From Quail Nest

From Quail Nest

From Quail Nest

I think she's in the middle of laying the clutch because she left yesterday afternoon but came back last night to brood. I'm trying to figure out how to screen this part of the yard off from the dogs without freaking out the quail and causing her to abandon the nest. . .

My Mom gathered those eggs up and brought an old electric skillet outside, lined with layers of towels, turned it on warm and put the eggs inside. My Dad laughed and told her it would never work. But when pecking holes appeared, she called me and I pulled my son out of kindergarten to witness the event. She hatched 10 quail eggs in an electric skillet!!

I just buried my Mom this past week. In her eulogy, I told this story and thanked her for teaching us to love all things great and small.

Do whatever you can to help those babies hatch and include a youngster in the lesson. You will be remembered for it!!

There are plenty of eggs there, and I'm seeing baby quail around here, so you might not have long to worry about the nest.

Here's my barricade. . . a friend at Game and Fish told me to try and keep the area as disturbance-free as possible:

From Quail Nest

as you can see, the dogs are excavating what looks like a hole for an Olympic-sized pool next to the potted saguaro, hopefully they'll ignore the furniture in the middle of their construction site!!

I've let several containers (usually on plant pedestals) die over the years after finding quail eggs (and/or the quail) in them and refusing to water them while someone is on the nest. I happily trade the plants for a batch of those babies. I even posted here several years ago asking about the jumping height of the babies since one pot was on a tall-to-me pedestal, but I was reassured that mom knows not to put the nest too high for the babies and it all worked out great.

I've had similar "problems" with mourning doves in pots too and I always just avoid messing with things until the babies are gone. I've had a lot of dead plants that way, LOL.

Nice to hear other softies out there. :) I'm always a nervous wreck when dealing with nests, LOL. Do keep the pics, stories, and updates coming. Good luck!

Take care,
Grant

Sheesh, I'm a nervous wreck too, Grant! then I read something horrifying about fire ants swarming and eating baby quail! I can't have that happen on my watch so I've been meticulously powdering all the suspicious-looking ant hills with DE.

She's wedged herself towards the back of the pail but I'm going to try and get a couple of pics tomorrow morning.

Of course, I then had to leave the side gate open for several hours so mom and dad and babies could get out of the back yard. I'm sweating right now just thinking about it all, LOL.

Continued success with yours and definitely post any pics you can get.

Take care,
Grant

From Quail Nest

and a rather grainy picture of mom on the nest.

From Quail Nest

I do hope I'm around when the babies make their appearance - I guess they skedaddle as soon as everyone is de-shelled and on their feet so I may miss it.

Any late-hatching chick is abandoned.

sometimes I crack myself up.

you are a riot ... LOL ;)

You know a few years ago I posted here on GW about a single tardy party baby quail I found while on a run. I ended up setting up an enclosure and heat lamp blah blah blah by my bedside and raised the goofy thing (on poultry feed and then crickets and poultry feed) until it was large enough to fend for itself. After the few weeks I raised it it hung out in the back yard for a week or so and then just wandered off, which was perfect for me, LOL.

In any case, look at this horrible discovery I made yesterday! Yes, a single quail egg on one of my big patio containers. UGH. I hope it was/is a dud rather than the beginnings of a nest. I'm already stressed just thinking about it, LOL. I'll just leave it alone for now of course and see what happens.

Surprise!

Love the momma pic you shared by the way, keep the updates coming!

Take care,
Grant

sorry for the photo quality. . . my little digital camera was pushed to its limits. the top of mom's head is concealed under the bucket rim.

We had a brood in one of our porch pots a couple years ago. One day there was all sorts of frantic peeping out there, but every time we opened the door it was quiet, and the nest was empty. We had NO idea what was going on. Fortunately my stepson stopped by, and apparently he approached the door quietly enough to go unnoticed. The peeping continued and he discovered the problem:

The nesting pot was just a nursery container, so I had placed it inside a larger decorative pot. The baby quail had all gone over the side of the smaller pot and gotten stuck in the larger one. The outer pot sloped inward and the nursery pot didn't fit quite all the way in the bottom, so there was basically a ring of tiny quail, one quail high, wedged into the "corner" where the two pots met. It was shadowy enough out there that we hadn't been able to see them.

With relief we removed the nursery pot and tipped the big pot on its side. Amidst much rejoicing, a dozen baby quail streamed out into the bushes, where they were quickly rounded up by the parents, who were still lurking. That was a good day. :)

The one egg I found (pic above) was either a dud or the mom decided I spend too much time in the garden, LOL, as it was the only one.

