Long story short about the female. A friend of mine knows a guy who has quails, she told him that I am looking for a pair, and he said he would give me a pair for free, so that is okay, I get the pair, and when he got them out of his car to give them to me (we met him at a bird auction), the females head was bleeding, and he said she probably just bumped it/scraped it. They were in a (tiny) box with mesh stuff over the top. When I got home with the pair, she had scraped her head again, or what I assumed, and I was really worried at that point, there wasn't much blood at all. I went to put the pair in the aviary, and she couldn't walk, and she would drag herself along the ground. I brought her inside and put her in a container with heat and kept giving her water which she happily took. That night, she started getting really active, and I thought she would be good to go in the morning.. I left her in the container over-night, just to watch her, and I kept giving her water, she had refused to eat though. The next morning, I went to check on her and she had passed away.
Oh.
That's so sad.
Button Quail also do this thing which I call "popcorning". This is where they shoot up straight in the air when they are spooked or very excited. A lot of BQ get head trauma from doing this and hitting the enclosure ceiling.
Maybe it was a combination of the small carry box and Mr. Q that did it.
I actually lost one of my females in a freak popcorn accident. She popcorned inside the house (from a very loud noise outside - I'm thinking it was a car hitting something) and snapped her neck against our ceiling. She was dead before she even hit the ground.
So inside cages (hospital cages) should have fabric placed inside the cage and close to the top. Almost like a hammock type thing spanning the entire top of the cage. This way if they popcorn then they just bounce off the fabric.
*By the way, sorry if you know all this!
I just think others might find this interesting as well! Ignore it all if this is old news.
If I need to get 3 more females to make sure there is more females then males, I will have to put them in an aviary that I am getting tomorrow for my Cockatiels which is a lot bigger then the Budgies. The Budgies aviary isn't big enough for 4 I don't think.
Bigger is always better.
My three are in a 3m x 1.5m aviary and they use all the space.
Just make sure you quarantine the Quails before introducing them to your Cockatiels or Budgies because they do share illnesses.
He gets..
Veggies
Seed Mix (I will have to get Quail seed mix, never heard of it)
Sprouted Seed (I don't know if this is okay?)
Grit (I already have a bag of it)
Pellets (no, yes?)
I see I am missing quite a few things. I was told they can have whatever the Budgies have. I will definitely get Crickets and Mealworms too. What kind of "calcium supplements" do they need exactly?
Budgie seed mix is fine! I found a special Quail seed mix that I prefer to use because it has plenty of different seeds in there. My Budgie mix is boring because it is a special low-fat mix.
Sprouted seeds are definitely OK as well!
Vetafarm told me that their pellets are fine for Quail as well. Mine won't touch it though. So that's why I use other supplements in their water.
I make grit available to them all the time. They swallow seeds whole and apparently need it to digest their food.
Quail in the wild eat a lot of insects! So their diets need to be quite high in protien. My girls get lots of little critters to eat - from mealworms to crickets to fly pupae to maggots. They get some form of protien every day.
I use Calcivet in their water because female Button Quail lay eggs non-stop! They really are like chickens. I get an egg every second day from each of my girls. Because of this a female's lifespan rarely exceeds 18 months. With the proper supplements, diet and exercise they could live up to 3 years.
Males can easily live for 5 years.
So I constantly top up their calcium reserves with supplements just because the egg laying takes so much out of them.
Kero's wing isn't broken, where the primary flight feathers come through (carpal joint?) is where it was injured. The primary flight feathers have come off and will grow back through. Before they came off, he was flying though. Right now, he looks like he has a one wing clip, where all the (primary) flight feathers have been clipped. Rest assured, he is fine, and will be fine.
Oh that's really good!!
I was so worried about the little guy.