Always love to see your videos and hear from you ❤

@Pavlovafowl

10 ай бұрын

Aww! Thank you so much for that lovely comment. You made my day! We've been have some real issues with internet speed here, so I've not been able to upload anything for quite a while but fingers crossed that is now resolved. All the very best from sunny Normandie, Sue xx

We have so many trees on our 3/4 acre. A few years ago, our neighbor asked if we wanted an above ground pool they had had for a summer for their niece. It's a plastic frame with a liner about 5 meters across. The wind had caught it when it was empty and pushed it over onto a fence and it had ripped. My husband set it up in the back, cut out the bottom of the liner and now we put almost all the leaves in there to mulch. Now and then he'll stir it up and let the chickens in there to find the worms and grubs. By late summer, he's moving the whole thing and turning and turning it into compost and the chickens have a nearly daily feast for a week or two. The rest of the leaves that aren't composted there are mulched down and used as deep bedding in their fenced pen area for winter when they aren't free-ranging so much and I'm at work. They scratch through it all winter, add their manure, and we top it off now and then. We dig it out in spring to add to the compost when they get turned out into a large fenced yard for the summer. They just love the mulchy leaf piles. Even a pile of dry leaves is great fun to scratch through!

@Pavlovafowl

9 ай бұрын

What a wonderful idea! Thank you so much for sharing, I love how you used something that would have been thrown away to make a great food and fun area for your chickens! We actually tried to have a pond once but we never had enough water in the Summer months to keep it supplied so we filled it in but it provides a damp area where invertebrates proliferate and it regularly gets filled with leaves from the tress around it - so a great scratching area like yours. All the very best from Normandie, Sue xx

🌞🍁☀🐞🌟🌼☘🏵🐝🌷🍃🍂 simply lovely - thank you xx

@Pavlovafowl

9 ай бұрын

You are so welcome! Thank you for commenting, I really appreciate it. I am having such huge internet problems with 0 upload speed, I didn't even realise that was possible when we still have an internet service of sorts! I am so grateful that I still get views and comments because I can't actually keep uploading as much content as I would like. All the very best from Normandie, Sue xx

always love to see your video ❤

@Pavlovafowl

9 ай бұрын

Aaww! Thank you so much! I'm trying to do more but our internet here out in the wilds is pretty terrible at the moment, at one point we had an upload speed of 0! I thought it was getting better but just as I'd managed to edit a whole load of stuff, it took another plummet. Hopefully though having complained yet again we will get something sorted. Watch this space! All the very best Sue xx

Hiya Sue. Lovely video. My girls are my ground maintenance crew. They are a great help clearing beds. Exciting news - I had a mummy quail hatch seven chicks a couple of weeks ago. All doing well. 😊. Question for you, I have been feeding them quail chick starter crumb and giving them dried meal worms as a treat. At two weeks old, what else can I feed them. Would they be able to cope with cabbage, lettuce, etc? How about millet seeds etc. Take care. Mags.

@Pavlovafowl

10 ай бұрын

Hi there Mags thanks so much for your comments and what wonderful news! Your Mummy Quail is a real star because I've found many female quail to be really a bit blasé about covering and they tend to let the eggs go off in all directions unless they have a really well dug, deep nest at the start. So here's my take on baby quail food. The last lot my quail hatched, I'd been doing a lot of reading around wild bird diets and I'd found that even graminivores feed their chicks on an almost exclusive invertebrate diet - so that's what I did and I had the best general growth and certainly feather growth ever. I fed no grain whatsoever but just tipped out a load of compost for them to search through and of course I have my mealworm 'farm' boxes too. I also put out a lot of greenery for them, the mother quail called them to it and she broke up the lettuce and cabbage leaves for them, after which they had a go on their own. I also fed hard-boiled and scrambled egg. One interesting thing that occurred as they grew to adulthood - they really didn't like grain, in fact they still prefer meal worms, egg and greenery but they will eat sprouted grain and some of the flattened five cereals I get from the organic shop but basically they are not keen. Just thoughts but that was my experience and it was doable for me because we have so may compost heaps and ant nests with very delicious and nutritious eggs! Much love from Normandie, Sue xx and a big hug to all the quail and chickens

@Pavlovafowl

10 ай бұрын

millet etc.,, sorry forgot about that. Again I looked at the composition of most seeds and there are a lot of what might be classed as 'anti-nutrients' in them, particularly if they are unhulled, whole grain. These are what protects the seed because actually unless that is an integral part of its cycle of propagation, no plant wants its seeds eaten. Having no hooves, claws and teeth, the plant uses various compounds, polyphenols, tannins, oxalates, phytates, which are essentially toxins which protect them by stopping creatures repeat eating them. Interestingly, adult animals, birds and hens included, do eat foods containing these to use as internal parasite control but they are not always able to get the rest of the nutrient out of them because the compounds prevent bioavailability. Therefore, I am always wary of feeding chicks dried seeds of any kind although sprouting or cooking can redress some of these issues. Then there is the vexed question of linoleic acid in seeds....so for me - I just stick to invertebrates and salad! Hope this is of use Sue xx

Q: do you know a way to keep excess quail males, without them fighting? Thank you for your videoes 💜🌸🙂

@Pavlovafowl

6 ай бұрын

Hi there Emma, outside the breeding season, I find everyone gets on fine it is during the breeding season, and often after my quail have paired off that they become territorial, this is particularly over nesting areas. Looking at the small amount of literature that has been written about natural quail keeping, including one academic study, even in quite a large space, only one bonded pair ever seem to be able to nest in peace, without some type of 'battle' breaking out. My guess is that in the wild nesting sites are quite far apart and this is probably to allow for maximum protection from predators. In my experience therefore, once your quail enter the breeding season and pair off you need to provided separate areas or solid divisions within your breeding area so that the pairs are kept apart from each other and can nest in peace. For the unattached males, usually the much younger ones, I do find these get on OK together but as with everything 'bird', you have to teat them as individuals and there are no set rules. I just go by observation and try to prevent conflict before it happens by making sure there is enough space to accommodate all needs. The females don't seem so bothered, they are quite happy to share nest sites but it is the males who seem to be so particular and who indeed do seem to be in charge of finding the sites and digging out and creating the nests. After some days of sitting, I have also found that even in bonded pairs the female will sometimes chase off the male, so it's not just the males that fight! Hope this helps and all the very best from Normandie, Sue xx