supplies

[Dixie]

i'm going to own afew bobwhite quail to train my bird dog to hunt . what type of eauipment should i buy like nets, feed, etc. do you have any suggestions. thanks

[Fivehollers]

ummmm are you going to hatch them yourself or are you buying young birds?

If you are going to hatch them you need of course an incubator/hatcher, brooder and then growoff/flight pens.

if you are getting baby birds then you still need a brooder because they can not regulate their body temps until they have their second set of feathers. The brooder can be anything large enough to  house the birds with a heat lamp and water and feed. The first week they need to be at 95 degrees then you can start to wean them off the heat lamp. make sure they have a place to get away from the heat tho in the brooder.

You should feed the small birds starter grower until they are about 12 weeks old then you can feed them flight conditioner we have been mixing the flight conditioner with milo, wheat, millet and a little cracked corn makes them gain weight faster because we are going to eat most of the birds we hatched out this year.

I don't know how others do it but if you read most of the posts on this site you will get a wealth of information about the raising and care for all game birds.
Good luck and happy reading.  

[Dixie]

thank you very much Fivehollers. i think i want to hatch them because i've raised cocatiels before and my friend breeds and rasies birds so i could ask her for help. would i need to separate the birds that have just come out of the brooder from adult birds and if so for about how long?

[Fivehollers]

You will need to seperate the babies from the adults if you are using an incubator. I have never let the quail just nest on their own so I would not know if you need to seperate them or not. I do know in the wild the male will help the female take care of the eggs and if something happens to her he will actually hatch out the eggs and take care of the chicks.

The babies that are in the brooder will have to be kept apart from the adult birds, they will kill the babies. We keep ours seperate until breeding season and then we put one male to two females in each breeding cage. We mix batches then and they seem to do fine after that. We have not chosen breeding stock yet although we have butchered around 100 birds and released about 25 on our property.

You need to read the other topics and posts you will gain a whole wealth of information from this site and the members.

Lori