#my quails

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

Salad for everyone! I give it half a day until it's completely consumed.

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One of my quails is brooding.

So i haven't posted anything about this because I didnt want to get my hopes up, because natural brooding behaviour is rare in cortunix quails.

But today is day 15, so maybe I'll be having quail chicks tomorrow or the day after.

You can't see her, but she's in there.

Because of course she chose the busiest place in the aviary right next to where they all run through.

Wish me luck that all goes well.

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

I did a deep clean on the aviary yesterday.

The last preparations before winter comes!

I didnt make a video of it, unfortunately. The quails were even helping (=getting in the way by climbing on the shovel or taking birdbaths on the dirtpile every.single.time)

The quails seem content enough with the new bedding XD

Especially this one:

Already pooping everywhere again too :/ You wouldn't believe how much such little birds poop. That was squeaky clean yesterday

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

They enjoy their greens as well.

Should have filmed them destroying a whole salad. It comes closest to their mealworm craze, lol

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They were confused. I was filming them but didn't have any food with me.

(I got them some grass after this)

I'm not sure what the noises the brown one makes mean. She was watching me very intently while making them.

I petted her right after filming, but she just continued until I gave them the grass. Weird.

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

Quails again!

(Tw loud noise) Sorry, the lawnmower is running very loudly in the background, but I didnt want to cut the quail noises out. (They were loud too)

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Quails again! The 2 wild type ladies i got are the chillest quails ice ever had. Not interested in food, dont care if i walk around them, dont care if i pet them. While everybody else goes crazy over mealworms or salad/grass etc they barely react.

Everytime I see them theyre sleeping somewhere.

I was kinda worried that they might be sick, but no, they just prefer lying around.

[picturesoffishandotherthings]

Somehow rats managed to get into the aviary by tunneling under the wire...

Unfortunately they bit one of my 2 male quails in the head, he lost one of his eyes, but is doing well, all things considered.

So now I had to dig up the entire aviary to put wire mesh all over the ground. It was a damn nightmare, because I dug down all the way where the other wire mesh of the sides ended, so 30-40 cm.

I unfortunatly didnt take any pictures of the earth mounds that were piled up inside, but this was after we finished digging:

And here after we put everything back again:

I really hope the wire mesh holds, im not sure what I'll do if the rats manage to gnaw through.

I've put up traps and caught 3 before they learned not to go near them, and they eat and empty the poison traps, but I've not seen any dead ones, so I'm not sure if it even works.

The quails are hiding and are a little more subdued now, but thats understandable. At least they didnt start to get panicked.

I was afraid this experience would make them so scared they start panicking if I get closer.