Quail

We have been hoping to get quail for a while, but haven't seen them for sale round here. I am sure they must be but we don't know where to look! I went to Toulouse to pick up Janet from the airport and collected 4 females on the way from just near Toulouse. Very convenient. They kindly laid 4 eggs in transit, but have only been doing one a day between them since then. Hopefully they will get over the shock of the journey and all start laying soon. The eggs are very tasty although being so small they are a bit of a fiddle. One got injured when I tried to catch her to move her from her transit cage to her new home, she panicked and flapped around madly and broke a wing feather and injured her leg. We thought perhaps it was broken and that she wouldn't make it, but she is walking on it now, only a week later so I guess it was just strained in some way. She won't have to be put out of her misery and eaten after all!

At the moment they are living in the run from the chicken house. It comes in to two parts, we are planning on building them a shelter to attach to one half and reattaching the other half to the chicken house.

Then on the trip to deliver Janet back to Toulouse I collected some eggs (from a different place - so they are unrelated). We are incubating them and will keep a male and eat the rest. I ordered 12 and got 26 for the same price! I guess the quail had been laying well!
Quail eggs are tiny so baby quail must be teeny weeny. They grow to adult size and start laying eggs within 6 weeks apparently (compared to perhaps 20-24 weeks for chickens - bit more eating on a chicken I guess!).