Recirculating Cheese

Quail are nature's snack food. (Actually, I originally said this about mice, but it holds for quail as well). So we named the bird (birth announcement, baby pictures) Fizzing Whizbee, or just Whizbee, for the Harry Potter candy that flies just out of your reach.

We'd been keeping her in a cage in the guest room/office, but she kicked her bedding all over the floor, and pooped on the floor when let out of the cage. So Francie built her an outside enclosure, and a little quail house. We started putting her out during the day a couple weeks ago, then starting leaving her out overnight this week (just in time for it to get cold and damp).

Last night/this morning, something got to her. We found a small hole dug under the enclosure, a lot of wet feathers outside the enclosure, and, a little ways off, a single foot. Until we found the foot, there was some hope that she'd gotten away (although she never had any street smarts, and wouldn't have lasted long in the wild anyway).

We still have a bunch of (unfertilized) quail eggs that she laid. We'll blow out some of the shells, but they're a bit delicate.

4 weeks old - cf. 1-12 days old

+ Went to aikido on Monday night, and received my shodon certificate. Each one is hand-calligraphed by Shuji Maruyama Sensei, president and founder of Kokikai. My impression has been that it can take up to a year to get the certificate, so this is pretty speedy. Now I have to frame it, which can also take considerable time...

- The head cold started Monday afternoon, and there's no way I would have gone to aikido if it wasn't for the certificate. The gym is unbearably hot in the summer, and I was thoroughly beat by the end of class. I slept for 11 hours, called in sick yesterday, and am still under the weather today.

++ Four days on, and the quail chick seems to be happy and healthy. It's in a brooder (cardboard box with heat lamp) in the kitchen, and is endlessly amused with its friend, The Hand. More baby pictures when I get the chance.

- The other egg stopped developing, so this one is all alone (except for its friend, The Hand).

--- We lost one of the hens to predation. The dog came to the back door with the decapitated, eviscerated body of Millie, the mille-fleur d'Uccle, the less devoted of the two broody hens, but the one who sat the one surviving quail chick. Anyway, the dog didn't kill the hen, just found her. We have hawks in the neighborhood, but Francie (who dealt with the carnage) thinks it was a member of the weasel family, since the head was found halfway down a hole. We're keeping the remaining hens in the (enclosed) aviary, which is proof against hawks, but not against weasels.

(Well, not all, not yet at any rate.)

The silkie's eggs eggs hatched today, but... When lyonesse checked them at 7:30? this evening, two of them had already hatched, but were dead; the third was still hatching. I was still driving home from Baitcon, and instructed her to remove the two, but leave the one. I was so distracted by the whole thing that I got off the Pike at 495 instead of 95, which added a good (or bad) unnecessary time and mileage to the trip. When we finally got home shortly after 9:00, the egg was cold, and collapsed (to the extent possible) on the body of the chick, still inside.

I honestly don't know what happened. Perhaps the chicks got cold; this was Francie's worry, and she bought a heat lamp before she left for England, but I hadn't set it up, because I didn't want the hens to die of heat (not to mention packing and prep for Baitcon). Perhaps the hen didn't know what to make of little things squirming under her, and attacked them. This is not inconceivable, given the clear head trauma on one of them. But the other doesn't show any obvious wounds, and the third never made it out of the egg.

Silkies are supposed to make good mothers, and this one was certainly devoted to sitting on her eggs, and she might still be good with self-mobile chicks, but I can't help thinking she failed the test of actually hatching her chicks.

( -- Pictures of neonatal mortality behind the cut -- )

As soon as we got home, I did what I probably should have had lyonesse do, and set up the incubator in the kitchen. The two remaining eggs were under the d'Uccle, a much less devoted broody, and consequently were much less far along in their development. I candled both of them, and at least thought I saw signs of life, albeit much further along than the sikie's. If they hatch, it won't be for another week or so, which is incredibly late (standard gestation for Bobwite Quail is 23 days).



7 eggs ordered, 10 shipped and arrived intact, 3 broke subsequently, 1 either infertile or failed to develop, 1 more either broke and I forgot, or was snatched. Two hatched, 1 almost hatched. Two left, and god only knows whether they'll survive.

(This should have been at least two posts, but WTF, I'm lame...)

Starting last summer, at least two of our bantam hens have been going broody during the summer. This year, it's been pretty much just the d'Uccle and the Silkie, but pretty much full-time - sitting in the nest box, even on the extra-jumbo Rhode Island Red eggs, even when the eggs were taken away from them.

We can't have a rooster (can't even legally have chickens where we live - ssh!), but we'd been talking since last summer about getting quail eggs for the broodies to hatch - quail being small, inconspicuous, and not growing up into chicken roosters, which would make their presence known pretty quickly. So we (Francie, really) ordered bobwhite quail eggs a few weeks ago from McMurray. They finally came on 6/28, and I immediately put them under the hens, and then looked up the gestation - and found out that they're likely to hatch...in the middle of Baitcon.

We candled the eggs today (as best we could, with a mini-maglite), and there are definitely active embryos (in the eggs we checked (4 of 7 remaining (out of 10 shipped (out of 7 ordered)))). So I'm kind of conflicted about the Baitcon thing - I definitely want to go and see people (in general and in particular, y'know), but I need to get someone to look after the menagerie who's willing to deal with (and whom I'm willing to let deal with) the possibility of tiny baby chickies.