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New page, more quail! Tiny god. Today is the two week anniversary of Willow coming to stay with us.  A lot has happened in those two weeks, and Willow has settled in more. She puts herself to bed, knows where the shady spots are in the garden, and the bathing spots. She's tried and likes a whole amount of new foods that I think her previous owners didn't consider for their chickens. Willow knows she is at the bottom of the pecking order, but has been getting closer to the rest of the flock (here bathing with Bella). She is also more comfortable around Nova, the lowest ranking of the three ex-batts. Nova is a gentle hen anyway, so they're starting to hang out together.
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Aug 4, 2021 17:52
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I'm glad the lovely Willow is settling in and enjoying her new home  I adopted three new battery hens over the weekend, and Chips, the oldest of my current flock, has not stopped yelling about it except to sleep. She follows them around on the other side of the fence yelling at the top of her lungs or keeping up a furious loop of "buckbuckbuckbuckbuckbuckBUCKBUCKBUCKBUCKBUCKbuckbuckbuckbuckbuckbuckBUCKBUCKBUCKbuck" I'm quite surprised since she's always been a very chill hen and didn't react like this to a previous adoption, but she is just incandescent with rage at these new hens daring to exist in her vicinity. Even when she went to lay an egg this morning, she continued a grumbling tirade from within the next box. The other hens spent the first day eyeing the newcomers up but have otherwise made their peace with this new development.
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Aug 4, 2021 18:29
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chicken politics are so enthralling! the flock is the world, everything must be kept in balance  i am so happy for willow, and for enfys' new rescue hens, who have left behind their old lives as commodities and been reborn as glorious birds
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Aug 5, 2021 01:33
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chicken politics is indeed fascinating. last week we sent Chickmunk off to his new home, and there have been a lot of staring contests as everyone reasserts their positions. City of Glompton fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Aug 5, 2021 03:41
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is it okay to just name all of your quail bip-bip because that's all any of them ever say I love happy cute chickens, look at them!
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Aug 5, 2021 04:30
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All those floofy feets!
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Aug 5, 2021 09:34
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We refer to our girls by the color of their tags (e.g. 'Mrs Green') so every day is like Reservoir
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Aug 5, 2021 10:27
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tigerlily was killed by a raven  usually the ravens aren't a threat to the quail, but we had a baby boom due to our mild wet winter, and now all those babies are grown up and ravenous. they're very bold - it happened right in front of my poor mother, who was supervising the quail while i was on a phone call and is now traumatised. i gave tigerlily's head a decent burial in the designated quail graveyard, and left his body in the orchard for his murderer to enjoy; normally i wouldn't do that for fear of giving the ravens a taste for quail flesh, but i think they've worked out well enough by themselves how delicious they are, and given the nature of the phone call i was on the whole thing had a ceremonial sacrifice quality about it and i was afraid not to give the drat bird what it had earned. tigerlily was a beautiful, gentle bird and we will miss him terribly. coming so soon after friday, this is a real blow to the flock. now quimmix is the last living descendent of felafel and frida quailo: a priceless treasure.
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Aug 6, 2021 02:13
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City of Glompton fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2021 02:18
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City of Glompton posted:
the phone call was my brother telling me i'm going to be an auntie, so the last thing i was going to do under the circumstances was piss off a raven! tigerlily gave his life. between this and friday dying on my birthday, the quail are really quite eerie. any day now, scrubtit will begin uttering psalms in the voice of a man. perepelki fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Aug 6, 2021 |
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Aug 6, 2021 02:30
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one thing that's good about quail compared to larger poultry is that when attacked by something, they either live or they die. there's only been a few times i've had to really agonise over whether an injured bird is saveable before euthanising them, which was the worst part of keeping chickens.
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Aug 6, 2021 02:43
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RIP tigerlilly, qualied off to the next life. Somebody wanted to be extra long today, for some reason.
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Aug 6, 2021 06:08
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lol
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Aug 6, 2021 06:15
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RIP Tigerlilly, may you forage eternal in the Elysian Underbrush.
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Aug 6, 2021 06:27
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stork
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Aug 6, 2021 07:04
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RudeCat posted:RIP Tigerlilly, may you forage eternal in the Elysian Underbrush.
