Quail pics.

[spookyevilone]

Button quail next to Cortunix quail. Silver female. (Edit: The Cortunix is the huge dark blob to the right of the tiny silver blob.)


Coturnix immature female, not yet full grown, next to full grown male silver Button Quail.


"We are tiny birds!"


The new beautiful red-breasted male button quail. This picture does not do him justice. His colors are stunningly bright and wonderful. I have a female of his type as well, she's got duller colors and no white bib.


I got paranoid that they were going to escape the 1"x2" mesh of the Cortunix cages, so I put them in the cage I had for the mini-hamster. It's something like 12"x12", and this is a pic of all four birds in it. The silver male is hiding inside the nest box.

It's an addiction. Pam was home tonight, so after J dropped me off, I headed up nort' and got me some miniquail.

My intent was to get one set of hens for the bachelors I already have and then one set of button quail.

Uh..

I bought four hens and two breeding pair of buttons. I got a female Cinnamon that matches my male perfectly, a dark almost black and blood red hen that's in with the cinnamons, a match for Tux that's so much of a match that I can't tell them apart yet, and a bizarre mutt - the Cortunix in the picture above, the size comparison, is 1/4 Bobwhite, 1/2 white (like my Chicken), and 1/2 tuxedo. She has very odd colors and is one of a kind. So she's mine.

Then I saw the buttons. I had to restrain myself to two pair. I have a pair of the red-breasted, and one pair of silver. Later, if I have room for them, I'm going to buy another pair of what's called White Tigers - they're brown and white speckled with black feather tips and dark circles around their eyes. Lovely! She didn't have a female, just a male, and I didn't want yet another rooster in the house.

So yes, more quail. The hens I got won't be ready to lay for about another month, they're not yet at full size. As you can see in the comparison pic, they're about four times the size of the buttons. The buttons are wicked tiny. I was able to see hatched-today button quail chicks. SO TINY!

Total thus far:
8 Coturnix: 2 Cinnamon, 1 brown traditional, 1 white, 1 fucked up mutt, 2 Red Tuxedo, 1 really dark black/red.
4 Buttons: 2 silver, 2 red breasted.

I'm going to wind up being the crazy quail lady. After these pics were taken, I got paranoid that the Buttons would escape from the 1"x2" wire cages and put them all in an 18"x12" hamster cage. Buttons + big finch nest + feed/water dishes fit with room to spare. They are THAT tiny.

Comments

[redselchie.livejournal.com]

oh wow, they are beautiful! might I ask how much a breeding pair costs these days?

[spookyevilone.livejournal.com]

If you buy them in petstores, $120+.

If you go to a breeder, $3-$5 per bird :P I paid $3.50 per bird for all of mine. Which is why I wound up with 8 instead of 4..