KING QUAIL

The king quail commonly kept in Australian aviaries is otherwise known in the UK, Europe and North America as the Button quail or Chinese-painted quail. Its popularity is determined by its size, being the smallest species of quail. They are said to be relatively easy to manage though I would question this. They can be easily tamed if desired. Most of their time is spent on the floor of the aviary working like vacuum cleaners mopping up seed spilt by the other aviary species. Quail readily coexist with finches and budgerigars, although the latter can interfere with the nesting of quail in crowded conditions.

The species is native to India, Southern China, Indonesia, New Guinea, and northern and eastern Australia. This distribution encompasses 10 races or subspecies. The one we keep in captivity in Australia is probably the Chinese subspecies which was imported into Victoria in the mid 1800’s. I have no information concerning survival or extinction of the native Australian subspecies.

Sexual dimorphism is readily apparent from the juvenile period when cocks develop their conspicuous white throat marking. Subsequently the body colouration diverges and becomes distinctly different, except in the white form which we do not appear to have in Australian aviaries. Lifespan of cocks is 3-5 years, and that of hens 2-4 years. Lifespan of the hen can be preserved by ensuring a plentiful supply of calcium to lessen the stress of near continuous egg laying, punctuated only by recurring episodes of incubation and raising of young.

Eggs are laid daily, usually until the nest contains a total of 8-12, but more or less than this number of green or brown speckled eggs is not unusual. Given the small size of the bird they can usually only cover about 8 eggs effectively. The nest usually consists of a depression in the gravel floor in a corner of the aviary, lined by grass if made available. Depending on who you ask the incubation period is somewhere between 18 and 21 days, probably determined by the incubation temperature that can be maintained on the floor of the aviary under the hen. Personally I have never recorded the incubation period. Incubation only begins after the last egg is laid, which means that all chicks that hatch do so virtually simultaneously. They need to be able to feed for themselves.

Quail feed on the small seed mixes routinely given to finches and budgerigars. They relish sprouting seeds, such as those in the various budgie soft food recipes. Greens are readily attacked, especially green seed heads. Any insects venturing in close proximity to quail would have to be suicidal. Synthetic foods such as budgie crumbles are devoured with gusto and powdered mixture such as hydrated budgie starter is an ideal food for the chicks during their first few days until ably to survive on seed alone. Supply of grit is essential since quail do not husk their seed. On concrete floors a large dish of sand is desirable in order to accommodate their regular dirt “baths”.

As with the keeping of most livestock, there can be a range of challenges for the stockman. Some hens won’t sit, they just keep on laying. I have not experienced this with king quail, but have with pharaoh quail, a species where this is a significant problem. There are behavioral problems to overcome, which are not a problem for flock species like finches and budgerigars. Quail are territorial, particularly the cocks. Cocks will continually fight each other in the space available in most normal sized aviaries, in the extreme case until only one remains alive. Some cocks make good parents, with both parents raising the chicks, but other cocks attack and kill the chicks.

The chicks themselves create problems: they are so small that they can pass through normal bird mesh and escape. Furthermore, they are very susceptible to cold. If they get separated from mum who normally covers them, they quickly pass into a cold induced coma. If found in time they can be revived by enclosing them in the cupped palms of one’s hands and blowing warm air onto them until they revive, as we do to save comatose budgie chicks that somehow get out of their nests before they are feathered. As soon as the baby quail hatch in the aviary some breeders enclose them and their mother with a fine mesh cover, or enclose the chicks with a row of bricks (mum stays with her chicks). I remove mother and chicks to a holding cage within the budgie breeding room. Serious quail breeders use incubators, but my concern with that approach is that one might create a strain of quail incapable of raising their own young. Furthermore, the hen needs some respite from egg laying, and that can only happen if she incubates the eggs and raises the chicks herself.

