug feeling that you did it from start to finish =D
Green Zebra tomato plant
Bok Choy plant. I already want to eat them.
Butternut squash
Zucchini and Cucumber
Strawberries, so yum!
Our garden (I'm standing at the gate)
QUAILS
We moved them outside when they were 3 weeks old. They’re doing really well and are getting bigger every day!
The hutch - we put them all in the upper section.
Quails venturing out of the shelter.
Quails snacking on some weeds! They're great little garbage disposals =)
I’ll post another update in a month or so. Thanks for reading!
We’ve got new quail hatchlings! If you check my Twitter page, I’ll be posting one photo of them a day, so you can watch them grow with me. It’s really amazing watching them get larger from day to day.
For instance, here is one of our 3-week-old quails next to one of our day-old quails.
Well...sort of side by side. This is as close as we could get them.
We moved the three-week olds out to the quail hutch on Thursday.
Each of those water bottles is 32oz. They drink a lot of water, and we want to be able to leave for a weekend without worry.
Eating food, yawning, running around. Feed them weeds - they love 'em!
Again, check out my Twitter page for daily updates on the new quail babies!
Last we left off, you were putting the plywood on the frame to form the shelter areas.
Here is how you make the shelter doors.
Shelter Door
Use 1x2s to frame the door, just like you did with the wire doors. We used the 3″ screws to hold the 1x2s together. Screw the plywood onto the frame and voila! A door! Of course, you’ll want to put hinges on it, and a bar lock.
At this point, you’ll want to paint it.
Our drill ran out of juice, so we painted some panels separately, and affixed them later.
Use an outdoor paint so your hutch will withstand the elements. If you’re feeling really cheap, check the oops rack at your local hardware store. Sometimes they’ll have a can or two of paint there that isn’t a horrible color. Otherwise, just grab the cheapest type of paint. That’s what I did.
P.S. I swear it’s a light terracotta, NOT pink!
Once you’re finished painting and have all doors and shelter walls affixed, it’s time to put the roof on.
Plywood attached, roofing felt attached, putting shingles on.
LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE: Extend the roofing out at least a good 6″ on either side. Ours extends 2-3″ on either side, and it does not protect from the rain the way I would like.
Secure the roofing to the beams using the 1 5/8″ screws.
The roofing felt goes on top of this. We used staples to secure it. Roofing felt is fairly easy to cut with scissors or with a utility knife, so don’t worry if it hangs over the edge. Cut it when you’re done stapling it.
For the shingles, we used leftover shed shingles.
We used staples on these too, though probably should have used nails.
Overlap the shingles and cut them at the edges. These can be cut with a utility knife or heavy-duty scissors.
You’re almost done! Now it’s time for the hardware cloth.
Dum dee dum, wire OUCH!
Use the coated hardware cloth for the floor. This stuff feels great. Run your hand over this and then run your hand over the uncoated wire. The coated hardware cloth is very nice, very soft on the quails’ feet.
If you have another person helping you, have them pull on the hardware cloth while you staple it down. Pull it tight so it’s not going all over the place when the quails step on it. Staple the hardware cloth on the outside of the framing. Then cut the excess with wire cutters.
When you cut the hardware cloth, cut it as close as possible, to avoid scratching or cutting yourself later on the pointy excess.
Feel free to use uncoated wire on the rest of the hutch – it’s cheaper!
Move to an appropriate place in your yard.
FIN!
For poop trays, you can build your own from plywood, or you could do what I did and buy plastic bin lids from IKEA (they sell them separately from the bins woohoo! $2.50 each). I like the plastic for how light it is and how easy it will be to clean. We’ll be moving the quails in this weekend if not earlier, so I’ll show you how that looks then.
TIME INVESTMENT: Approximately 24 hours. If you know what you’re doing, it will probably take less time. We spent a lot of time waffling, arguing, fixing mistakes, and running back and forth to the hardware store =)
Okay, so from last time – you now have your two sides put together.
Using brackets, connect the two sides with 2x2s. I made the hutch approximately 6′ long. You’ll want to cut 9 2x2s of this length (5’8″) Leave off the roof ones – we’ll get to those later.
Starting to install poop tray bars as well...
In this photo you can see we’ve installed three of the front 2x2s. We’ve also installed two 1x2s on the top for the poop trays to rest on. These can be secured to the other 1×2 pieces with the 1 5/8″ screws.
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions.
Here it is with more of it done. For the roof pieces, we tilted them at the same 30 degree angle – so one of the sides of the 2×2 is flush with the roof. Not the best way in the world to do roofing, but we’re housing quail, not people. We went in from the sides with the 1 5/8″ screws to secure the top pieces.
The hutch is starting to take shape...
Just a quick note – think of framing as your structure’s skeleton. These are the bones you’re going to hang your trimmings on.
Framing the doors and the sheltered areas.
The 9th 2×2 – the odd one out – goes in the front to support the door framing. We used 2x2s to frame the sheltered area, and 1x2s to frame the two wire doors. We used 1 5/8″ screws at a diagonal from the front to secure the 1x2s for the door frames.
