Kahh-tuuuur-neeeks!

I started getting fed up with my quail.  They were getting pretty loud with their obnoxious "Kahh-tuuuur-neeeks!" One of the Texas A & Ms was startling all the time and flying up into the ceiling of the cage, effectively scalping the feathers from his head.  Just looking at him was stressing me out.  So one day I took a trip onto BYC and found a step-by-step tutorial on butchering quail.  It helped that the user employed the help of a six year old to model each step.  If some first grader can do it so can I!  I was a little challenged emotionally because I had raised them up from eggs and they are so small, they fit in one had, how could I kill something so dainty? 

The first one to go was the scalped A & M, but he did not make it easy for me.  I went to grab him out of the cage and he flew out.  So then I spent fifteen minutes chasing him around in the yard.  I finally pinned him under a stray rain gutter that I had lying around.  By that time I was SO ready to chop his head off.  Aida was taking a nap but Millie was awake and as I held the panicked bird over a 5 gallon bucket she wandered out to me.  I told her what I was doing and then grabbed a pair of hand pruners and clipped the quail's neck.  She surprised me with her casual attitude.  "You killed the quail," she said and went to play on the swings.  Huh, I guess she is getting used to this whole urban farming thing. 

Plucking a quail is so easy!  It's almost enjoyable!  No scalding required; some people just clip off the wings and skin the bird, but I left the skin on.  Even though I was totally inexperienced I was completely done cleaning the carcass in about five minutes.  Time for number two.  I grabbed one of the Jumbo Browns and vented it, just to see.  You can injure a bird improperly venting to determine sex, so until now I had been too timid, but in a few minutes this bird was dead meat anyway so perfect timing.  The second butchering was uneventful, took a little longer to pluck because of the brown feathers.  I went to grab the last A & M, flipped it over to vent and was surprised to see a much different picture than I had seen with the previous bird.  The cloaca was large and swollen... Hmmm... I guess I should leave these two alone. 

The two survivors

A week later I was rewarded with my first quail egg. Yay!  I had it over easy.  The second week of laying I started collecting eggs for an incubation experiment.

Beautiful slightly green with brown speckles

My experiment: To use my yogurt incubator to hatch quail eggs, I will be doing sets of 4 eggs, with a maximum of 16 eggs.  In about 17 days we will see if I get any babies.  I am doing to the staggered sets because 1) I am not completely certain of the fertility of these eggs, 2) I am super impatient 3) eggs can only sit around for ~1 week before being set.

Here is my incubator next to my beside so I remember to turn the eggs frequently.

Excited for more babies but I am not holding my breath.  I will report on the results either positive or negative.  I will warn you, if you believe in premonitions, I had a dream about exploding eggs.