It’s sad. One of the quail died.
It looks like a rat gnawed its way in through the top of the cage and got her while she was sleeping.
Unfortunately, it was the female that was killed, as if it was the male I could have moved her to the other cage. As it is, this poor guy is sitting in a corner all alone, and he seems really traumatized. (He must have spent all night next to her body because he only ran to the corner once I took her away.)
The two of them have been together since they left the chick cage. They really were like an old married couple out there, cuddling together and with him hopping around her protectively whenever I got close.
Now he’s alone.
I feel really sad for him.
There’s always too many male quail.
You only need one to keep a flock happy (the ladies feel secure with a male around), but it always seems like the females are getting themselves killed off.
I think it has to do with how entirely docile they are.
Domesticated quail are really tame as long as you don’t startle them. (Coturnix; button quail are more novelty than anything else.)
If you approach them on the level–don’t loom!–they will quickly settle and you can reach right in amongst them. They don’t even mind having their bodies gently nudged out of the way and will just walk around your hand to keep getting at whatever it is they want.
They aren’t naturally full of salmonella like chickens are. BUT you can accidentally introduce salmonella into your flock by feeding them uncooked chicken eggshells or having their cages too close to where you house chickens.
I DON’T COMPOST UNCOOKED CHICKEN EGGSHELL because of the possibility of cross-contamination to wild birds. That whole “Salmonella outbreak amongst wild birds”-thing is likely tied to someone composting a bunch of chicken waste, or going “I’ll let the wild birds have the leftover food from my chickens” and not realizing that those birds would come into contact with salmonella and be able to spread it to other wild birds.
I don’t think it’s killing the wild birds. But when they congregate at a backyard feeder, they can infect each other, and then they spread it through other feeders into a big problem. Because now there’s a bunch of salmonella in your yard, and if YOU don’t wash your hands you can get very sick. Same with animals eating those wild birds or drinking water where they’ve been.
So if I’m going to compost uncooked chicken eggshells, I might boil them real quick or bake them to kill the bacteria.
Because while it’s not like I’m throwing a bunch of raw eggs into my pile, even just a little salmonella can spread and contaminate other things.
And curious little birds will get into anything and try to dig around. So it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Anyways. I’m sad over the loss of my bird. And I feel a little mad for thinking “If it had been you instead of her”-about him, because he can’t help it that he’s male and can’t be put into the other cage. And it’s not anger toward him, it’s anger at the situation, where he’s likely to spend the rest of his life in a big cage by himself because I only have three birds right now, counting him.
If there were more females, I would pop at least one into his cage. But there’s not.
Because somehow or other (bad planning, smart rats, our cat Lemon’s feral mother and brother), I ended up with way more males than females. And now they’ve been whittled down to just three birds.
And that’s so sad to me. And frustrating. And heartbreaking. And I don’t know what I’m going to do when it’s just one lonely bird looking at me. Asking “Why?”
