Tips and strategies for hatching and raising quail chicks, organically, naturally and holistically

Every July for the past four years we have had a stand at a local 'Art in the Garden'  exhibition. Each time we have featured one of our larger recycling projects; the composting toilet, the pedal-powered washing machine and this year the 'organic no-electricity, incubator/coop'. Yes you guessed, a recycled untreated pallet wood house and run with a broody hen as the heat source. As an extra twist to the exhibit, the coop was built in situ over the weekend and when it was completed a broody hen, our Cochin 'Snow Kitten', was put inside to sit a few quail eggs. This action brought with it a whole raft of consequences, which have helped me no end in understanding how a broody hen and quail think!

I hadn't really intended that 'Snow Kitten' should raise quail but she was broody and I'm always wanting to spread the word on cage-free quail. In fact it caused quite a stir and even made the local papers. Great but with drawbacks entailed, as our little Cochin although a brilliant mother, witness my recent article on babysitting, is way too fluffy and heavily upholstered and furthermore has those enormous Cochin feathered feet. However, as my male quail had already paired off some months ago and formed a reasonably monogamous bond with Cecily, one of my females, I was in high hopes that, having made a couple of tentative nests and laid a goodly amount of eggs, she would soon become broody. I was further encouraged by the fact that I had even caught her on camera, last year, showing marked interest in Ginger my broody quail's nest. So, I had a back-up plan in case the eggs hatched, this was not a certainty for the following reasons I share below.

Cecily last year showed more than a passing interest in Ginger's nest

 

Monogamous Bonding in Coturnix Quail - Cultivating a Happy Couple

As with last year's hatch, I was well aware that our borrowed male Fred was pro tem  bonded to and only interested in our female Ginger. As I had observed that the nest she made and sat on was communal and that she began it only a few days before becoming broody, I was aware that only these last few eggs had a chance of being fertile. When she was a week or so into the sit, she actually began to chase off Fred, who had taken up a position guarding the nest. After this rebuff he then turned his attention to our other quail.

With Algernon, (above) who I bought last year, although initially he was obviously very attached to Cecily, it was not as strong a bond as between Fred and Ginger and in fact, I had seen him with several of the other females. This may be because Cecily although she readily accepted Algernon as a mate, more so actually than Ginger did Fred, she did not become broody after laying a clutch of eggs. I do believe however that the next paragraph will further explain why this happened. My guess is therefore that Algernon has strong breeding instincts and is thus looking for the mother of his chicks! When I collected the eggs to put under Snow Kitten I therefore took a chance that more of them would be fertile. However, if you are planning natural quail keeping, it is as well to be aware that the 'one male for several quail' is not a natural ratio if you are attempting to breed from them, i.e. for the quail to become broody and sit.  In my experience, quail seem to be inclined to form pairs and nest, when they have plenty of space in which to do so and are in a quasi wild environment, with a source of wild protein. This was echoed by Orcutt's findings with breeding pairs created at random from quail taken from Cornell University Poultry Science Department and studied in captivity in Ithaca New York (Orcutt and Orcutt, 1976).

How Circumstances Can Work Against Monogamy 

Enter now a feral cat, the only curse of living by the sea, where holidaymakers regularly dump or accidentally lose their pets whilst on vacation. This particular subject, large and inquisitive, who like its fellow travellers, had already found food and lodgings in the vicinity, now spent every evening staring in at our quail, as in the past, it had probably watched TV. Against my better judgement, I began to put all our quail together in the coop each night thus, I am certain, endangering the bond between my pair. No longer canoodling on the porch, or rather snuggled down in the lovely leafy bedding of the safe area, my female quail was now forced into communal living overnight. Due to an incident at the beginning of the breeding season where one of my female quail 'Nuggets' had suffered a head injury overnight in the coop, I was now forced to place my male quail in alternative and solitary sleeping quarters.

Choosing the Male(s) for your Breeding Pair(s)

When thinking about quail and humans, it is as well to go back to the roots of why man took the quail from the wild and remember that it was to fight and not to lay eggs, nor raise chicks. For this reason many quail keepers find male quail belligerent and overtly harsh with females, thus showing the males to have retained the very characteristics which have been selectively bred and/or fostered in them for centuries. It is therefore of importance to successful pairing, I believe, to select non-aggressive males for your breeding group. These males rather than seeking to fight or philander all the time, will form stable relationships and thus encourage nesting, sitting and hatching. It is also important that your male should be a 'talker'. The male call has been associated with the onset of nest building and indeed I have witnessed this on several occasions and with different groups of quail. I have found that the male does not call over the Winter but only starts to vocalise a few days before we get our first quail egg. Thus male vocalisation is a great indicator for letting you know that everything is going according to plan! I have to say that we have not yet attempted to keep several pairs of bonded quail together, we have only kept one pair within a group of females.

