Breathe

Here goes an extra long post. Three weeks ago, I had a plan to throw together a quick quail coop out of pallets. That’s when fourteen of the nineteen eggs I was incubating hatched. One, very sadly, didn’t make it. Thirteen have been doing wonderfully.

Thirteen. I hadn’t expected any to hatch, as it was a new, cheap incubator, and it was my first bumblehanded try. Suddenly, I needed the coop done yesterday. The race was on. Everything else, from gardening to beekeeping to housework, suffered.

It started raining. After an abysmal gardening season of drought and heat. It kept raining. I worked in the rain. My existing quail pen started to flood. I dug a trench. Fixed it. Went back to work on the coop. My bees balled up on their porch, in the rain. I gave them an additional eave. And went back to work on the coop.

I learned that quail are at least very hearty in the cold that is brought by fall rain. And that an overturned bucket, in addition to their nest boxes, is a favorite hangout. They’re easy to please. I also learned that they are excellent pest control, and that they do, indeed, like cucumbers. I learned that quail chicks grow super fast. And I frantically worked on the coop.

There couldn’t be openings, sharp edges, too much sun, or too little sun. A double door was on my wish list, for security. Drainage had to be right. A trench for burying a hardware cloth skirt had to be dug around the perimeter. I learned that cheap hardware cloth is just that. Cheap. But I got a refund, and they told me not to return it. And I made it work anyway, with lots of ugly furring strip patching. I learned it didn’t matter, as pallets are ugly too, and quail don’t care. Same with the stained up, otherwise unused Langstroth deep I turned into an extra cuddle box for them.

Boy howdy do quail chicks grow fast! And they fly even before they’re two weeks old. They also seem to poop much more than the adults.

At three weeks, it was time to move the chicks outside, with proper heating. Plant mats do not, in fact, work for our setting. The Cozy Coop I was planning to return works great. I thought it was too hot to the touch, but the babies love it.

One of my original hens is mean. At one time, I had her in her own quail jail, because she was terrorizing the rooster. He had a bloody beak from that. After a couple of days, she was fine when she went back into the pen. She was most definitely not fine when put in with the chicks! She didn’t just pick on one, but chased every one of the chicks through the pen, and wouldn’t stop. And the original rooster is viscous! Back to the original pen with the adults. Had to quarantine the mean hen again, though.

Four of the hatchlings are roosters. They are very young yet, so they’re happy together. That will likely change over time. I contacted someone about purchasing additional hens. They want $25 for a single coturnix hen. The norm seems to be up to about $7 per bird. They said the hens came from expensive eggs. So I decided to incubate another batch of eggs from my own birds, instead. They aren’t expensive eggs, but they do seem to be fertile, and produce healthy birds. Hopefully I’ll get all hens. Or at least mostly hens. Or at least some hens. I’ll have to learn the toughest lesson of all if the roosters collectively are too many.

I don’t want to end this on that note. Here are are the chicks in their very own coop. They’ve been enjoying dust baths, watermelon, and enough room to fly. They still even let me pet them, although quail tend to be jumpy.

Now I can breathe.