My preferred incubator, which is a Janoel 24, has a couple of large thumb gaps in the hatching tray. This might be fine for chicken chicks, but it would easily allow a quail chick to fall through to a certain death by drowning or chill. I’ve used rolled up shelf liner to fill the gaps in the past, but this time I’m trying something different.
In the above image one of the thumb holes is on the right edge, under the canvas. I cut a piece of plastic needlepoint canvas to go over the whole tray. This should avoid much shifting, and the chicks shouldn’t weigh enough to push that down. I cover the hatching tray with grippy shelf liner. Since I started doing this, splay has been a non-issue. Any that come out with spraddle leg from a rough hatch correct it themselves by walking on the shelf liner.
I divided the eggs, sixty of them, from this go-round between my two incubators. The other is a Janoel 12. It doesn’t produce the same hatch rate as the larger one, but it also doesn’t have gaps for chicks to fall through. Here are the eggs in the larger one.
These are from my own birds. I’ve gotten great results from them in the past, but anything can and will happen. Maybe they’ll all hatch, or none will. Or more likely some number in between.
I’m trying to rush through the build of my new small hutch, for the quail shed, right now. After the roof is on and the windows are cut, I’ll build the larger hutch. I just don’t want to be hammering after birds are in there, as it will frighten them.
With this all going on, my package bees have arrived in town. I lost my hives at the very last minute, and it was probably a numbers issue from the wasp raid last fall. So it won’t be a honey year. But this new package could bring honey next year.
Everything here is on faith. So far, the quail have come through with flying (pun intended) colors.