The Day of the Hatch

 

Now what have you let me in for?

The quail hatched on the 17th day of incubation, which was last Wednesday, the 6th of July, under Snow Kitten and she accepted them immediately, even though she had several 'hard stares' at them from time to time as if she was wondering what on earth she had hatched. She had however, accepted the eggs very easily, never giving them a second thought. The chicks in turn responded very well to her. My greatest fear was for the movement of her feet but for the first two days she was incredibly careful, it was as if she had literally sized up the quail and knew she needed to shuffle in those big feathery Cochin slippers. One thing is very certain about quail hatched with hens, they are kept exceedingly warm in those feathers. In observing Ginger last year, I realised why hen-hatched quail burrow down so far towards her body, that they risk strangulation when she gets up in the morning. This is why I am so careful at these times to check a hen over for attached chicks. The answer seems that the quail chicks 'hook' themselves to their mother and she can actually walk with them all on board to a new area. This is during the first days after hatch when they are particularly vulnerable.

The Aftermath of the Hatch

Two days after hatch on the 8th of July, we were obliged to be absent for the greater part of the day and when I returned one of the chicks had been squashed. As I have already written I had been worried about leaving the quail with the hen but she had seemed so careful. However,  at day three after hatch, she would have been naturally expecting to leave the nest, even though she still had a couple of non-fertile eggs to keep her sitting. By the evidence she had left the nest and in getting back in had accidentally stepped on one chick. I was therefore in a slight quandary, as Cecily showed no signs of going broody and Algernon had turned his attentions to another of my quail, including Caramel. The latter had created a recognisable nest and on the previous night had just begun to sit on a clutch of eggs. This was a long-shot as Caramel showed no signs of real broodiness, in the way Ginger had and during the whole of the day we observed her leaving the nest for long periods. However, later that evening I observed her back on the nest that she had now carefully embellished with more straw and hay. At the same time I had a protracted hatch going on from a little hen I had found two nights before in the garden. So I planned to put the quail chicks with Caramel and shift an egg from the protracted hatch over to Snow Kitten.

This year, after last year's cornucopia of garden-hatched chicks, I have been very careful to seek out potential promiscuous al fresco nesters and give them one or two eggs each to hatch in a place where I can follow their progress. The above beautiful little hen (Jenny as I now call her, after the Dolly sisters) is a twin, so I had no idea she had gone AWOL until I heard the first chick cheeping! She now has seven chicks plus the two I gave to Snow Kitten.

Problems

Even though I followed the common dictum to do everything at night, quail are obviously not gullible! Whether she was not totally broody or because she can count and understands incubation periods, Caramel would not accept the baby quail. I took one, the most camouflaged and inconspicuous, being a Pharaoh but not only did she not like it but she ran off to a corner of the quail house. Slowly I got her to come back, using my headlight on low beam to show her the now chick-free nest. The next thing I tried was moving the nest into the house in a cardboard box. It took her sometime to sit and get comfortable, actually it was midnight and there was the eighth egg under Jenny pipping and vociferous, so ready to be moved to Snow Kitten. I placed the Pharaoh chick in the box with Caramel and finessed it into the nest. It worked, so I added the other two chicks, which were rather conspicuous being golden and at the same time added the pipping egg to Snow Kitten's nest, she immediately engaged it in conversation, so I knew she loved it! At that moment I put my headlight back on to check all was well, just as Caramel stood up and rejected all the chicks, in fact at one point she tried to fly out of the box and straight at the lamp! The quail chicks were now beginning to feel the cold and vocalising this but there was no sound from Caramel, which convinced me that she was still not truly broody. Snow Kitten was now purring over her hatching egg, the quail chicks were crying, Caramel was twitching about the box and I was very tired and wishing I'd never started this. Andy was fast asleep and it was now one o'clock in the morning. Then all of a sudden Caramel fluffed herself up and made one sound and sat down on the chicks. I then fell into bed!

