Twenty coturnix, hatched about six weeks ago, and for the last few days there has been a low croaking coming out of the pen. I genuinely went looking for a frog in the run before I worked out it was one of the birds.
It is intermittent rather than constant, and whoever is doing it seems fine otherwise. Is this a noise quail make, and is there any chance it is telling me one of them has something wrong?
Worth being precise about what separates a call from a symptom, because people hear croak and reach for antibiotics. A call happens occasionally and in a context: he does it, he stops, he goes back to scratching about.
The thing to listen for is whether the noise is attached to his breathing. A rattle or a click on every breath in and out is a different animal from a croak every few minutes.
Mine started at about five weeks and sounded broken for a fortnight. Then one morning it was a proper crow.
The list that would make me separate a bird and ring somebody: gurgling or rattling or clicking with each breath, an open bill or gasping, bubbles or discharge at the nostrils or eyes, swelling round the face, sneezing and head shaking, or a bird sitting fluffed and off its feed.
Respiratory infections move through a pen, so the separating comes first and the phone call second. With twenty birds in one run that is worth knowing before you need it.
@crow_practice · last wk. · 3 replies
Six weeks old and a croak that comes and goes is a young male working up to his crow. The adult call is a short burst of harsh notes, their version of a rooster, and the early attempts come out gurgly and croaky before they settle into it.
You are about to have several of them doing it. Coturnix make a much wider range of noises than people expect: soft trills and purring while they forage, a repeated urgent call from anyone separated from the group, and a sharp alarm that makes the whole pen freeze.
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@froggy_in_the_pen · last wk.
So the croaking is effectively how I find out which ones are boys?
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@chest_markings · last wk.
It is one of the easier ways once they are a few weeks on, yes. Crowing is a strong male signal and hens stay softer. Put it together with chest markings, which differ between the sexes in most coturnix varieties, rather than relying on the noise alone.
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