A Different Philosophy on Keeping & Breeding Button Quail

Nancy Bent, Brookfield, Illinois

I have read with interest the last two articles from the Game Bird and Conservationists' Gazette (February and June 1999) on the Chinese painted, or button quail Excalfactoria Chinensis. These papers were clearly written by aviculturists who are very well versed in the production breeding of these birds, but have prompted me to share with your readers my somewhat different philosophy in rearing these, the tiniest game bird.

Many authors have commented on the fact that captive button quail females will usually scatter their eggs as they are laid and make no attempt to incubate them. How much of this behavior is due to the fact that these birds were hatched in incubators and raised in large gang broods without adult birds to learn from? Modern husbandry methods used to produce quail in volume necessitate this use of incubators and brooders, but what have we lost by rearing multiple generations of birds in this fashion? Have we created a species that will no longer incubate, brood and rear their own chicks?

On the other hand, maybe the instincts for chick rearing are still present in these brooder reared birds but are not being triggered because of the lack of the proper stimuli. In other words, are we presenting our quail with what they need to breed successfully? Lets first look at how these birds live in the wild, and see if we can recreate these conditions for our captive quail:

Wild button quail live in dense grass or brushy areas, where they can hide from predators.

The main diet is seeds (green and ripe) and insects, which they spend quite a bit of time foraging for.

When frightened, they fly straight up, level off for a short distance, then drop into cover and run away.

The normal social group is a monogamous pair with their current chicks.

Nests are created in clumps of vegetation, lined with a nest of grasses and leaves.

Males assist with all phases of chick rearing, even joining their mates on the nest at night.

How many of these basic natural history needs are met in the standard production methods for rearing button quail? For the most part, none:

These birds are usually kept in open enclosures with no cover. Even when kept in finch flights these quail are usually on an open floor.

While I'm sure that all of us meet the nutritional needs of our birds, we often do not meet the behavioral needs of foraging. Quail love to scratch for their food, which they can do in finch flights, but they eat many more insects and green foods in the wild than we usually provide for them.

It is often advised to keep buttons in low cages with padded tops so that they won't scalp themselves when spooked straight up. This is often a necessary evil (except in finch flights), but with adequate cover is usually not a problem.

It is also advised to keep these quail in trios, or in larger groups with fewer males than females. While this provides for a large volume of eggs, it does not allow for the monogamous pair bond that this species prefers.

Again, lack of cover (plus lack of provided nest materials) ensures that even females that might be inclined to prepare a nest area are not given the opportunity.

The lack of a monogamous pair bond precludes any assistance from the males present in most breeding setups, probably contributing to the females' lack of nesting behavior.

When I started raising button quail 13 years ago, I knew that I wanted to rear the birds naturally. I was unaware of the methods that most breeders use to produce the birds available for sale in most pet stores, and just assumed that my birds would raise their own young. Having read about their natural history, I set up a 30 gallon 'long' fish tank with a substrate of cob bedding. I used artificial ('silk') plants in bunches for cover, unraveled hemp twine and burlap for nest material and lined the tank cover with more silk plants for both cover and protection in case of the birds popping up. I placed one pair in this setup. They were fed game bird starter for balanced nutrition, finch seed for scratching and pecking at, leave lettuce and cucumber for green food, and mealworms.

It immediately became apparent that mealworms were (and continue to be) an important part of the diet, both nutritionally and behaviorally. They are a major part of the male's courtship, as the male tidbitted the female with every mealworm offered. He only ate the worms himself when the female was incubating. When the eggs hatched the mealworms also showed their value in cementing the bond between the chicks and their parents, as the parents tidbitted the chicks with every worm offered.

The above setup proved to be extremely successful, as the birds raised numerous clutches of chicks with no outside assistance. The problem I found was that the male could be rough with the newly hatched chicks when they tried to brood under him and had to be removed for the first few weeks of their lives. He was returned when they no longer required brooding and was a model parent from that point on.

Soon afterwards I had a display finch flight built and moved the quail into this 4' high, 3' wide and 2' deep cage. All of the same cage furniture as provided in the fish tank was supplied, with the main difference being that silk vines hanging down the cage sides provided much of the cover and the height of the cage did not necessitate any padding of the top. This cage setup continues to work extremely well for quail that are tightly pair bonded and with females that become truly broody.

This brings up the final stumbling point with natural breeding of button quail. Though meeting the behavioral needs of the birds is often enough to trigger them into the full breeding cycle, there are still quite a number of females that do not ever become fully broody. I have obtained quail from breeders, feed stores, and pet stores, and have found sitters and non-sitters from all three types. You are as likely to purchase a sitting female from a pet store as from a breeder these days. Through the use of of an incubator to finish a partially incubated clutch I have been able to teach a female to rear her chicks (see an article I wrote for the AFA Watchbird, Nov/Dec 1996), and a later pair to rear their chicks (this pair now completes the entire breeding cycle). This demonstrates that there is a learning component to raising young that also enters the equation.

There is a satisfaction in watching a pair of button quail care for their tiny chicks - both parents brooding the young; tidbitting them with mealworms, bits of lettuce or thawed frozen corn (a later addition to their diet); teaching them to scratch for the seed the finches spill; and protecting them from their keeper when I reach in for the food dishes. I have never seen any problems between the finches and the quail, in fact, I have even seen nine tiny quail chicks, one parent, and two shafttail finches all drinking from the same water dish at the same time with no dissension.

To preserve the full range of behavioral traits in the birds we keep and breed in captivity, we need to allow some of our button quail to raise their own chicks. Breeding quail in volume for the pet trade or to find and fix a new mutation is fine, but all quail breeders should also set aside some space and a few pairs of birds to produce chicks naturally. These little birds do so well in a finch flight, provided with cage furniture and diet mentioned above, that finch breeders can also do their part. After all, if we aviculturists can't keep and breed the whole bird, preserving not only their physical traits but also their full range of behavioral traits, then who else will?

This article reprinted courtesy of Game Bird and Conservationists' Gazette.

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