Choosing the Right Mother Hen. Hatching and Raising Quail Organically - Part Five

Raising quail with a hen is a three way process, there has to be understanding and adaptability from both mother and chick(s) but there also has to be the same between you and the hen.

There can be problems with quail chicks, when you'll need to intervene and quickly - trust is all.

In this post I will take you through the first two of five case studies of the mother hens I chose to raise our quail. No experience was the same and I learned something new and valuable from all of them. You will see I used two specific breeds and two cross-bred hens but it was their physical and mental characteristics which informed that choice. Therefore, although I would strongly recommend the breeds I used, any hen with the same attributes should do just as fine a job. I made some simple, what I thought of as common sense rules, before I made my final choices but I also modified these with time and experience. In one case I even broke what I believed to be an unequivocal decision, which was never to use a hen, who had no experience of hatching and raising chicks.

The neophyte Cappuccino, I took a chance on her methodical foraging and focussed sitting abilities

My Simple Criteria - choice of mother

As stated above some of these were changed and/or modified with experience but as a general rule of thumb, I found they made a useful starting point.

The hen should be:

- light-weight to accommodate the size and fragility of the eggs and chicks

- fine feathered to avoid hampering the chick, who will burrow into the down

- small-footed to avoid dangers when digging

- tame and trusting - most important because of unavoidable problems

- quick to perceive changes in chicks - cold kills quail

- a good and methodical forager - high metabolic rate = quail chicks eat a lot

- accommodating and unflustered - these are not chicks as she knows them

- experienced as a sitter and raiser of chicks

- aware of and quick to spot danger - quail chicks are so focussed on eating.

En Garde - Polly picks a vantage point on the top of the opened quail run. Out here in the meadow, where we were giving the quail freerange to forage with their mother, there were buzzards in the distance. Polly was always checking the skies, as well as keeping an eye on the chicks. We were only giving her a couple of quail at a time and Andy was presiding over those left in the run but Polly kept coming back to check he was on the ball!

Case One - Chicklette the Ardenner

Ardenners are a rare breed bantam and standard size hen and as the name suggests, from Southern Belgium. The standard size are very difficult to find, the breed like many, having been decimated by two World Wars. They are thought, in their ancient five toed version, to be the stock from which the Dorking was bred and in fact people often mistake Polly, for such in my films. The Ardenner holds a special place in my heart because this was the breed of the first ever chickens I raised here. I was given a pair of young chicks, sisters, in part payment for 'sitting' the neighbouring smallholding/homestead. Chicklette (on the right) had always been the more authoritarian of the pair, even going so far as to start crowing at one point but she had raised two impeccable clutches of foraging chicks as had her sister. However, she was lighter in weight and also had a slight edge on Poulie, in that she seemed to be able to find more protein per square centimetre than any hen I have ever seen before or since. The only problem with her was her slightly domineering personality and crazy nature when broody, in fact together she and Poulie were at opposite ends, with the latter being calm and easy going. In The Complete Encyclopaedia of Chickens the authors, Esther Verhoef and Aad Rijs, state that Ardenners take on the personality and characteristics of the keeper, which is interesting because I am a Gemini.

Pest control - Chicklette clearing aphids from the beans and as they grew taller she would hand them down to the quail!

..and what I learned

The eggs were a big problem for Chicklette, she really didn't like them and made the noise I associate with both dislike and distrust. Later to avoid this problem with Polly, her daughter, I actually put one of her own eggs in with the clutch as well, just to give her a point of reference.

The chicks however, were an even bigger problem at hatch. I had forgotten that one of Chicklette's idiosyncrasies was that she had a mortal fear of mice, unlike Lucky, my second mother who used to hunt them! The day before the eggs were due to hatch, we were invited to dinner but as we were just about to leave I saw a chick come whizzing through the air, Chicklette was systematically ejecting small brown quail chicks from the nest. On further investigation I saw she had already hatched a couple of golden quail who were well-snuggled under her and being an inquisitive bird she had already had a good look at them. The brown quail though with their fine pointed heads and dark beady eyes, peeking through her feathers, did look uncannily like mice and I am sure this was at the root of the problem. So I spent an hour sitting on the kitchen floor in my party frock, fielding little brown chicks as they were expelled from the nest. Each chick was then reintroduced to her, so as she could see the shape of the whole tiny creature and accept it as a bird. Luckily we were invited to friends who were farmers and know the vagaries of this life, so we ended the evening leaving a content Chicklette for an excellent dinner.

