Well, we are getting a steady tickle of quails eggs. I think we have 10 now in total. There are probably two quails laying as we are getting two eggs a day, although I have read that they can lay twice in a day.
The quail with the bitten neck has been joined by another one that I found pecked at the weekend. They are in a bird cage which we found in the charity shop, and we are using this as isolation cage whilst we try to sort out the males and females. I had thought that the ones with the pecked heads were girls (refer to last post), however these quails have not laid eggs, and I have found the eggs in the other house. Which means that either they are ladies, and have given up laying because of their sore heads, or that they are males who have been hen pecked – literally. I want to make up trios of two females and a male, which is why I am trying to work out who’s who.
We wondered, for about three minutes, why quails have never become domesticated pets. Within an extremely short amount of time, having had the poorly one in the house we realised why. For small birds, they are extremely noisy and messy. We could hear the trilling of the quail when we were in the bedroom and the quail downstairs in the living room. It also competed with the dogs when they were barking. And won. It also seemed to spit bits of chewed up newspaper out of its cage and on to the window cill, leaving little piles of papier mache stuck there looking like bird poo. It was quite a relief to get them back outside.
When we found the other one with the chewed neck, we put it into the cage with the first, and they started to fight. We forgot our lesson from the chicks which is to make sure that when introducing birds to each other in a cage or box, to make sure it is a neutral one. We took them out of the first ones box and put them both in the new bird cage and they stopped fighting immediately and started trilling quite happily.
The ram lambs in the stable have been getting used to being fed by hand, which is good, although one of them is still quite nervous of me. The rest of the sheep are still waiting for me in the morning for their food, and can be seen making their way across the field to wait at the gate for us.
I trimmed Billy at the weekend and he looks distinctly better, although I did need to give him sleeping tablets to get him to stay still.
We bought our Christmas present on Sunday, some pictures. They are by the daughter of a fellow stall holder from Grainger Street market. We were opposite his stall last week and could see these prints and couldn’t work out what they were, but on closer inspection they were pen and ink drawings of ladies who are a bit ‘Dangerous Liasons’, Paris backstreets, Kennith Williams, Gerald Scarf…. So you know exactly what I mean!