A Quail Tale

When I lasted posted, I had given up on the quail eggs. It was Tuesday, three days after they were due to hatch and I was depressed that despite the signs of life when candled and despite my faithfully turning of eggs, nothing had happened. I didn't know why, whether it was too cold outside the incubator or whether I had got the humidity wrong but I had given up and decided to have a rest from trying to hatch eggs and possibly think about buying a more sophisticated incubator.
So you can imagine my shock when lying in bed on Tuesday night, I heard a loud chirping in the room. I shot out of bed and there was a chick in the incubator, unlike last year's chickens it had hatched cleanly and quickly and was already drying off and moving around. Although in retrospect I think it may have hatched a few hours earlier and because it had been quiet for a while I had just been unaware of its existence. I immediately got very excited and hoped for more to hatch overnight but in the morning there was just our il Sunday one and only chick looking pretty healthy and running around. We named her Una for obvious reasons.
By Wednesday night I had fixed up the brooding arrangements, a large plastic storage box under a heat lamp in the corner of the living room. I had intended to carry on rearing them in my bedroom but for one tiny chick, Una is pretty noisy. She looked very small and lost in the big box and I worried that if she got too cold  she would have no-one to cuddle up to. So I got on the phone and found a poultry breeder in Farsley who had some 10 day old quail chicks he would let me have for a pound each. He said he only had three though, I said this was fine as they were primarily company for Una. When I got there though he threw in (not literally) a fourth chick who had a damaged foot from birth, although he seems to get around fine on it. I have christened him Tim, after Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. Tim and Una are both brown and stripey. Now that Una's baby feathers have fluffed up she really does look like a big bumble bee running around the brooder. The other three are Golden quails and I don't know what to call them, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail come to mind. The older quails are in a less attractive stage than Una of beginning to grow their adult feathers and are showing several bald patches.
The story is not finished there though as yesterday afternoon I was again stunned to hear cheeping from the incubator. Amazingly after five days and after I had stopped bothering to add water to the incubator, another chick had hatched. She didn't look as large or as active as Una (who is no longer the one and only) but she made it through the night.
I am going away to the beekeeping  convention now until Sunday (expect the next post to be full of bee news) but I shall leave the incubator switched on just in case.

Back on the Quail Trail

Like getting back in the saddle after a fall, I thought it best to order more eggs and start trying again with the quail as soon as possible. Consequently I am back in the old routine of turning eggs every four hours.

One was damaged on arrival leaving eleven. They have now been in the incubator for 10 days. After 5 days I candled them and found no cracks and no obviously infertile eggs. All was going well. Around day 7 or 8 Ellie wandered into my room 'So how do you torch eggs?' she asked. I was taken aback, setting fire to them had never been my intention, She agreed that the word she had been looking for was candle. I chose one of the lightest eggs to show her, and she nearly dropped it, 'Aargh , it's moving!' she cried in a mixture of fascination and horror as if the tiny embryo was about to burst from the egg and attack her in a recreation of the scene from Alien. Sure enough though, the little red blob of cells, seen when a powerful light is shone through the egg shell, was moving of its own accord, probably put out by the brightness of the light.
So we know one of the embryos at least is alive and kicking.

Requiem for a Quail

Having given the quail at least two days past their hatch date, I finally gave up on them today and decided that they weren't going to hatch.
I switched off the incubator and removed the eggs and then because I wanted to know if it was something I had done that had stopped them hatching, I decided to open the eggs and try to work out what age they had been when they died. Last year, when I tried to incubate chicken eggs, I discovered on opening the non hatching eggs that some of the chicks were fully formed and feathered but dead in the shell. I think they died because I increased the humidity too soon for them, not taking into account a power failure during the incubation.
However the quail were nowhere near that stage, rather unpleasantly they were still at the early embryo stage. I think it is likely that they died when Oliver fell on the incubator.
So I have no other option but to disinfect the incubator and try again.

Screen Printing

I never go a chance on Monday to say that the  screen printing went much better this week than last. I was careful this week to make sure that I kept the drawstring of the bag well away from the screen.

Although there was this one that looked as if someone had squashed the bee on the left!

All in all, I was only limited by the number of bags that I had. Now it's off to order more and to work out whether I want them all this size or whether it would be useful to have some in the next size up.
Still no sign from the quail, I have given up expecting anything from them although I will leave the incubator switched on a while longer.

A Waiting Game

Today, at 10 am to be precise, the quail eggs are due to hatch. They are not automata though and a day either side of the hatch time is quite common. Three days ago I stopped turning the eggs and increased the humidity in the incubator to 75%, hence when I tried to take a photo of the eggs it is impossible to see anything due to the condensation on the incubator window.

According to the books, from the sixteenth day (Saturday) a gentle chirping noise can be heard from inside the shell. I can't say that I have definitely heard anything, but it is easy to get confused between chirping noises  from inside the incubator and chirping noises outside the window, in the garden.
Again according to the books, from the seventeenth day movement of the egg indicates that it is due to hatch. There has definitely been no movement.
All I can do is wait and hope.
Ironically as I don't go out very often, I have two events lined up for today. The first is my second attempt at screen printing, where I am due to go for two hours this afternoon. I may make Rosie stay with the eggs and text me any news. The second event, is my first monthly meeting of the Radish Readers Group tonight. Whilst it would be a shame to miss my first discussion, especially as it is discussing The Daughter of Time, if there is egg breaking activity going on in the incubator at 7.30, there is no way I'm going to leave it.
Although last year's experience of watching a chick hatch was that it took several hours and was thrilling and boring at the same time. I couldn't take my eyes off the egg, as each effort made the crack a bit bigger yet in between efforts the chick would rest for ten to fifteen minutes.
As I said, wait and hope.

All the King's Horses and All the King's Men

Oliver is not an egg.
This is good as yesterday we were called to come and pick him up from nursery where he had been running, tripped and landed on his face and split open his chin. Four hours and a trip to the minor injuries clinic later, he was stuck back together again. Literally. These days instead of stitches they use some sort of magic glue.
However the eggs are eggs, and this morning Oliver managed to fall on the incubator and knock it over. It didn't have far to go as it was already on the floor but it was far enough and now the 11 eggs are down to 6.
Here are the sad casualties:

Most of the cracks are barely visible and show up mainly when candling (shining a high intensity light through the shell) but they are thereand are enough to let infection in to the egg and ultimately infect the other undamaged embryos so I can't risk it but have to discard them.
In more bad news, when I candled the 6 remaining eggs only 3 showed definite signs of life in them. I put all 6 back in the incubator anyway  but the prospect is not good. Depressing news.

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.