Friday, 20 June 2014

A Friend's Quail


If you have ever seen quail eggs they are tiny and feel so fragile!



As the are Coturnix Quail they hatch at around 16 to 18 days.
Different breeds of quail take different lengths of time.

Elegant Quail:22 days 
Blue Scaled Quail:23 days 
Bobwhite Quail:22-23 days 
Button Quail:16 days 
California Quail:22-23 days 
Gambel's Quail:22 days 
Montezuma Quail:24-25 days 
Mountain Quail:24-25 days


10 minutes old


Nicely dry and very very cute! 


 Keeping an eye on the temperature is crucial - they must be kept warm at around 35 Degrees for the first week, this is slowly deceased until they are fully feathered at four to six weeks.






This 50p shows just how small they are, this chick is 24 hours old.


Sunday, 15 June 2014

Wow the wonders of grass!

They are growing at a ferocious rate on the grass. They will be old enough to sell the first week of August, as long as they have started to feather up by then,  which they should of done.  As this will be the last year for goslings we will keep one of the girls to bring the grass cutting numbers up to three, which should keep our field in check,  obviously no more goslings otherwise some may be of father,  daughter parentage.. Not good.. But I have an art project planned for the eggs next summer.... So watch this space!

Thursday, 5 June 2014

Week old and doubled in size!

It never ceases to amaze me how fast they grow... If you ever want to see really rapid growth hatch some quail!

Wednesday, 4 June 2014

Goslings sexed and ringed

My leg rings arrived today,  so braved the torrential rain and a cross Honda!  And it turns out we have two boys and four girls,  a great ratio as girls are always more popular when you sell them.   I was going to photo/film it for you,  but the weather was too bad,  but in a week or two they will need the next size up ring and hopefully the weather will be better, I  will show how to sex them and ring them.  Goslings are hard to sex as everything is internal and the boys are very good at keeping it that way!  The younger you do it the easier it is. But everything is so small you need a keen eye.