For those of you who have been following Side Stepping Normal for a while, you will know that we recently picked up some Quails to look after in our garden. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it yet, but these are Japanese Coturnix Quails (four girls and one boy).
We plan to use them for eggs, but also to find ways to integrate them into our garden as part of a Permaculture design system. While we’ve looked after chickens in the past, Quails are entirely new to us. There’s a lot to learn!
We are also doing this in a rented house so there are severe limitations on what we can do in the garden. There is no option to build a permanent bespoke hutch that fully meets our needs, and we can’t segment off part of the garden to make it predator and escape proof (if that is even possible with Quails).
In this essay we have decided to discuss some of the initial challenges that we’ve encountered while managing Quails. In doing so, it’s worth noting that they currently live in a two-tier rabbit hutch and occasionally get out into the garden within an Omlet guinea pig “zippy” play run. It’s also worth noting that we’re not particularly happy with either setup!
There is much less information about managing Quails in a garden than about chickens. A decade ago, we brought several books on managing chickens. These proved extremely useful. There are no equivalent handbooks for Quail’s. We’ve found a few in the library, but these are relatively old and somehow fall short of our hopes for a book that would help us to integrate the Quails in some way, into our garden.
I guess part of the problem is that we are looking not only to get eggs from the Quails, but to also give them the best quality of life possible, and to find ways to integrate them into a Permaculture system in our garden. There are three key problems that the books highlight and which we are already beginning to see, now that we have Quails.
1. Predator proofing
Quails are not as good at looking after themselves as chickens. They are more prone to fox or rat attacks (and that was already a big enough concern with the hens!). We’ve also noticed a resident cat showing quite a bit of interest from her roof-top perch! This means that any outside hutches, runs, or cages, must be fox and rat-proof. This adds a few complications to our desire for the Quails to have access to the garden itself.
The books that we’ve found so far suggest that there should be wood, concrete, or at least a wire-mesh floor between the Quails and the soil otherwise rats or foxes will certainly get them.
G.E.S. Robbins at least offers a slight alternative by describing a wire-mesh skirt around the edges of the house, suggesting at least 12” (.3m) to ‘prevent vermin digging under the house’ (Robbins, 1981, 13). We had something similar for our chickens when we brought a walk-in Omlet cage for them. On that occasion, we reinforced the skirt with paving slabs.
Omlet cages might be a good option again, but to use one we will need to find a way to add extra mesh to the sides. This is already something that we’ve discovered, having brought the Zippy play run from Omlet. This works well for the Quails. It’s the perfect size and its relatively easy to access from multiple sides. That comes in handy when trying to catch the Quails to bring back to the hutch and to pick up eggs. However, they stick their heads out all the time, so I’m not convinced that it is fox proof enough and the skirt is only 8”. A rat could easily squeeze through as well.
Robbins argues that wire mesh on cages or hutches should be no larger than ½” (1.3cm). The Omlet run is 3.8cm squared. The reasoning Robbins gives is to keep wild birds out, to stop rats from getting in, and to stop foxes catching a Quail head through a larger mesh space.
Our hutch is better in this regard. The wire mesh is about ½” and the floor is wooden. By placing them only on the top floor (see challenge 3) they are further from the ground and its harder for a fox to attempt a break-in. We remained nervous though as fox’s sunbathe in our garden during the summer months! We therefore added a second layer of wire mesh and an extra (stronger) bolt for each door. We also added some wire mesh to the front-edge of the roof as an additional deterrent for a fox or cat thinking about accessing them from above!
On the first night outside a fox did try to break in. It managed to dislodge the water bottle attached to the outside mesh, but that was the only damage it managed to do (see challenge 5). Since then, there hasn’t been any damage, but at least two foxes keep a close eye on the hutch looking for weaknesses or mistakes!
2. Flying capabilities
When something surprises a Quail, it doesn’t awkwardly attempt to fly like a chicken. Chickens are funny when they fly. They wobble, careen, and fall in a wibble-wobble chaotic way. There was never much of a risk of them getting over a fence. They were lucky if they made it over a seat. That said, our naughtiest hen, Boudica, could jump fences, but only if she was able to see the other side. Quails are more like rockets! They are not necessarily good flyers either, preferring to spend most of their life on the ground, but when they do fly, they go up vertically, at high velocity!