On the strength of what I learned from Chicklette, I always present the quail egg to the hen. Trusting me helps to diminish any potential fears or worries the hen might have.

Case Two - Lovely Lucky

Lucky the Sebright cross was an excellent mother, who had raised an enormous brood for her size (see photo in the 'About' section top right) and kept them constantly and well fed. She was super qualified in both weight and feathering and unlike Sebrights in general, a great sitter and a doting and long-haul mother. Sebrights are reputed only to keep their chicks for four weeks before they leave them, I have actually had this happen. She was tamer than Chicklette and much calmer and I expected to have little or no trouble with her adapting to quail chicks who looked, smelled and spoke differently to her previous brood. In the event, sadly hardly any of her eggs hatched. They came by post from a big commercial hatchery and  those that did hatch were all golden and not strong. The golden quail here come from a very small gene pool and are often much weaker than the rest. Lucky ended up with one chick Pip, whom she adored and the chick so imprinted on her they were almost identical twins.

...and what I learned

that a good mother imprints upon even quail chicks and that as with Chicklette a good forager, like Lucky, makes for a great foraging chick.

and also...
not to count my quail chicks before they hatched and that no hatch is ever the same!

...to be continued

Thanks for dropping by and if you enjoyed this post and found it useful, please feel free to share, comment, ask questions and/or relate your own experience of raising quail with a mother hen.

All the best, Sue
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© 2014 Sue Cross

Understanding Broodiness in Hens & How this helps in raising quail. Hatchng Quail Organically Part 4

Last year I raised another brood of quail chicks with a mother hen and although I made some films of the different stages of development and the joys, trials and tribulations, I have not yet found time to sit down and put the experience onto paper. I'm doing this now in the hope that it will be of use to those amongst you who have contacted me via this blog or my youtube site and others too, who like me would like to raise quail outside the convention of the incubator, wire cage and a cultivated grain diet. I'm going to try and share as much detail as possible but please do write and ask if you need any further information. 

Worth their weight in gold - organic quail eggs, our own.

Starting with the basics

Eggs

The two main factors contributing to the success of your hatch and the relative carefree nature of the experience are the quality of the hatching eggs and the nature of the broody. Let's take the eggs first. These, if possible should be from organic stock, a non-existent option in my case and I guess in that of many others, there being no such hatching eggs, or even quail available. Once you have built up enough bloodlines you will be able to breed from your own stock, a position I would have been in, if we had not suffered a bad predator attack the year before. The next best thing, is to find eggs from birds, who have been allowed some outside recreation, or are barn-bred and who have been raised on a non-medicated and non-GMO feed. If you can get organic quail eggs then you are very lucky and should not experience any of the nutritional deficiencies which will be dealt with in a later chapter.

Chicken

Mad                                                      Bad                           and Dangerous to Know

Bubble throwing herself whole-heartedly into the part. An interpretation unlikely to put her in a strong position for the role of Mummy quail.


The idea of 'a' broody hen is a simplified human interpretation of what is a complex and recurring phase in a bird's life. From all my observations of hens in various stages and states of broodiness, I have come to the conclusion that there is, in fact, no such creature as the above. This is of tantamount importance when choosing the right hen for the job and so in the following paragraphs I'm going to try and break-down exactly what I have observed and I will follow it up with a film showing various examples of broodiness and how this impacts upon and informs my choice. Firstly though, I would like to stress that if you are embarking on raising quail or chicks for the first time you should furnish yourself with a back-up broody in case of problems. That said, in my first ever quail hatch some 12+ years ago I did not  have that option and I did manage to get around the problem but then with quail flexibility is all.

