Now I know why my girlfriends never sell me the baby quail until after they are three weeks of age.. Fragile little wee tikes they are ..

Between Snow, Cooler house temps and power outages, they have struggled with their temps, however when it comes to feeding them, I have been very! pleased with how things are working out..

I have nice straight legs, strong little bodies, great growth,

bright-eyed and active birds..  I will continue to watch growth and track things including age of first laying and so forth.

So Quail are said to need 28 percent protein for good growth and so its recommended per the books that you track down Game Bird Feed..

Well, I do not have Game Bird Feed locally, and I am not even sure where I would order in from if I wanted to..

I do have regular good quality locally grown, cleaned and ground bird feed at around 12 to 13 percent, which if was all they are feed would leave them in real issues..

So what is a girl to do?  You know I got this right 🙂

My healthy, feathering strong little birds are being raised on

• Soaked an fermented bird feed (which increases their ability to eat it, and get all the good stuff from my great locally produced bird feed
• Fresh Sprouts (they love red clover, alfalfa and all sweeter greens), they dislike mustard sprouts, pea greens, herb greens or kale or turnip greens, I expect that they can be trained to them with age but they attack their preferred greens without any left, the other are tried and refused.
• Hard boiled mashed egg, and this one is the key, which the other are very important as is the what they are being raised on an fresh water, the hard boiled mashed egg is what is the extra key that allows them to thrive. They are using one of their mothers eggs per four chicks per day.. this is great as the hens lay daily and so they keep me in egg for their own chicks.

They need fresh water and the correct bedding so they do not slip on their feet, but I could not be more pleased, I had planned on adding in meal worms to their diet once a week, but watching them closely and tracking feather growth, weight growths and overall bone development,  I do not feel that its needed at this time, I will add it on week five to week 8 for when the females move over to laying if they start that young, their mother did not but only time will tell on that one.

I adjusted the feed amounts based on the chicks themselves, I did not want to waste food and they were feed four to six time a day, and I went by sounds and contentment after the feedings.

My ideal aim was that they were content until they saw me, but would call me when I was visual, they were feed and content until the next feeding, if I can any calls for food, without seeing me, I made sure to give more at the next feeding,  we figured it out quickly.

If you did not have them in the house and did not want to do four to six times a day feeding, free feeding of the main feed and twice daily feedings of the sprouts and egg would do the trick.

So far, all chicks are growing well and are in good health!

Ps, new photo on a different day that is not in a middle of a blizzard- slash freezing rain..