This can be a real problem. It means that Quails are much more likely to end up over the neighbours fence! Let me tell you a story about that. Within a few days of moving into our house in Kent, our neighbour knocked on our door, coat on, with a flashlight in hand. It was dusk and darkness had already descended. We’d only met him once before, and then only briefly so we were at first worried that he had a complaint of some kind. Nothing was further from the truth. He asked if he could go into our garden to look for a Quail which he believed had leapt over the fence. We would later discover that our neighbours looked after stray or injured animals such as Quails, chickens, and hedgehogs.
We all went out to the garden to conduct the search and lo and behold the Quail was sitting still on the concrete paving slabs near our conservatory, perfectly unharmed and docile. We know, then, that Quails are not to be trusted out in the open in a garden. One little thing startles them and up they go. They are much better flyers than chickens.
There is also a second issue with the Quail vertical flight; there is a greater risk of them hurting themselves if the space they are in is high enough to give them momentum. The breeder who we obtained some of our Quails from, suggested we affix something soft like bubblewrap to the roof of the hutch, just in case they attempted flight! The same issue exists for any cage or run we use.
3. Capacity to walk up ladders
Chickens have no problem walking up ladders to their roost or a nesting box. Quails are not the same in this regard. We brought a two-tier hutch in the belief that they would have plenty of space across the two floors. We had seen pictures of other people using similar designs, so we didn’t think it would be a problem. How wrong we were. For the first few days, all we saw were Quails falling into the great big hole and bumping down the ladder to the bottom floor. Once there, they were trapped with no way of getting back to the second floor again.
Some people online suggest that it is possible to train Quails to walk up ladders. We even considered adding some kind of tread to the ladder in the hope that the Quails would be able to better walk up and down it. In the end, we gave up that idea after a particularly fraught moment when most of the Quails panicked and fell into the hole en-masse. It was bizarrely funny seeing the Quail's kamikaze leaping into the unknown but horrifying at the same time. It's amazing none of them got hurt!
This means that we are only using half the hutch we brought and, therefore, the Quails have half the space we expected them to have. While this is still enough in theory, we were looking for more than the minimal space suggested, to give them the best life possible. The hutch hasn’t been able to do that so it isn’t (at least by itself) a goof final solution.
4. Bedtime routines
Chickens have some useful instincts. They can’t see in the dark so naturally they sit still if it's nighttime. That puts them in danger, so they don’t just sit down wherever they fancy, they trout off back into their coop and roost. This means that it's easy to lock them up at night and open them up in the morning (or even to buy an automated door that closes and opens at set times). Even if a chicken accidentally ends up outside, as long as you can find it, you’ll be able to easily bring it into the coop as they are absolutely docile and useless as soon as its dark.
Not true with Quails. They are definitely dumber in this regard. Quails will settle down wherever they fancy, and inevitably that isn’t where they are safer or dryer. This doesn’t really matter in the hutch, but if we did try to move them to a run setup, we would need to find a way to ‘take them to bed’ for their own safety. That could prove challenging and time consuming, which somewhat works against the Permaculture principle of keeping things simple and efficient. Holmgren’s principle of observing and interacting suggests finding design solutions which are more efficient and sustainable, while his principle of producing no waste makes us consider how to align all the different inputs and outputs of a system so that they are reused rather than thrown out. That includes thinking about the efficient use of our time and effort.
5. Providing food and water
On an ordinary day, providing food is easy. We have a little plastic container which hooks onto the inside of the mesh in the hutch (or the play-run). We’ve also brought a pet food bin to protect the unused food until it’s needed. Providing water is also easy enough. We started with a large water bottle feeder which was great for providing them enough water, but because it’s attached to the outside of the hutch, was seemingly a target for the foxes to attack the mesh. We’ve since opted for a second plastic container for the water, which can also be affixed from the inside. In addition, we have a small container for oyster shell (which helps the Quails with their digestion), which is also affixed to the inside of the mesh.
This is all fine for an ordinary day. But what happens if we go away for a few days (or even a week)? In our current situation we don’t have neighbours, family, or friends who can check in on them, so we need alternative strategies for these times. We’re in the process of investigating means of providing bulk water and food which is safe from the Quails making a mess of them.
Summary
We are keen to find ways to integrate the Quails into a Permaculture design while ensuring their safety and quality of life. We want them to have more space than they currently do and opportunities to forage naturally in the garden, while also being safe from escape and predators. This is proving challenging, but that is what Permaculture is all about – observe, interact, reflect, design! We are very firmly in the observation and interaction phase, with the occasional leap into experimentation. This will eventually lead to working out a better design which is efficient in terms of managing the Quails and integrating them into other systems.
Sources
Robbins, G.E.S., Quail: Their Breeding and Management (World Pheasant Association: Suffolk, 1981)