Secure the bottom part of the vertical shelter 2x2s with brackets. You just want to avoid running any screws into each other (secure the bottom 2x2s with 3″ screws).
Due to the weird angle of the roof bars, we used a 1×2 in the back for the shelter, and used a jigsaw to cut the angle. It’s a little jimmy-rigged, but it works.
Now time for the roof beams!
There's me, smiling like an idiot... =P
We put three roof beams in. One we put in at the same distance as the shelter beams, to provide the framing for the shelter plywood (you need to screw the plywood into something so it stays where you put it!). The other two we spaced evenly apart. We made the shelters 1′ wide.
Now for the fun part – putting on the trimmings.
For the plywood we just used a measuring tape - calculations can get iffy.
Take your sheets of plywood and use a jigsaw to cut them to form the walls, floors, and roof (singluar for the bottom one) of your shelters. Use the 1/2″ screws to secure the plywood to your framing.
Part III – the finale – to follow!
I had a few requirements when building the quail hutch. It had to look nice, so as not to garner complaints from the neighbors, it had to hold a decent amount of quail – enough to feed my family of 3, and it had to be efficient…just because.
I’d seen a lot of people using rabbit hutches for quails, so I used that as a basis, and turned it double-decker so as to better use the space.
COST: All-in-all, the project cost me ~$250.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
Tools:
-Staple Gun
-Power Drill/Screwdriver
-Circular Saw
-Jigsaw
-Wire cutters
Supplies:
-2x4s
-1x2s
-2x2s
-3″ screws
-1 5/8″ screws
-1/2″ screws
-20 metal brackets
-4 small bar locks
-4 sets of small hinges (2 per package)
-coated hardware cloth
- hardware cloth
-roofing felt
-shingles
-thin plywood
Put the two side pieces together first. Pre-drill the holes for the wood screws.
Yeah, note the "not to scale" at the top.
Here is one of ours in the middle of assembly.
In the middle of assembly. Note the metal brackets.
And here’s what they look like when they’re finished. The 1×2 pieces will later hold the poop trays. These are going to be on the inside of the side pieces. Make sure you put them on the inside!
Two side pieces...complete! Now what?
Allow me to note that neither of us has any background in carpentry. The only experience I’ve had was some set-building in high school. It taught me a little bit about framing. Other than that…nada! We even had to borrow the circular saw from our neighbor. So if we can do it, so can you.
I’ll try to get the subsequent parts up ASAP. As with the incubator – time investment will be posted on the final part.
Quails will be moving into their hutch on Thursday, we’re set for another hatch starting Friday, seedlings will be planted in our garden this weekend (barring poor weather), and I’ll be picking up ingredients for homemade deoderant this week (mine is almost out!).
We’re talking about getting into brewing our own sake, so look for that in the future as well!
In preparation for my quail chickies hatching, one of the things that I bought was a quail waterer.
It looks like this:
You can get this at your local feed store.
After the quails hatched, I learned a couple of things. 1. Quails are messy drinkers and eaters. 2. Pine shavings absorb water like a sponge.
I’d leave in the morning with fresh pine shavings and a full water bottle…and come back in the evening with a sodden mess and a water bottle that needed to be refilled.
I turned to the web and found mentions of others using rabbit/guinea pig waterers for quail. You know, the ones with the little metal ball at the bottom that they move to get a drink.
I bought one of those and installed in in the brooder.
I bought this from Wal-Mart for about $3.
I put a small dish underneath it.
Works like a charm! The quails figured out very quickly how to drink from it, their bedding stays dry, and I don’t have to refill it as often. We’re all happy!
I’ve read of people using these with day-old chicks, so don’t bother with your standard quail waterer.
Ok, so going out and plucking slugs off the plants every night didn’t work. Mainly because we didn’t go out there every night. Who has the time?
Our poor, poor seedlings.
So we tried a couple other methods.
STALE BEER METHOD:
Get a container. A bottle works well, as does a pan or a cup. In this case, we used a dog bowl. Bury the container next to the affected plants, up to the rim. Fill the container with stale beer. If the beer isn’t stale, don’t worry, it soon will be if you leave it out.
Leave it out overnight. Here’s what ours looked like the next morning:
YES! Dead slugs! The slugs are attracted to the smell of the beer, they go up close to it, fall in, and die. Beer method works!
EGG SHELL METHOD:
Just in case some of those slugs were wise to our plan, or some just weren’t into booze, we also tried out this method.
Take some eggshells, crush them up, and place them around the base of your seedlings. The slugs can’t cross the jagged edges, so they can’t go climb your plants and have a meal.
Ah-like so!
INITIAL TIME INVESTMENT: 10 minutes
DAILY TIME INVESTMENT: 2 minutes – refill that beer when it runs dry, until your plants are big enough!
In quick quail news, the quails are growing like weeds. Every morning I wake up and look at them, they’re bigger! There are 17 of them and they’re going through their scruffy adolescent phase.
I can sort of fly already too!
I have 39 more eggs in the incubator – soonest expected hatch date of 4/24.
