House climate for quail — warmth, fresh air and the draught

Quail lay best at twenty to twenty-two degrees. If the temperature falls to sixteen degrees, laying performance drops; below ten degrees laying stops altogether. Just as important as the warmth is the air: fresh air has to come in, moisture and ammonia have to go out — and all of that without creating a draught. Quail are markedly sensitive to draughts, and they show one earlier than any instrument could.

Temperature

These figures apply to the laying flock, not to rearing — chicks need considerably more warmth in the first weeks, and locally under the brooder, not throughout the room.

What matters is the direction in which you draw conclusions from them. A short cold day costs nothing; a house that stands at twelve degrees for weeks costs the winter's laying performance. If you have no heated room, work on insulation and wind protection before you think about heating: a dry, draught-free house holds its temperature better on its own than a draughty one in which a heater works against an open door.

And the second conclusion: a laying pause in winter is normal in cool keeping and not a sign of illness. To avoid it you need warmth AND light; one alone will not do.

Fresh air

Fresh air has to keep coming in. As a guide, at least one and a half cubic metres per hour in the cold season and five cubic metres per hour in the warm one. The difference is not a contradiction but the answer to two different tasks: in winter it is about carrying moisture and ammonia away without taking the warmth with them; in summer it is about carrying warmth away.

What the air has to transport arises in the house itself: breath moisture, moisture from the droppings, ammonia from droppings breaking down. All three collect at floor level and in the bedding, and all three are carried off by dry, slowly moving air. A house that stings your nose when you open the door does not have an ammonia problem — it has a ventilation problem.

The draught and its early warning sign

Here is the most useful practical hint in quail keeping, and it costs nothing:

Feather loss on the back is the first sign of a draught in the house.

Not coughing, not a drop in performance — the back. Look at it regularly and you notice the problem while it is still just a gap. Bare patches on the back do have other causes too — feather pecking, moult, an over-eager male — but a draught is the cause you can check fastest: smoke or a sheet of paper at bird height shows within a minute whether air is moving through.

The places where draughts arise are nearly always the same: the gap under the door, the joint at the window frame, the space between the wall and the row of cages, the open vent right behind the birds. A batten, a curtain of plastic sheet, a shifted row of cages usually fixes it.

Density and calm

How closely the birds sit belongs to the climate: every bird gives off warmth and moisture, and the tighter it gets, the more the air has to carry away. In cage keeping, about 120 to 130 square centimetres of floor area per bird is the guide.

Both directions have their price. Too tight leads to feather pecking — the most common consequence of too high a stocking density. Too loose is no good either: the birds are more restless and eat more without producing more eggs. So if you have space, do not spread it generously over a few birds; keep to the range and use the rest for a second pen.

Water

Water belongs to the climate, even if it is rarely filed there. Too little water lowers laying performance, and with a lasting shortage laying stops. In summer the birds drink considerably more, and a drinker that was enough in April is not enough in July.

So check two things: whether water is there, and whether all of them can reach it. In a flock a few birds control access; the lower-ranking ones drink last and too little if there is only one place. Several drinking points are cheaper than a dip in performance.

The height of the cages

One point that plays into the climate although it sounds like equipment: quail fly straight up when startled. In a tall cage they gather speed doing so and injure their heads. That is why cage height stays below twenty centimetres, with fifteen regarded as the optimum — not to save space, but so that the upward flight path is too short to cause injury.

That also explains why calm in the house is a health matter: for this bird every fright is a possible impact. Announce yourself when you enter — light on, voice, and only then the door.

The figures and reference values in this article follow the specialist literature on quail keeping — Stele, Osmanyan, Afanasyev, "Egg production in poultry keeping", chapter on the technology of quail egg production.