I found an unexpected problem with transfer of the hen and chicks into the budgie breeding room. The cock drove us mad with his incessant calling to his mate. The solution is to run two hens with each cock, leaving one with him at all times. Two hens have the other advantage in that cock quail are determined sex maniacs, and two hens halve the incessant pestering that they would otherwise be subjected to. It would be interesting to know the social structure of these quail in the wild. It would be a safe bet that any young cocks would be driven away by their father as soon as they approached sexual maturity. This basically limits the number of quail one keeps, with numbers directly proportional to the number of aviaries, with an aviary reserved for juveniles to develop, or separate quail pens (aquaria or breeding boxes) if one desires to specialise in quail alone.

The juveniles raised together generally do not start attacking each other until they approach sexual maturity, but onset of aggression is hastened when hens are present. Among a current set of six juveniles, the one hen in the bunch appeared to mature faster than the cocks and developed into the aggressor, featherplucking all 5 immature cocks.

Although they dwell on the floor of the aviary, quail are very good fliers. When startled they rise vertically at a rapid rate, instantly damaging their fragile craniums on the aviary roof. In the wild this is followed by a swift low flight of about a100 metres or so, but few of us have aviaries that long! So this can be another significant problem with the keeping of quail if they are in any way skittish.

Having kept king quail on and off for a few years now, I have observed some unusual behaviour. I have a pair of hens in one aviary that take turns at incubating eggs in the same nest. In another aviary both hens have laid their eggs in the same nest and to incubate sit side by side. On another occasion a nest hatched and both hens (one wasn’t incubating) then took over the role of looking after the chicks (keeping them warm). In stark contrast, on some occasions I have introduced a second hen into a large 5 X 2 metre aviary only to have her killed within hours by the resident hen! Swapping birds around or repairing needs to be carried out with extreme caution.

Many of us keep birds so that we can experiment with breeding a variety of colours made possible by a series of feather colour mutations. Although there are not as many quail mutations as budgie mutations, nevertheless there is some diversity within the king quail. In Australia I have only seen silvers and cinnamons, but in the UK, Europe and North America they also have whites, blueface, golden pearl, splashed, red-breasted and probably others, together with the many composites from combining the above. In Australia with our restricted number of mutations the only possible composite is the silver-cinnamon combination (known as creams in Australia, and I think ivory elsewhere).

The silver was the first of the mutations seen in Australia, during the 1970’s. They were initially referred to as powder blues, subsequently blues, and now as silvers. I am informed that originally they were bluer than is now the case, suggesting some change in modifier gene frequencies have occurred over the past forty or so years. The mutation follows recessive inheritance, and is not sex-linked.

The next of the mutations was the cinnamon, otherwise known as fawn. There is considerable colour variation, prompting some to suggest that there are two mutations. If a reported sex-linked form really does exist then there may well be two mutations. Certainly the cinnamons I breed are recessive, and not sex linked given that I can breed cinnamon cocks from a pair of normals. I assume the sex determining mechanism for quail is the same as in budgies? Although mature cinnamon hens are easily distinguishable from wildtype, as the cinnamon cocks mature they approach the colour of wildtype cocks, but remain deep brown on their backs.

Breeding silver-cinnamons (creams) can be done as follows. Step 1 involves crossing silvers by cinnamons to get normals in the F1 generation. Creams then appear in the F2 generation, at the rate of 1 in 16 chicks, assuming silver and cinnamon is unlinked (on different chromosomes or not close on the same chromosome). However, if the silvers to start with were split cinnamon, or the cinnamons split silver, then silvers and/or cinnamons would appear in the F1, meaning that crosses could then be engineered to produce creams in the F2 at the rate of 1 in 4 chicks.

Strangely, the sex ratio is far from equal with far more cocks than hens bred. Whether this is due to meiotic drive or some other reason I do not know, nor do I know why this skewed sex determination would have evolved. It means however, that one would probably succeed in breeding a cream cock before a cream hen.

In summary, quail fill a niche in the aviary that would otherwise remain vacant. Their territoriality does however provide some challenges. If anyone knows of other mutations anywhere in Australia, I would be interested to hear about these, and how to obtain them.

© John Mulley, January, 2005