Why do hens go broody?   

Understanding even just part of this is the key to not making mistakes in hatching and brooding quail. There are, according to my own observations and I can have eight to ten broodies at any one time in my flock, many reasons for a hen to go broody. I'm sure I haven't figured out all of them but the following are to me the obvious ones. 

It might seem logical that because of the precocial nature of quail and their high level of activity, a younger mother might be the best suited but a young broody may have ulterior motives...

To a young hen, or one low in the pecking order, being broody gives status, which it may otherwise take her months or even years to attain. The broody hen and even more so, the mother of chicks, is revered by the whole flock. She has priority at the food bowl and in the case of a garden with several flocks, like our own, has a right of passage through all territories. Her protective and often aggressive behaviour seems to instil fear into the heart of all but the most self-possessed of cockerels or perhaps it is the instinct poultry seem to have that these chicks are their future. In all my years keeping poultry, I have only had one cockerel, an Ardenner, who has ever challenged the dominant position of a hen with chickens. Motherhood brings out the monogamy in many cockerels and in particular if they have an inkling that the chicks could be theirs.

Although a young hen will go broody for improved status, that does not mean she will actually want to carry it through to full motherhood. You should be aware that her thinking may also be influenced by another reason for sitting eggs and that is to get away from the attention of cockerels.

In Spring a young cockerel's fancy turns to chickens...

Having a forest garden setting for my hens and with a rather laisser faire attitude to my birds, I can end up in Spring with a few unplanned chicks, some of which will by the law of averages and I believe, the influence of seasonal temperatures, may be male. I have four flocks in the garden and a good spattering of males, these live in harmony with each other and the hens but the arrival of new cockerels at maturity can cause some problems. Even if you do not have a similar establishment, the influence of any type of aggressive behaviour, whether from a male or female in the flock, can have a tendency to promote broodiness as a way of physical and mental escape.

Older males within the flock have a côterie of females or a favourite hen and in general all the hens and cockerels in my garden are paired off. This means that any new intake of cockerels finds itself marginalised as far as l'amour is concerned and spends a lot of time running after mostly younger females. The latter are targeted because, unlike older and more experienced hens, they are often for whatever reasons, unprepared to fight for their honour. This can trigger a rash of broodiness among a younger flock, which can however exacerbate the problems. The cockerels become opportunists, jumping on the sitting hens but a good dominant cockerel soon puts a stop to that!

Broodiness, like dust-bathing or yawning in humans, seems to be something which tends to 'go  through' a flock, so with the younger hens you really need to be sure it isn't just a passing fad.

For the older hens, the two above reasons should also be considered when choosing a broody. However, in addition some of them are serial sitters, after all if you are sitting you are not expected to do much else. Over the years my comportment has taught my hens that I'll bring breakfast and dinner 'in bed', take them indoors to a nice cool room in the heat of Summer and install them in an individual hay-filled cardboard box. Hens aren't stupid and they have good memories. This does not matter if they are intent on seeing the thing through but some hens are actually just keen on sitting. They do not under any circumstances intend to or expect to have the onerous task of bringing up chicks. Only experience of the individual hen sitting full-term and coping with a hatch and the aftermath of many weeks of hard work will tell you this about your hen... and for quail this is going to be extra, extra hard work.

Next time I will look at the types of hen I have chosen to raise quail and the specific characteristics needed, with five individual case studies. Until then I leave you with this film I made about broodiness and which will introduce you to some more of my flock. To access Part 5 of hatching and Raising Quail Organically with a Mother Hen click here

Thanks for dropping by and please feel free to comment, ask questions and/or share your own experience of broodies.

All the best, Sue
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© 2014 Sue Cross

Hatching and Raising Quail Organically with a Hen Part 2 - Taking you through the first few days

Polly and the quail at three days old and already something of a handful! I kept them in the nest for the first three days, letting them gain in strength and size and because Polly is so trusting and so understanding she complied. This would be against her better judgement because, normally once her eggs have hatched and all the chicks are on their feet a mother hen will be ready to leave the nest and take the chicks out to forage.

