Organic Quail & Watercress Part 2 - Cultivation

In the first part of this article, if you have not read it can be found here,  I looked in detail at the nutritional and medicinal value of this quail, poultry and human superfood and why it is such a great choice for a fodder crop. In this article I share how easy it is to grow.

 

Watercress Cultivation

Contrary to its common name nasturtium officianale does not need to be grown in water, moist soil is fine. However,  it does give the watercress a stronger more peppery taste but both the quail and ourselves relish this. Our watercress bed is just a damp area of greenhouse adjoining the quail safe-breeding area and is watered with rain water harvested directly from the roof, as are all our greenhouses.  Living in a longère/longhouse has great advantages! If you do not provide enough water, the plant will do what all plants do in such conditions, cut its losses and put all its energy into saving itself by producing flowers and thus seeds. The flowers themselves are edible and nutritious but lack of water will make the stems and some of the lower leaves woody and less palatable.

Two for One Deal

As you can see above, I grow watercress with rocket/arugula as a companion plant, which gives me an extra crop from the same area. I just broadcast the rocket seeds all over the prepared soil before I plant in my rooted stems of watercress.

Watercress makes wonderful salads and delicious soup too!

My first watercress grew quite by accident, I was given a tray of cut stems for my hens by my local organic shop. Having left them tied in bunches just as they were, pinned down in the garden, I noticed that even after my poultry had denuded the leaves, white water roots were emerging from the stems. These I planted in damp soil. When I obtained some more I just cut off the leaves for the hens, started the remaining stems in a bowl of water and then added them to the bed. I have been growing it ever since. Even though, as recently happened, witness the 'burnt' stems and leaves below, our watercress was severely damaged by frost it still manages to survive and recovered quite quickly.

Growing watercress from seed is pretty simple, although as already discussed it may be easier just to go out to a Farmers' Market, buy a bunch of long stemmed organic watercress, eat most of it and then use the lower woodier part of the stems as your starter. I've even grown baby water cress on by just tipping it out in the greenhouse and then covering the ends of the stems lightly with damp soil. 

Seed should be thinly broadcast on wet humus rich soil, either in open ground or in a container. The reason for the humus is to retain the water and keep the soil perpetually damp and also because watercress as a perennial will keep producing without much maintenance as long as you have given it a good food supply at the start.  The soil should be kept moist at all times, as the seed is just sown on the surface rather than covered with soil. To avoid 'damping off', this is where the stems of the young plants just post germination, become waterlogged and rotten, sow them in good light and when the ambient temperature is above 50°F or 10°C. However, watercress seed germinates best at low temperatures so try not to exceed 60°F or 15°C until after germination has taken place. If growing in containers or inside then it is wise to cover with a transparent lid to avoid too much evaporation before germination. Alternatively containers can be partially dug into the ground and then lifted once the young plants are established. Plants grown indoors can be sown in a double container with the inner perforated to take in water from the outer.

After your plants are well rooted they will continue to spread via vegetative reproduction, with the procumbent stems re-rooting and forming new shoots. This makes a dense mat of foliage which will aid in keeping the roots cool and damp. As ambient temperatures rise, the vertical stems will produce flowers,  which will give you a further means to increase your potential harvest, as watercress self-seeds freely.

Harvesting

Watercress is a matter of taste as it changes with age and seasonal temperatures, the quail, chickens and ourselves prefer the older crisper plants and unlike many also eat the flowering stems. As long as you keep the soil damp in hot weather the taste and texture will remain palatable.  In the Winter it makes a great addition to the salad bowl although as you have seen above it may be cut back if you suffer from long periods of frost. The best way to harvest watercress is on a 'cut and come again' basis.

You will also find other articles related to producing forage crops for your quail and other poultry below.

Good luck with growing some nutritious and apart from the initially outlay, free and valuable organic forage for your quail and other poultry,

Thanks for dropping by and do feel free to share experiences or ask for further information in the comment section. If you have enjoyed this piece and found it useful think about sharing it with your family and friends, on social media and also maybe about joining this blog and/or subscribing to my Youtube channel or even supporting us on Patreon or It all helps to keep me going!

Until next time, all the very best from Normandie! Sue
© 2018 Sue Cross

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My organic, hen-raised quail is now raising her own chicks. Update 3 - Mother Quail

I was amazed by the way Ginger had accepted the quail chicks and they had instantly warmed to her. During the day she continued to keep them close and was worried if they went over to the other side of the box.

She was calling to them most of the day in a voice range I have never heard in a quail before. I have probably mentioned that quail used to be kept as song birds but that the whole strain of singing quail were wiped out in the Second World War. Well I reckon Ginger could start a whole new race of them. She also started to do the typical hen-like call to food but she could do it simultaneously whilst making the low coaxing sound, which I interpret as her way of reassuring them that she was there. The way her voice modulates between contralto and alto and up to soprano is quite amazing.

For the quail chicks it must have been slightly confusing, as they had been used to Snow Queen and responded to her but they certainly picked up Ginger's voice patterns pretty quickly. On her time-scale the quail chicks had just hatched and as I had also given her one of her eggs, she kept everyone well clamped down. This was really important because although it was warm enough within the house, quail chicks always seem to feel fluctuations in temperature so much more quickly than hen chicks (other than Sebrights). I was also amazed at how much she was aware of perceived danger, these were obviously totally new surroundings to her and  she had no idea whether she was in a safe area or not. She made the most incredible noises if  the chicks went out of sight. They could easily do this as, to make her feel more at home, I had put edible greenery in the box. As the week has progressed she has begun to jump out of the box and then realise she is parted from the quail, then her voice rises to fever pitch!

Watching them together also solved a nagging problem I have always had, with regards to past experience of raising quail with a bantam, that of quail chicks burrowing down into the chicken's feathers and getting stuck and on occasions almost strangled. Well Ginger can move around the box and I never see the chicks move because she is carrying them. They obviously hang on or somehow attach themselves to her feathers but when she stops they can quickly release themselves. On occasions I have seen them fall out as she moves but it has been rare. Perhaps my using of Frizzles helped me in this because they could not attach themselves so well. However, I am so pleased to have witnessed this as it throws a whole new light on the problem, as it is a proactive and deliberate manoeuvre by the chick rather than, as I had thought, an accidental 'sticking' to the feathers.

Later on in her first day with the chicks I gave them ant eggs and she really enjoyed offering them. She also got them to eat greenery, which Snow Queen hadn't and they never made a squeak all day except their happy eating sound. Tomorrow I am taking them out to the greenhouse if the weather permits and am hoping to hear and see some new facet of quail and quail chick bonding. I am so pleased that Snow Queen seems happy with her eggs which maybe will hatch in a few days time and Ginger is totally overjoyed with her quail chicks, of which she is the biological mother. I am convinced that Fred was monogamous for the first week until Ginger turned against him, so the chances are that some of the quail eggs under Snow Queen may hatch.

And now, if you'd like to, sit back and watch the film:

Update: 

None of the other eggs hatched, although Andy, who checked them, did think that one of them could have been fertile. As for Ginger, it's now seven weeks after hatch and she is still very much a mother, even though she stopped communicating verbally with them except at night, around the 31st of May thus two and a half weeks after hatch. Even so, one of the quail chicks still sleeps cuddled up next to her at night and Ginger takes interest in an individual chick's activities.

This has been a most interesting experience and one I will love to repeat when I can get hold of a suitable male quail, which at the moment seems to be a difficult task!
 
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


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©  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


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©  Sue Cross 2015