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Aug 6, 2021 07:11
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RudeCat posted:RIP Tigerlilly, may you forage eternal in the Elysian Underbrush.
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Aug 6, 2021 09:45
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thank you, all of you. tigerlily would appreciate your respect 
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Aug 6, 2021 11:43
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Always hard to lose one but you give them the best home you can while theyre with us 
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Aug 6, 2021 13:48
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I'm so sorry to hear of Tigerlily's noble demise.
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Aug 6, 2021 14:18
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The quail continue their swift ascension effortlessly, bewildered at our earthly attachments.
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Aug 6, 2021 17:38
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 bibbit
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Aug 7, 2021 12:43
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bibbit of joy for all 
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Aug 7, 2021 14:10
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So we cleaned out the quail hutch this morning instead of finishing construction on their new coop. I had been rushing the coop construction because their hutch was getting Very Filthy, but today we kind of hit a critical level of poop and flies, and I awoke with a headache that does not bode well, so...we temporarily abandoned construction and set about cleaning, instead. Unfortunately, their hutch had gotten so dirty that they were not the cleanest birds (poopfoot!) so I STILL haven't taken good pics for The Great Naming. Despite lack of proof, I assure you that all 8 are very handsome and beautiful and cute and doing very well. One of them likes to pop up like a meerkat any time anybody comes near the hutch. She is endearingly alert.
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Aug 8, 2021 15:31
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perepelki posted:
Enfys posted:bibbit of joy for all my cat is norris posted:So we cleaned out the quail hutch this morning instead of finishing construction on their new coop. I had been rushing the coop construction because their hutch was getting Very Filthy, but today we kind of hit a critical level of poop and flies, and I awoke with a headache that does not bode well, so...we temporarily abandoned construction and set about cleaning, instead. very excited to see them when they are ready for their photo shoot we had a nice chicken breakfast this morning. everyone was pretty well behaved and only Izzie pooped on a chair. i'm now resigned to the fact that Izzie is a weird rooster, as there has been a little more crowing, and a little more aggression towards him from Darlin'. i sure hope they can cooperate because i think they are both so great, i hate to have to give one up
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Aug 8, 2021 16:43
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Aug 8, 2021 20:07
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Aug 8, 2021 22:17
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City of Glompton fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Aug 9, 2021 02:57
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i love them  i have had a week of solid quail tragedy. yesterday i built an outdoor coop for them so that i didn't have to hover over them constantly whenever they're out of the cage. today i found out the coop wasn't completely quail-proof. quimmix and echidna escaped, and the raven found out about it before i did. perepelki posted:i gave tigerlily's head a decent burial in the designated quail graveyard, and left his body in the orchard for his murderer to enjoy i am now down to three birds, and i'm not going to produce any more. i'll let these three live out their natural lives, taking the best possible care of them, and then i think that's it for me and quail. i can't condone keeping them in a cage 24/7, they're impossible to free-range, and i don't have the technical skill to build proper housing (or the money to buy it pre-built). i will find another type of animal and leave the quail alone. it's got to the point where they're better off in the wild than under my "care".
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Aug 9, 2021 12:33
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i kept thinking i could make it work but i just cannot loving make it work!! i give up. it was wrong to try in the first place. it feels like the fifth time i've made this post but this time i really mean it. for some reason i thought predation would level out after a year or so here and at least become predictable and manageable. but because of the river, new migratory predators are coming through all the time, on top of the natural seasons of the ones that stay here year-round, and now they all know there's quail to be had. so i'm trapped in an endlessly escalating nightmare of bird death. perepelki fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Aug 9, 2021 |
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Aug 9, 2021 12:52
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perepelki posted:i am now down to three birds I’m sorry for your losses. I’ve had similar tragedies this past week. My open air summer coop with no door was raided by coyotes, probably. Out of the 6 pullets only one survived. Two were eaten completely and one, our favorite of course, was missing without any trace. I’m just kicking myself. I needed to cull some of the roosters in the main coops and then I was going to move those pullets up but I didn’t get it done. We hadn’t had any predators get through the new fence so I was totally complacent.  After a lot of thought we decided to cull our 5 remaining rabbits rather than move them to Georgia. We did that yesterday and I’m really bummed. And I still have a bunch of roosters that I need to cull before we move. I wish that chickens were more like geese and had a breeding pair instead of one rooster to 10 hens. And while I’m wishing, I wish that roosters weren’t so dang loud and people in cities could have them… On my moving list are Clarence, one of his half Orpington sons, all 6 broody hens, Bertha and Blazer’s 7 chicks and 6 leghorns. It feels like I’m taking so few but I’m sure it will seem like a lot when they are in the van for 24+ hours. (We are still waiting to hear when the movers are coming so I don’t even know when I’m leaving  ) I am soooooo ready to be done moving.
