The Quail Report............Part Deux......

So The Man's C/L quail, while delicious, weren't "quailing" as they should be.  He'd yet to get an egg, no signs of breeding, no quail-ish noises.............NOTHING!  The weekend after we brought the 14 home, he butchered 5 of them, and gave 4 of them to JB the guy at work who gave us the deer.  The remaining 4 hens and one rooster have been living in quail paradise.......

 with plenty to eat and meal worms as a treat. Every day The man goes out wanting to see some little speckled eggs and every day there is nothing.......We've still heard no crowing, no cooing, no mating, no nothing!

One day last week while I was perusing the ever helpful C/L at work, I saw an add for some Italian Speckled Coturnix quail, cages and all.  It was 4 pens of mated quail, 3 hens and one rooster per pen.  They were about 12 weeks old and already laying and included the whole setup for one price.  I mentioned it to The Man and he didn't say much as he's had plans of buying some hatching eggs and an incubator in the next couple weeks.

Saturday it was nasty out so we were busy canning pork and beans and butter beans, cooking pork down for lunch sandwiches through the work week, and making homemade frozen burritos. The Man said, hey, get on there and see if that lady still has those quail!  So I did, and she did, and we set up a time to go look at them on Sunday after church.

In the meantime, I was looking at the farm and garden section and saw a Silver Fox buck for sale, with the key words PROVEN BREEDER...........magic words when you've got a reluctant doe on your hands, but that story will come later and I'll let The Youngun tell it......

Back to the quail......

So after a 5 hour round trip, The Man came home with these..........

and they are a whole different ball game than the ones he currently had!  These things "got busy" the whole way home, and made all sorts of interesting quail-ish noises.  

As you can see, he is quite enamoured with his new birds!

They are quite beautiful and VERY docile.  Here they are taking a dust bath in an ice cream bucket lid.  They do love dust baths just like chickens.

And this had him even more excited!!  EGGS!!!  He's got 12 ladies and he got 11 eggs tonight!  We just brought them home last night.  He's had the other quail for over 3 weeks and nothing......

So you can imagine how happy it made him to collect these little speckled beauties!

And now tomorrow night...........we are having deviled quail eggs!

The people asked, and he brought quails, and satisfied them with the bread of heaven.

Psalms 105:40

Till next time......