 

Solutions

Over the last couple of days I have observed and learned so much. One item being that temperature is absolutely crucial for quail chicks in the first days of life. Looking at how Caramel now behaves and it has been a massive learning curve for her, she is willing and capable of carrying all the chicks on her body. She is thus keeping them warm on the short journey from one nesting area to the other. She can carry them to the food I have placed within her hay box and I wonder if in the wild she could carry them much further. It would be very interesting to see this, however I have witnessed that she shakes the chicks out of her feathers in the morning and when they have been napping for a long period during the day. It is certain also that she stands up for most of the night and the chicks are either totally burrowed into her feathers and off the ground (the younger ones) or have their feet on the ground but their heads well embedded in her feathers. if I hold a small quail chick and keep his body warm he will make a burrowing motion with his head, even with his eyes closed, as if trying to work his way further in to get nearer to the body of his mother. I noted the temperatures for a quail brooder is marked in several places on the net as 35 to 38 °C  (95 to 100°F) for the first week reducing to 32 °C  (90°F) in week two. There is no way our house and not even the greenhouse, during the recent terrible weather are achieving that. It is therefore of the greatest importance that Caramel has had to learn and respond to the signals for the chicks being cold.

It has been an enormous burden on our quail to fully understand the intricacies of brooding chicks and so quickly. In a period of only three days she has made the transition from being vaguely broody to full motherhood. By the morning of the 9th, she was already speaking to the chicks and it was a constant call, making sure they knew where she was. I still kept infertile eggs in the cardboard box, to give her and the chicks an idea of a nest. Her vocalisation is totally different from anything you will hear from a non-brooding quail, it is urgent and raucous but during the hours of darkness it is quite faint, presumably not to alert predators. Just last night and perfected today she has an assembly call, which she uses when she wants everyone to get under her because she is now in tune when the chicks are cold.

I must also add that to make matters even more complicated for all of us, I purchased three nine-day-old quail chicks, from the farm where I buy our organic milk. This was on Saturday and they were in a brooder with 35 more. We brought them home in the car and they immediately fell asleep, as it was probably hotter than their brooder being the warmest day we have had this year! I finessed them in around the back of Caramel when she was concentrating on her own chicks. As you will see in the film, she just had one moment of protest and then accepted them all. Needless to say the new chicks love her and they are also helping in keeping the smaller chicks warm. I did also yesterday try them out in the greenhouse at 25 °C  (77°F) but on Sunday, she still wasn't up to speed on noticing when they were cold. In fact until this very afternoon, she has needed to be in the original cardboard nest box, which is full of hay, to feel that she needs to brood them. Once in there no matter what her previous mood she starts her assembly call and everyone goes underneath. At this very moment, they are all in a 'playpen' of sorts inside and she has just within the last couple of hours began to assemble everyone for a snuggle. Her voice changes frequently as she adds new notes, today she has developed a single high pitch whistle, which makes her sound very much the wild bird.

Whilst they were out in the greenhouse she was finding them insects but as with some mothers, once out and foraging they do tend to concentrate on that and ignore the warning signals that the chicks are cold. I'm waiting hopefully for later in the afternoon when the feeble sun will have raised the temperatures to around 30 °C  ( 86°F) to try again as I really want them to be consuming invertebrate protein and weeds, rather than the egg/sprouted grain/rolled and soaked five cereals/cabbage and root vegetables I have them on at the moment. You can see from the image below a happy sleepy quail who has had his beak in the soil!

 

What About the Cochin?

Well I added another chick from the Jenny's brood, the final chick to hatch and it meant that the other seven who were thirsting to go out with their Mummy can now free-range in the garden. However, Snow Kitten had great difficulty in remaining in the nest with her two newly hatched chicks as she was well aware, she had already been sitting with the hatched quail since last Wednesday. I have had to keep putting her back in the dark, so that the chicks could get some rest because otherwise she was for taking them out, this even though she had a couple of infertile eggs to cover. Again as with my mother quail she understands the passage of time, with Caramel, the quail hatched too soon, with Snow Kitten, the eggs are too old and so are the chicks to still be wanting to stay in the nest!