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Aug 9, 2021 13:40
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perepelki posted:i kept thinking i could make it work but i just cannot loving make it work!! i give up. it was wrong to try in the first place. it feels like the fifth time i've made this post but this time i really mean it. I'm so sorry. I hope you reconsider (again). You give them such beautiful and grand lives, short though those lives may be. Joburg posted:I’ve had similar tragedies this past week. My open air summer coop with no door was raided by coyotes, probably. Out of the 6 pullets only one survived. Two were eaten completely and one, our favorite of course, was missing without any trace. I’m just kicking myself. I needed to cull some of the roosters in the main coops and then I was going to move those pullets up but I didn’t get it done. We hadn’t had any predators get through the new fence so I was totally complacent. Such a rough time, friends. I hope the other side of the move will be blessed to make up for all of this.
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Aug 9, 2021 14:41
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thank you, my thread of friends. sorry for that outburst yesterday. i'm used to losing birds, but the scene that confronted me in the yard last night was particularly awful. i am keeping the three quail i have now, and if they go broody i'll let them, but i won't hatch out any more eggs myself. the cage is big enough for the three of them to live in comfortably, so i won't add to their numbers and will just let them live out their lives in peace and safety. all of this has made me realise why wild quail move from place to place every day. as soon as the predators know where they are, it's a buffet. if i ever somehow manage to buy a house where i can build a permanent coop that's big enough to give them the free-range experience that they love, i will be the happiest person alive.
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Aug 9, 2021 23:58
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City of Glompton fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Oct 9, 2022 |
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Aug 10, 2021 01:55
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i am not losing another tame quail to a predator for as long as i live. that is my new goal. it should have been my goal from the start. i'm so sorry
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Aug 10, 2021 06:23
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i'm looking for a way i can "farm" migratory colonies of wild native quail in their natural habitat instead. which is what i wanted to do from the start, but i thought i could just substitute japanese quail into semi-wild environments instead and they would be fine. they are not fine. i was wrong. they cannot be fine. i have failed them up until now, and from now on i will know the difference between wild and tame and protect these creatures with my life
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Aug 10, 2021 06:25
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the mistake i keep making is that i expect them to have basic common sense, like chickens. but they're not chickens, so they don't. they have no common sense. guinea fowl have no common sense either, but they can recognise a predator. quails have no predator recognition. they don't know anything. i cannot trust them to have any sense whatsoever, i literally cannot leave them unattended in the yard for thirty seconds or they will walk straight up to a raven and kiss it on the lips  loving look at these things! they break my heart
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Aug 10, 2021 06:29
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Ugh...I think Comet has a B2 deficiency. I don't think it's Mareks because they've all been vaccinated. She's the largest chicken and has just started laying. The others bully her so it's possible she's not getting enough to eat. She's been separated for now. Any suggestions on a good vitamin supplement I can add to their water?
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Aug 10, 2021 13:47
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I'm sorry your quail journey has been full of so much tragedy but hey you have learned a bunch of things and done a bunch of stuff so it's not all bad 
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Aug 10, 2021 19:11
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someone around here must have also had a quail journey, as we finally saw a little bobwhite i've been hearing all summer. it came and set on our fence and called for a little bit. i am afraid it might be all on its own and looking for friends. i tried to take some video of it but my phone is absolutely abysmal so you'll just have to take my word that it was really cute
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Aug 10, 2021 19:33
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