Our town is in an extremely rural setting. We’re surrounded by farms. But since a large turkey corporation (rhymes with hen-be-no) and its testing facility are in town, we’re banned from keeping backyard chickens. It’s ironic that a couple of the more upscale, yet smaller towns next door allow residents to have chickens. They have sensible regulations for keeping these birds, and it seems to work, as it does in many other towns.
I found an even better alternative, and then I was fortunate enough to find an excellent local source. We picked our seven quail up on Saturday, after a couple of days of scrambling to finish their run.
They have an on-ground run, made of a few sticks of treated 2×2’s, pallet wood, and hardware cloth. The ground in the pen is covered with a bit of gravel for drainage, and several inches of sand.
Our rooster is on the right.
When we put them in the pen, the birds started eagerly taking dust baths right away. Sand was flying! I had turned some unused Langstroth beehive parts into a shelter for them, but they had little interest in being “inside.” So I threw together a couple of pallet wood nest boxes, and made a tunnel for them out of a piece of a plastic pot that one of our fruit trees came in. They seem much happier with this setup.
They’re absolutely adorable. Even the rooster’s crowing is cute. These young adult hens have just started laying eggs.
I plan to build a walk-in aviary at some point, and keep this as the secondary pen. Meanwhile, I’ll have to figure out a couple of potted plants for the run. And what additional treats can be added to the rotation.
