Chinese painted quail: breed description and characteristics, breeding

Quails are not large, but they are also grown for meat and eggs. These birds belong to different breeds. Consider the description and characteristics of the Chinese painted quail, the pros and cons of the breed, the rules for keeping and feeding birds, caring for them. Features of breeding Chinese quail and protection against diseases at home.

Features, description and characteristics of the painted Chinese breed

Chinese quail belongs to the pheasant family. The birds are small in size, the weight of an adult is 45-70 g. Females are smaller than males and differ from them not only in size and weight.You can determine a bird by gender by plumage. Females (like many wild birds) are grey-brown, inconspicuous. Males are dark brown with a blue-gray chest, dark red belly feathers, and black and white neck feathers. The wings may have a light pattern composed of brown feathers. The beak is black in both sexes, and the legs are orange or yellow.

The body length of the Chinese quail is up to 14 cm in the male and up to 12.5 cm in the female. From them you can get eggs weighing 10 g. Females start laying eggs at the age of 6 months, 150-200 pieces are demolished per season. Quail eggs are considered a dietary food, they contain a lot of vitamins, for example, to get the daily intake of vitamin D, you need to eat 2 pieces a day.

Good and bad sides

Dignity of Chinese quail:

• unpretentiousness, you can keep them in cages or small enclosures;
• fed on standard food;
• Chicks hatch well in the incubator.

Flaws:

• small size and weight,
• heat-loving birds, need to be kept in a heated room in winter;
• under poor conditions they pluck each other's feathers.

Despite the shortcomings of the breed, farmers and poultry farmers willingly grow it for their own consumption of meat and eggs.

Maintenance, care and feeding

Quails do not take up much space, they can be kept in any utility room and even in an apartment. They can live in a mesh cage, but it should not be too tight, 10 cm of area should be allocated for 1 bird. Cells can be placed in tiers on top of each other.In an apartment, Chinese quails can be placed on a closed balcony or loggia so that there is no unpleasant smell in the room.

The room should always be warm, even in winter it is necessary to maintain a constant temperature not lower than +10 °C and not higher than +25 °C. In the cold, Chinese quails will not lay.

If the room is small, you can heat with portable oil radiators. There should be no drafts in the room. Proper lighting is another indispensable condition for keeping quails. The length of daylight hours should be 18 hours, it is supported by artificial lighting. Then the light is turned off for 2 hours, then turned on again for 2 hours and then turned off again for 2 hours. To create such a scheme, it is convenient to use a system that will automatically turn the light on and off.

Chinese quail care consists of cleaning the cage, feeding and watering the birds. The floor in the cage is made of a fine mesh, a tray is placed below, into which the litter falls.To avoid smell, ventilate the room every day. Feeders are hung from the outside of the cage wall, birds stick their heads through the net and eat food. Drinkers put ordinary or nipple. Laid eggs roll down the sloping floor into a special bin for easy picking.

Chinese quails are fed 5 times a day, after they reach 1 month, 3 times. The first food for them is a soft, easily digestible mixture of boiled eggs, cut into pieces of greens, the smallest grain. A drinker can be arranged from an inverted 0.5 l jar placed on a saucer.

Adult quails of the Chinese breed are fed with mashes of millet, grain chips, grass, grated root crops. You can give them some chopped fruits and berries. In winter, the diet can be enriched with dried herbs, grated carrots. Drinking water should be warm and always clean.

Like other birds, Chinese quails need coarse sand for digestion. It is washed, dried, poured into a small container and placed in a cage.

Chinese breed quails can be fed throughout their lives with compound feed. They grow well on it and rush. Feeding compound feed is convenient, it is stored for a long time, does not deteriorate in a dry and dark place.

Breeding and protection from diseases

The ratio of breeding males and females among Chinese quails should be as follows: 1 quail 3 quails. Different families need to be placed separately; when living together, males will fight with each other. Only females can be kept together for eggs and males for fattening for meat. It is better to breed quails in an incubator, and not under a hen. An ordinary home incubator will do just fine for this task.You need to lay in it a hatching egg from a thoroughbred bird in order to get purebred quail.

Quail suffer from infectious diseases and eating disorders. Birds are given antibiotics to prevent infections. In order to avoid disorders, it is necessary to monitor the diet and feeding regimen. In the event that diseases or nutritional disorders are detected, sick quails are planted separately and treated. He althy livestock are soldered for preventive purposes, drugs are taken in smaller doses than usual.

Chinese quails are raised by poultry farmers for meat and eggs. But because of the beautiful plumage, they can be bred and kept as a decorative bird. The maintenance, feeding and breeding of Chinese quails is no different from the cultivation of these birds of other varieties, therefore, they should not cause difficulties for an experienced owner.

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