To make it easier for Polly to comply, I made sure there was a continual supply of varied foodstuffs and water and of course continued to take her off the nest twice a day. When I took the above photograph they were still all in the nest but sitting in the doorway in full sunlight - getting some rays!

Sitting is easy it's after hatching that the fun starts!

My problem has always been in obtaining organic hatching eggs, so I have had to take what I could get. Most quail are hatched in incubators and to some extent a poor quality shell, due to inadequate diet and lack of Vitamin D from sunlight, isn't that much of an issue. However, an egg that is turned by a hen several times a day and may be trod on as she gets in and out of the nest is a problem. To counter this, I lift my hen on and off the nest, twice a day, once in the morning and once at night. I'm amazed, though I shouldn't be, how careful most hens are with quail eggs and it's usually when I have flustered the hen that I have had broken eggs. With Polly because of the experience with her Mother, who didn't take to the eggs immediately, I put a hen's egg into the nest as well and had an extra broody standing by to take over with it once the quail eggs hatched at 19 days. Seeing them together in the nest really illustrates the difficult task the hen has been given!

I took this shot later when the quail and Polly moved out into the warmest of the Greenhouses (recycled glass and pallet wood). From it you can see the relative size of the Ardenner and my adult quail (behind the compost bag). I had hoped to keep this female quail in the Greenhouse at the same time as Polly so she could integrate with the baby quail but Polly was having none of that and I had to separate them.

Some thoughts about choosing a broody for quail

I couldn't have asked for a better hen to sit quail than Polly our Ardenner bantam but she certainly had her work cut out. If you haven't come across the Ardenner before, as the name suggests, it is an ancient and very rare breed from Southern Belgium.  The larger version had existed for centuries but along with the bantam was almost extinct after the two World Wars, in fact, I have never come across the Standard size Ardenner. The Breed are known for being great foragers, good layers and excellent mothers and I can vouch for all three of those qualities, they are also, in my experience hyperactive, which makes them totally suitable as surrogate Mothers for quail.  At the other end of the scale, as possibly the worst bantam Mother is the Sebright, a race which is reputed for only staying with chicks for four weeks after hatching and I have had experience of this too. However, the Sebright cross bantams make excellent Mothers and the Sebright/Ardenner crosses are fantastic with quail. In particular they are lighter than the Ardenner and also have finer feathering both of which characteristics are a plus when raising quail. 

This is Lucky and her favourite quail chick Pip, they were inseparable and I could free-range Pip with Lucky and know he would always be within a few centimetres of her. As a Sebright/Ardenner cross Lucky was probably half the weight and certainly half the size of an Ardenner. Weight can be a big issue with rising quail, in particular if your hen does not realise how delicate quail are in the first few days of life. Both Polly and Lucky were really good at understanding this, don't ask me how they knew to be very much more careful with quail, they just did. As an example of how incredible mother hens can be, I once had a hen called Dorothy whose chicks use to sit on her back even when she was walking about. One night when they were going to bed, two chicks were still standing on her back as she entered their little house. Before I could intervene, she actually got down and walked in on her hocks because she realised that the chicks would be knocked off her back if she didn't - how did she work that out? This sort of consciousness, which tells her that the chicks were higher than her head, which was level with the height of the door, is quite abstract. Moreover, it was the speed with which she realised what she needed to do, which quite astounded me.

Problems with hatching eggs 

Unless you can not do otherwise, it is best to go and fetch your eggs if you live more than a day's posting from the seller. I have never found eggs which come by post to have a high hatching rate and I have read that after four days the fertility of the eggs starts to diminish significantly. If you think about quails in the wild they can lay and sit very large clutches so the first eggs in a clutch may be over a fortnight older than the last egg laid but that wild quail will be on an optimum diet and living in an optimum environment.