Keep the updates and stories coming. Quail really are adorable aren't they?

Take care,
Grant

I was horrified when I first noticed, because my dog, Toro was out by the bucket, but I realized that he was eating empty egg shells. . .

I was terrified that he had eaten all the eggs (or babies - eek!) but realized that there was not enough carnage there for it to be a legitimate quail-icide scene: the bucket was not turned over, there was no blood, not enough feathers to suggest any mutilation. Just the two unhatched eggs, which had been moved out of the nest but were untouched by Toro.

Yeah, maybe I'm overanalyzing the crime scene to make myself feel better for not keeping a closer eye on the dog. . . but after a decade of reading police reports and homicide investigations, I just can't help myself!! :-)

You should be on CSI. LOL

Keep an eye on it. If they are not hatched by August 15, they aren't going to hatch.

Help!!!!

I have 3 girls and they are already naming them...

P.S. I loved reading all your stories. I will post pictures of mine soon!

All of these posters live in the valley where it gets 115°.

Quail obviously do just fine in those temps. If you don't have to interfere with Mother Nature, please don't.

The hens lay one egg a day until the clutch is compl;ete, then they start incubating. They hatch in 30 days, usually less, so check once a week for 5 weeks and if they are unhatched they are dead.

Put them BACK where you found them, arrange some shade if your husband wrecked the grass the quail was nesting in and the hen might come back and finish incubating. The chicks MIGHT make it.

Otherwise, explain to your girls that the eggs aren't going to hatch because daddy and mommy made a mistake and explain to them that baby wild animals and birds are best left alone.

It is by the street and we already ripped apart their home (completely) and discovered it in the grassy mess. I could have reassembled it all and left it there, but it was grass. Not like I could have made the grass stand up again! I don't think you understand unless you would have seen it.

I am actually on here for advice, no need to tell me what I should have done.

So, for those of you who care to be nice to me: we now have them in a shoebox with the grass below it to protect it. We read that they should be at 99 degrees. It is getting up to 110-115 here so we figure the shade is best. At night we are putting them in the garage since it stays around 100 all night there. It gets to about 90 outside at night.

We also read that the mom turns them so the yolk doesn't stick to the egg so my daughter is turning them once a day.

Who knows? They may all be dead, but maybe not?

All that being said, they probably won't hatch without the proper (and consistent) temp of mom sitting on top.

Please don't beat yourself up about it - it's the desert, life is very harsh for the various species that inhabit it and worse things happen!! :-)

This can be a good learning experience for your daughter and, if they don't hatch and aren't broken, the insides will eventually dry out and you'll have some very pretty quail egg shells.

I don't have any scientific information for you, but I do know that the mother birds often leave the eggs for what seems like a long time and everything works out fine. They don't even sit on them that much until they've laid them all, so that they all get in synch and hatch in the same day or so, but even after that she spends a fair bit of time away.

There's usually a dad quail around.

I'm glad that most of the quail eggs hatch in 3 or 4 weeks so I don't have to deal with this too long, LOL. The first week or so I keep forgetting they're there and they spook me (and vice versa!), but now I'm trying to remember to stay away when I can. Plus I'm going to have houseguests soon and I hope the "nest" out front is long empty by then, a month away.

The babies are awfully cute though, as are the big fat parents!

Take care all of you softies out there (me included, grrr),
Grant

Vicki R ~ in Arizona ~

Does anyone know if a coyote finding a quail's nest will scare off the momma quail such that she doesn't come back?

I just frightened a coyote off my back patio, but not before he had eaten one or two of the eggs. There are 8 or 9 eggs left in the nest, so it doesn't look like it was a full clutch yet, so maybe there is hope the parents will return???

I haven't touched the nest, now I am just trying to figure out how to prevent the coyotes from making a return visit while still allowing access for the quail.

If anyone has any insight, I'd be most grateful!

Andrea

P.S. I have appreciated reading, and learning from, **ALL** the posts on this thread. Thank you to everybody for sharing your experiences, especially the folks for whom it was more of a "cycle of life" kind of lesson, because those are really important too! Thank you.

Yesterday, I built a little chicken wire fence all the way around the bushes the Quail are nesting in, and cut-out little 5-6 inch spaces at the bottom of the fence every so often so Quail can get in, but coyotes cannot, and voila...

...This morning the momma Quail was setting her eggs again!

I'm so happy - I wanted to share with all of you (in case you wanted to know what happened!)

As cute as the parents and the babies are, I'll be glad when they're hatched and gone, the stress is killing me, LOL. :)

Take care all you quail lovers,
Grant

Thanks!