On our quest to find our place in the homesteading world we have tried multiple different approaches to several different types of livestock.
We recently wanted to take on quail. While there is a magnitude of information available on raising quail, it has proven difficult to find people raising quail the way we want to raise them; cage and stress free. The first thing people ask is, cage free? How can you reasonably expect to raise quail without a cage? Well that's not entirely what we mean. With livestock, our hope is to keep them contained but as close to their natural habitat as possible.
Since the research has been limited, we weren't sure how to go about this. Enter the ever popular chicken tractor. Farmers and homesteaders everywhere are using the chicken tractor to raise pastured poultry. Every day the tractor is moved to fresh grass. Why won't this work for quail?
We have been scouring the internet and social media for any information on pasture raising quail. With limited resources available we found that the biggest issues that we would face were going to be cage size, disease, and predators. These are some pretty big hurdles to overcome but we set out to find fixes for each individually to make this work.
Cage Size
Cage size was an issue we didn’t know how to fix but ended up fixing it without realizing what we were doing. This becomes an issue because quail like to fly straight up when they are startled or scared. They will fly up, ultimately breaking their necks from hitting the top of their enclosure. The basic fix for quail owners is to limit their head space. This constricts them to the point that even if they fly up, the distance typically isn’t enough to kill them. During grow out, we had a couple that actually flew up and broke their necks (we were using our chicken brooder). The flying up issue ended up being a fix that happened due to circumstances. We had make-shift cages that forced us to be in constant contact with our quail. To feed, water, and clean their cages we had to open their pens. We had to handle them frequently. There was constant interaction and handling. The result was, they didn’t fear us. After a few weeks they had adjusted to the interaction. They were no longer going into “fight or flight” mode at the sight of us.
Disease Issues
Disease is an issue with any livestock you decide to own. There are precautions that have to be taken no matter what animal you decide to keep. Cages will always need to be maintained. Bedding and feces will always need to be removed. The work around for quail is “poop trays” and wire floors. The quail waste passes through the wire floors into a tray thus keeping the cages free of feces. The thought of them spending their entire life on wire floors, broke my heart. I wanted their life with us to be as close to nature as we could get. To us, this would be an easy fix. Simply move them every day, clean fresh grass every day. Even in a large tractor, we move them. They will only be on an area, once a year for one day. Our tractors are large enough that we can walk into them and guide the quail so that they don’t get ran over or escape when the tractor is raised up to move. At this point, they are used to human interaction.
Predator Issues
Predators can and will go after an easy meal. Quail are no exception. Caged equals easy prey. Our set up is most likely not practical for everyone but I’ll tell you what we do and things that could possibly be done for you. Our property is fenced with 2X4 welded wire on all 4 sides. In addition to the fence, our goats also run the perimeter of the property. Their boundary fence is 4 strands of hot wire. The lowest strand is roughly 6-8 inches off the ground. Since their interior fence is the 2X4 wire, we put one strand of hot wire off the main perimeter fence at the bottom of the interior fence. This is dual purpose as it keeps the goats from pushing on the fence but also since it’s only about 3-4 inches off the ground, it stops smaller critters from climbing or digging under the interior fence in the event they are small enough to go under the perimeter fencing. Inside the fence we have dogs and cats. They tend to deter activity from wildlife on the interior areas. Luckily our dogs and cats have zero interest in our birds and poultry. Now for the real issue, SNAKES! I can’t say that we have this figured out, snakes are tricky little creatures that fall into the “if there is a will, there is a way” category. I am not sure if you can ever totally rid your birds or poultry from the stresses of snakes. The only thing that we can reasonably do to keep them out is make heavy tractors that sit on the ground and finished out with ½ in hardware cloth. This isn’t 100% but it is a deterrent for snakes. We still have a small number of snake incidents but heavy tractors made of hardware cloth has dropped the fatality rate. The downfall to the heavy tractors is, they have to have wheels to move. This is an extra cost. We have one set of wheels that we use for all the tractors, seems more reasonable since we can’t move them at the same time anyway. They are easily installed and removed.
I said I would offer some suggestions for other options to protect your tractors from predators. We love solar fence chargers! Those can be moved easily and won’t require electricity to work. You could put one strand of hot wire around the bottom of your tractor to stop predators, even the ones that choose to dig under. Another option is possibly using livestock netting, also with the solar chargers. We have netting designed for poultry and goats. The nets are large enough to enclose multiple large tractors and help to deter predators.
In the end, we all want what is best for our critters. We also have to do what works best for us and our set ups. I put this together to help centralize some of the information that we found and tell what has worked for us. Thanks for reading and happy quail raising!
Playlist of our Quail videos:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxSqOXKLo15EwUGrgL7DfzyCt0HsHqyky
