Are any of you actively raising bobwhite quail? I am considering buying some pairs for captive breeding with intention of release to stock my land later on.

Ground nesting birds have been just about eliminated where I live due to uncontrolled predator issues but I have been active in keeping my property clear. Bobwhite are native here but now very rare. I miss hearing them call.

If you do raise captive bobwhite in aviaries I am interested in any tips and interesting experiences you might have concerning these birds.

It has been shown that very few if any pen raised bird survive. Several of my friends have bought and released them. None have made it to reproduce. The only way to reintroduce them is to catch wild birds and move them. Not legal for the average Joe and hard on the caught birds. Without an adult to teach the world out side the pen is just too dangerous!

Ann, that's the same results my neighbor + I got when we tried raising them in cages, but that's been over 40 years ago. Although we did have a large loss of the native birds here due to predators, the main culprits were the fire ants as the birds clutch on the ground + where we used to have a decent population, now we have very few, to the point that I won't even hunt them anymore; just not enough left. That's a real shame for a variety of reasons, but when hunting them + they take off in a cloud flurry, they do things to your adrenaline level that has to be experienced to believe. I do miss that + just having them around in general. We also had bad results on raising pheasants too. Mainly that they are notorious pacers + are constantly walking the cage perimeter + sticking their heads through the wire + the predators would come in the night + bite their heads off. All in all, we had negative results on cage raising game birds, except for turkeys. But that's another story + I do have some humorous stories there. Funny now, but not at the time.

Several years ago, I released 100 hen pheasants and 10 roosters on some excellent habitat. This was on property that had previously had a very good pheasant population. They were released about January 1 and the winter was mild. As far as I could tell, none survived or reproduced. I have a friend that did the same with bobwhite, about 40 birds. He had the same results, a total waste of money.
People that are selling the birds will tell you some will survive and populate your land, that’s BS.

Hmm. So I reckon it will just have to be good enough to hear them calling from the aviary.

I did ringnecks here shortly after moving to this property. They did not last long with freedom. I think the biggest predator on them here was great horned owls picking them off at night.

Sad to hear all the above. I would have thought it was feasible. Damn shame.

I have never heard of anyone having quail in a pen naturally reproduce.... The hens don't seem to get broody like chickens. Everyone o know that raises quail gathers eggs and uses an incubator.


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Jim, that is interesting. I had not heard that but it is possible. My plans are for an on the ground set up. A lot of people raise them in simple cages similar to rabbit set-up.

I have a large cabinet incubator as I hatch about 100 araucana chicks a year here.

I live across a highway from a south GA commercial quail hunting plantation. We constantly get a small bleed over of birds onto our farm. They never make it more than a week. In contrast we have 2 coveys of wild birds. They do just fine and the covey size stays stable. Raptors are the main killers of the pen raised birds. They simply aren’t aware of danger from above.

Other than wanting to try to repopulate them in the area, another reason we were incubating, hatching, + raising the quail was for a taxidermist friend in San Angelo that would kill, stuff them, + mount them in wildlife scenes in coffee + end tables that had glass sides. He sold quite a lot of them. I remember him saying that the way to kill them was to put them in a bag, attach a hose to his vehicle exhaust + kill them without damaging the bodies. He said that works on all birds EXCEPT ducks. He said, don't EVER try to gas a duck. I never asked him why, but I'll bet there was a humorous story there.

Back when, the company I worked for built gas turbine engines. Part of the qualification of a new engine required it to handle a bird ingestion. The lab guys built a canon that would fire a live chicken into the intake of a running engine. From what I heard the animal rights folks heard about this and made a big fuss about using live chickens. OK, someone found a source for frozen whole chickens. At the first test using a frozen chicken the turbine disintegrated; back to the drawing board, chicken had to be dead but warm. One of the lab techs figured it out. Take a trash can, invert, insert chicken, give it a couple of blasts from a CO2 fire extinguisher, wait for flopping around to stop, and launch. That became the SOP.
C.G.B.

Ann, although you are not in Texas, I bet these folks would respond to any questions. The issue with bobwhites is very complicated, from predation to parasites to habitat loss/alteration. Restoring birds on your place is a highly admirable goal.

https://www.quailresearch.org/

An older friend of mine that was born and raised near here said when he was a kid a lot of farmers were given pheasant eggs by the DNR. They would put them with the brooding hens (chickens) and the chickens would raise them. In the fall the pheasants would disperse on their own and he said there was a vibrant population of them in the area. Basically free range yard birds, but they would wander off when mature and take up residence in the local thickets and marshes.

An idea for sure, Matt. I generally have broody hens here. I wonder if they would raise tiny quail chicks?

I don't know about quail, but my chickens never had any problems with Muscovy duck hatchlings.