Quailing at the prospect

Although that isn't true, I'm quite excited at the prospect. I have been fancying keeping quail since I started keeping chickens. Unlike chickens, if you keep quail you keep them in a cage or aviary, due to their habit of shooting 20 foot in the air when startled and flying off in a straight line, there is no nagging worry that really they ought to be free range and hence no retrieving of quail from next door's garden. Although they can make a variety of noises, the cocks do not crow thus it is easy and beneficial even to keep them in groups of one cock to three hens giving the prospect of raising little quail. And they do lay their posh little eggs. Most people eat then hard boiled and use them decoratively but I do rather fancy having 6 little poached eggs dotted around my toast for breakfast.
Anyway I decided to leap in and order a dozen eggs to put in the incubator. Hence the parcel that arrived yesterday

 When buying chicken eggs, they are normally sent in specially designed polystyrene protective boxes. Either they don't make these for quail's eggs or my ebay seller is as much into recycling as I am, for the packaging had a definite home made look about it

Whether it was as a result of that or just one of those things, one of the eggs arrived broken but no matter, they cost me £5 including postage and are very much an experiment. If it works, I will have my quail and I will also have had the pleasure of watching them hatch. I have seen quail chicks described on the internet as like fluffy bumblebees and I can't wait.
However my incubator is of the cheapest of the cheap variety and there is much that can go wrong. It has a thermostat and a fan and a thermometer and hygrometer (for reading humidity) but last year when trying to hatch chicken eggs I had two failures. Both times it was due to the bulb which provides the heat, failing and allowing the eggs to get cold. The first time, one chick heartbreakingly made it through to hatching only to die within 24 hours.

 Quails eggs should take 18 days to hatch and I shall post updates regularly. As it is a basic incubator I shall have to turn the eggs every 4 hours or so to stop the growing embryo sticking to one side, because of this I have moved the incubator to the side of the bed which means that I should also be able to keep a better eye on the bulb. Oliver thinks the box is for cooking eggs, we will have to impress on him that he isn't to open the lid until they are done. He will get a surprise if the eggs hatch.
After 5 days (for chickens at least, not sure about quail) the eggs can be candled by shining a bright light through the shell to check if there is a living embryo inside. This is a magical moment, a bit like having a scan in pregnancy when the egg stops being just an egg and turns into the home of a living creature.Sadly I can't think of any way I could take photos of this to share with you. You'll just have to take my word for it.
So they went in to the incubator at 10 am on Friday 22nd February and hopefully they will emerge some time between Sunday 10th March and Wednesday 13th March. I'll keep you posted.