I've given you a day by day account of how this all worked out in the hope that it will be of use in understanding how nothing ever is written in stone when it comes to chickens and/or quail. Snow Kitten was already known to us as an incredibly adaptable and intuitive mother who had proved herself able to adopt chicks.  Caramel has experienced a huge learning curve, not every potential mother quail may be able to do this. However, I believe if you learn and think with/as her then maybe together you can bring out that ancient spirit which over centuries of living in captivity with humans has been forced to bend to their will but has not broken beyond repair. Now if you'd like to, sit back and enjoy the film.

Thanks for dropping by and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube channel. Please also feel free to ask questions or make comments in the section below.

All the very best,
Sue

RELATED ARTICLES 

One of my quail has gone broody and is sitting eggs.

So here I am with my design for a secure quail breeding area still in the workshop and Ginger already on her 6th day of sitting ...read more

Broody adopts chicks in cold weather.

Some times people comment in surprise on my films that a hen will raise anything but her own eggs but this is only half the story...read more

Links

Orcutt Scott Jr, F. and Orcutt, A. B. (1976) 'Nesting and Parental Behavior in Domestic Common Quail', The Auk, Vol. 93, No. 1, January, pp. 135-141

RETURN TO CONTENTS PAGE 

©  Sue Cross 2016

My organically raised coturnix quail sitting her eggs - Update 2 - All Change

Everything seemed to be going well, Ginger, our golden coturnix quail had been sitting her second nest very seriously now for 14 days and Snow Queen, our Cochin bantam, had been looking after the quail chicks for a week. Ginger hardly left the nest at all except to have a few minutes at the food plate or in the compost bin, the film still below is of her coming back onto the eggs in the time it took me to put out the food and go for the camera!

In all, four quail had hatched and I was absolutely certain that these were from the four eggs I had retrieved from Ginger's first abandoned nest. The only problem was that the weather being terrible, I had not been able to take the quail chicks out even into the glass greenhouse for more than a few minutes. Even when in an enclosed cardboard run to cut down any potential drafts, the chicks had started shouting pitifully after just one minute of being down on the ground and Snow Queen had seemed uninterested in their cries and had just continued on with her dust bath.

When I returned with them back to the house, I noticed one of the quail looked as if it had sprained its foot. I did wonder however if this was the one who had been hatched last and that he had injured his foot when he fell from Snow Queen's feathers. I gave him some organic selenium in spray form directly onto his foot and then upped his B complex vitamins in the form of yeast flakes and sunflower seeds. He had already eaten quite a few woodlice, so I reckoned I had pretty much covered the usual supplements. he was moving quite well even though his one foot was turned inwards. Whilst broody Snow Queen has been quite flighty when out, literally, which for a Cochin is unusual as they do not fly very well. She just will not stay on the ground to eat. I have had to feed her once she is back on the eggs.

I had been aware for a couple of days that Snow Queen was a bit blasé about the chicks, even to the point of using them as serviettes, wiping her beak on them after eating egg yolk and then eating the bits off them afterwards! I also noticed that, although I presumed the eggs to be infertile, she clamped herself down on them ever more. In the event everything went pear-shaped last night. Firstly I noticed Snow Queen using her beak softly but deliberately on the chicks, I thought she was trying to gather them under her but eventually realised she was just jabbing at them and a couple of times knocked them over. Then finally I saw her open her beak in a big broody squawk of annoyance right in the face of the little blonde (presumably) English white quail. Taking Snow Queen out for a break just before bed time, I found the injured foot quail, dead underneath her, he had been squashed. This sadly happens sometimes with quail chicks under hens, in particular in the first few days and having an injured foot would have impaired his ability to get out of the way as she moved.

However, coupled with her obvious and growing indifference to or maybe even dislike of the quail, something I must say which has never happened in a hatch with a hen before, I decided I had to take action. It wasn't Snow Queen's fault she is a very young Cochin, hatched last year and she will make a fine Mother. She was very gentle with the quail at first but she obviously prefers sitting to hatching and was not ready to take on the mantle of looking after exacting quail chicks. I am very careful about taking chicks from a hen. I have done it only once before and with a young hen who hatched some chicks and then started to peck them. She was mortified and so was I but the year after I let her try again and she was a superb mother but I got the feeling in the first week after hatch, she was incredibly wary of me if I picked up a chick, I am absolutely sure she remembered.

Well it was midnight and the dinner had been cooked and waiting but I had to make a quick decision. I decided to go and get the quail who had been guarding Ginger's nest (above left and still not making eye contact - the quitter!). I got a box of hay put a couple of quail eggs in the middle and sure enough she began to sit but when I put the three quail chicks in with her she was terrified.