Nutritional problems to watch out for in the first few days

If you've been lucky enough to get hold of certified organic hatching eggs or eggs from a smallholding where the quail are kept outside and on a good natural diet then you won't come across nutritional problems. Eggs reflect totally the health of the bird who laid them. The main deficiencies I have come across are Vitamin B and Selenium, the latter seems most prevalent in domesticated commercial gamebirds in particular quail and peafowl. Vitamin B deficiency is something I've come across before in purchased fertile hens' eggs. A couple of days after hatching the chicks start to go down on one hock, begin to sit down frequently and finally lose the use of their legs and most often their toes curl up, hence the name 'curly toe paralysis'. This condition like many nutritional deficiencies in small growing chicks can be fatal but is easily and quickly remedied by balancing the diet. My thinking is that we are taking a weak chick and giving it a quite energetic and outdoor foraging life, if it was hatching in an incubator and kept in a cage on a chick ration it would probably survive a little longer before the symptoms show. In the life it will have with a Mother hen, these symptoms show quickly. I feed yeast flakes, actually chicks seem to like the flavour but I have gone so far as to sprinkle it onto an egg yolk, another good food for baby quail. Selenium deficiency again affects the nervous system and causes paralysis. The best form of Selenium is the brazil nut, however you only need the tiniest (3-4) fine gratings, as Selenium is actually toxic in large amounts and figuring what that means for a tiny quail is difficult. One way to know when your chicks may be suffering from either of these deficiencies is if you see your mother hen nudging the babies back onto their feet, it means she has noticed they are sitting too long. One of the ways in which hens naturally treat coccidiosis in chicks is to keep them on their feet and moving so that they eliminate the problem as quickly as possible.

A few words about feathers

Sebright crosses have one huge advantage over Ardenners as Mummy Quail in that their feathering is much finer. When a bird goes broody she loses a lot of feathers off the breast so as to be in close contact with the eggs. Some hens, probably due to the added heat involved in brooding and raising chicks may go into a  semi-moult. Even this, however, may still be problematic for quail if the Mother bird is well upholstered with feathers as is the Ardenner. There is a fine line in keeping the quail warm and not getting them dangerously caught up and almost strangled in the feathers. The first couple of days were rather fraught for me when I lifted Polly off the nest in the morning to find the quail entangled in her feathers and hanging by their necks. The problem being, from my observations, is that living amongst the feathers the quail droppings do stick the feathers together is how they get caught as they snuggle into the plumage. With the Sebright-type of smaller, finer feathers this does not occur. However, once I realised this problem could occur I could deal with it. Do be aware however, that this is a serious problem because on one very sad occasion Polly felt the quail dangling at her back and in panic, kicked out and killed it outright before I could release it.

How to avoid those busy hen's feet.

I like to get baby birds outdoors as quickly as possibly, as soon as it hits 16 degrees C. I always tend to start them in a small run, as even at that temperature some baby chicks can still get cold. Sebright chicks in particular feel the cold keenly and they need the mother to be nearby if that happens. A good hen will always sit if a chick starts to try to get underneath her, she instinctively knows it is cold and/or tired. With quail in the past I have bought the outdoors in with a complex set of runs fitted with areas of grass and soil. However since Andy started making Greenhouses, it has given me an ideal place to put the quail in the first few days. The only thing to be aware of is dust baths because that will be the first thing a Mother hen wants to take. If you look at the film at the end of my previous post on quail you will see how I got round this by creating a run within the greenhouse so that the quail and Polly could still see each other whilst she was dust bathing. 

In those first few days in the Greenhouse I still supervised Polly and the quail and they needed to be brought back indoors into their nest as soon as they showed any signs of getting cold. You'll know when this is as baby quail are not shy and retiring when it comes to wanting something, they make an insistent whining noise when they are cold!

They also have an amazing ability to draw attention to themselves by extending themselves to their full height and making a piercing noise.

Something the males use to full effect in adulthood:

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube, Odysee  or BitChute Channel or even supporting us on Patreon or

It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from sunny Normandie! 

Sue

Part Three of Hatching and Raising Quail Organically with a Mother Hen can be found here

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©Sue Cross 2012