[omnipeasant]

One of the quail is missing. I found a hole in the wire today. Someone ( feline I suspect) had pulled the wire away from the wood. Two were still in the pen, two out. I managed to find them, but while I was catchuing one the other disappeared. Any ideas about enticing it back, providing it doesn't get eaten in the mean time. Have spent ages listening and looking in the undergrowth. My only hope is that if I can't find it nothing else has so far! 

[SheepishSophie]

Do you say anything when you feed them? All our birds are 'trained' to come to a 'Coooome on girls, cooome on' in a quite high pitched tone (Quite funny to hear the men do it!) So I quaileys come back when they inevitably fly over our heads! So try saying something you say when you feed them, even if you might not notice yourself saying it?

Other than that maybe a trail of corn or their favorite foodstuffs into a safer area... I can't think of anything else, sorry!

[in the hills]

Over the few years we have kept them, a handful have managed to fly out of their pens, usually when my daughter was catching them so that we could give pens a really good clean. They seem calm one minute and then gone in a flash. On two or three occasions, they have disappeared and we haven't been able to catch them. One male was gone for about 3 days .... thought he had probably been eaten ... then daughter came dashing back to the house and he had made his way home and was in one of our open hen coops .... as it was daytime they were out free ranging. All others came tootling back and circling their pens to get back in after a few hours.


If you have a spare coop of any description you could try leaving the door open, with food inside and hope he returns of his own accord. Put the coop next to the quails proper home. If it helps, we keep an old bath towel handy if we have any fly-aways and we sneak up and throw the towel over them when they return. They tend to be so fast and fly away again, otherwise, as you approach. My 10 year old is expert at catching them now and the neighbouring farmers know what she is doing when she runs across their fields with towel flying.    Bonkers.


Good luck 

[SheepishSophie]

Our neighbour who part-owns the birds had to whip off his shirt the other day to throw over one that didn't want to come back in! It was quite a site!

[omnipeasant]

Thanks for your input. I do talk to them, call them quaillies when I feed, but this lot have never been tame or responded in any way. Will try to hatch my own next time. I used a towel to catch the first one, good idea. Trouble is I have a very wild garden so she might be anywhere, or eaten by the cats! I kept the cats in all night but had to let them go this morning. I hoped it would be lurking outside the arc by then.

I will try listening for quail calls again today. I could send in the jack russel, but i doubt I would get the bird back alive    

[in the hills]

We hatched our own and they are handled well and talked to ..... just like the hens and everything else. Unfortunately mine have never become "tame". They do seem to know the call which means I'm throwing them some millet or whatever but wouldn't come back if called. One minute they can seem quite calm and can be stroked etc. .... next minute they seem spooked and scatter.

[Beeducked]

I have hatched and hand reared them and although they will be "tame" in terms of not panicking and braining themselves on the roof when you try to go near them and will tolerate being handled, when they are out they are gone!