I also tried one of the Pharaoh quail, who I knew had been adding eggs to Ginger's nest and even lingering on the eggs until shooed off by Ginger, again interested in the eggs, didn't want the chicks. So I bit the bullet and went and got Ginger, nest and all. I hated doing it, I felt like a traitor to Ginger who had been such a star sitting these eggs so well. Not only that but she was making a deep lugubrious mourning sound, over her nest as I took the eggs out and when I got her inside the house it continued at a more urgent frequency. As a precaution I had taken a sprig of rosemary with me so the nesting area would have the same fragrance. Even this didn't help, as when I put her in the hay box, she took just one egg under her but refused all the others. If a quail can look sad with just a beak to express it, then she was the epitome of tragedy. I felt a complete heel and in the end had to take her back to the greenhouse but by now she was so upset she wouldn't go back on the eggs and continued with the awful accusations. I felt like weeping!

I had one last card to play I took her and the eggs back into the house in the box. Then I put all but one egg under the Snow Queen and transferred the now squeaking babies into the box with Ginger the result was something utterly beautiful. Ginger began to clear a space in the hay beneath her creating a depression or 'scrape', whilst making interesting soft sounds. The quail chicks looked nonplussed but unworried. Ginger is not particularly tame but I could see she really wanted the chicks. She still hadn't got the idea of opening up her wings but I did it for her and just pushed each chick underneath. Then she gave a quick shuffle and they all instantly vanished. I put the box by my side of the bed and I could here her soft voice as I fell asleep. In the night I was awoken by her calling out and found one of the chicks was out and searching for food. So I gave him some and they stayed like that until morning.

There will be a film in the next post.

Ginger and a little tuxedo chick enjoying a draught-free 
excavation in the cardboard run in the greenhouse.

Thanks for dropping by and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it and also about joining this blog. Please also feel free to ask questions or make comments in the section below.

All the very best,

Sue


RETURN TO CONTENTS PAGE 
©  Sue Cross 2015

One of my coturnix quail has gone broody and is sitting. A Fred and Ginger production!

You know how it is, you've been hoping and planning for an event and just as you finally start to get ready for action, your poultry decide they've waited long enough for an outcome and take charge.

Fred and his best friend Dorothy keeping guard whilst Ginger is laying.

Well, a couple of weeks ago I started reading about fatal genes in the Golden quail.  There is a lot of conflicting  information because well it's genetics and thus exceedingly complicated. Even the nomenclature 'Golden' quail is somewhat controversial, in French these quail are know as Isabelle but in English there are two recognised type of golden quail - the Italian and the Manchurian. You will read in some papers and articles that it is the latter or the former that carry the fatal gene. This however, is further complicated by the fact that some articles I've read, insist that the Italian and Manchurian quail are one and the same! In my experience with purchased hatching eggs and through talking to other quail keepers, it is certainly true here, that all Golden quail seem very frail and have poor hatch and survival rates. My golden quail I've had now for three years from hatch and although they wouldn't get any prizes from purists, as all the feathers are patterned differently, they are gold and they are healthy.

However, not to tempt fate nor F.B. Hutt et al, I have decided to steer away from crossing gold with gold of any sort. In France this makes even more sense, as the Isabelle are said to have been raised from a very small gene pool, just 20 original eggs brought in from Portugal. Thus on top of the fatal gene issue, we have consanguinity to add to and exacerbate the problem.

Some two weeks ago on a visit to our local organic dairy farm to collect our milk and where they keep quail, I asked if they had an English White or Range or any other colour other than gold to sell me. In fact they had a lovely Tuxedo, which I instantly wanted but could not have, as he was their only example of the colour. So I asked to borrow him for a week. In the event and just in case there was some friction between my quail and Fred, I brought his friend with him. This English White quail was of undetermined sex but I called 'her' Dorothy after Dorothy Lamour because she had a heart shaped pattern on the back of her neck. This complicated things rather as I always felt she was keeping a beady eye on Fred and perhaps rather cramping his style!

One of last year's nests under the rosemary

In my reading around the subject of wild quail because this is the way I am sure I will get the happiest and healthiest creatures, I found that the female is drawn to start nesting by hearing the male cry. Apocryphal or not, last year when I had a male quail, my female quail made nests. This year when they started laying in early April, they were just laying in a random, devil-may-care sort of way, single eggs in different places each day. However, the day after Fred arrived I noticed one of my golden quail hiding behind the pallet wood vertical garden shelving in the greenhouse and I noticed her return there the next day too. On the following day I investigated and found three eggs in a row, it is a really tight squeeze in there, so every time she got up from laying she left the eggs in a rather haphazard way. However, on subsequent days I noticed she would gather them together before she laid and that she was going back in there, during the day, seemingly both to check on the eggs and to turn them too. This quail I now named Ginger, for obvious reasons.

I was now getting very excited, Ginger had laid six eggs in all but Fred was destined to go back to the farm the very next day when we went for the milk. From all I have read, I am still not totally sure how important the male is, nor exactly sure if he is involved in sitting. As wild quail, are  very private, shy birds, there is no great body of research on their behaviours. They do actually have wild quail on the farm but assure me they have never seen two birds together on a nest but my belief is, from watching Fred, that in the early stages of nesting even if the male does not sit he is very near by. According to a paper I read on the subject; Nesting and Parental Behavior in Domestic Common Quail, Orcutt and Orcutt (1976), the male sits within 30cms of the nest for at least the laying of the eggs and for some part of the sitting. This was true of Fred as you can see from the photograph above (top) and the film. So I decided to ask to borrow Fred for another week, just in case Ginger decided to sit. In the event Ginger started to sit that very same day.

I was really worried now, as it meant I would have to leave Ginger outside in the greenhouse all night rather than put her away with the others in their little wooden house. We have a variety of predators here but the worst for quail are rats, which although I shouldn't say it, I have not seen for several years. We also had a weasel here quite recently but I was hoping that Ginger was well enough hidden. I placed a board in front of her at night and a couple of bricks along the front of the greenhouse door where there was a slight gap. How happy I was the next morning to see her still sitting and in good health!

With regards to how often she comes off the nest, this is rather a vexed question as the first day I did not see her move at all and I was, as you can imagine, rather a fixture in the greenhouse. One thing I noticed over the next few days though, was a complete change in attitude towards Fred. She became progressively more and more aggressive towards him and for that matter most of the other quail. She did not however, exhibit that 'puffed up' and erratic scratching of the classic broody hen. Orcutt and Orcutt on the subject write that their male had feathers missing from his head by the 5th day of incubation! Conversely however, she became more accepting of me and finally by the 4th day of incubation actually came from the nest and out to meet me at the greenhouse door when I was feeding the poultry in the morning.

Fred caught snacking again with friends

I also read in the Orcutt article, that they actually had to remove their male from the breeding pen, as he was showing less interest in the nest and he was being attacked. I did however, wonder at this behaviour from Ginger. She was particularly aggressive towards Fred when she saw him around the food bowl in the morning and I did wonder if she really wanted him to be guarding the nest or even sitting. In an Experimental Study of Nesting by Coturnix Quail, Vernon C. Stevens, The Journal of Wildlife Management, (1961) the author seems to indicate a more proactive role for the male. However, I was rather hoping Fred would not be that important to Ginger, as by the next weekend he would have to go back to the farm!

So here I am with my design for a secure quail breeding area still in the workshop and Ginger already sitting and on her 6th day of incubation. Fred is still in the dog house and Dorothy possibly quite happy about it. Whatever happens, I have backup in the form of my little Cochin Snow Queen who is already sitting on some of the other quail eggs, which I am hoping are fertile by Fred too. If Ginger gives up then I will transfer the eggs to her.

One of my most important precautions for Ginger though,  is in nutritional support. As you can see in the photos, now they are laying, I have been stocking up the greenhouse with compost and keeping the large compost  bins closed as the chicks have had their share. This is, however, part of my Spring schedule, spreading compost in order to get the greenhouse ready for planting. As our principal compost bins are chock full of arthropods, I have set up a 'holding bin'  actually in the greenhouse and Ginger gets the first pick of this every morning. I am hoping all the methionine and the B complex vitamins this food will provide,  will keep her stress levels down to a minimum and save Fred from a few plucked feathers.

Part Two the update is here 

Fingers crossed... and now if you'd like to sit back and watch the film:


Fred snacking again this time on a courgette/zucchini.
Thanks for dropping by and if you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it and also maybe about joining this blog. Please also feel free to ask questions or make comments in the section below.

All the very best,
Sue


RETURN TO CONTENTS PAGE  
©  Sue Cross 2015