Chinese Button Quails

[BillD]

I've read some posts on button quail, but I didn't see anything on Chinese Button Quail. Maybe I missed them.

Came across this bay sale and they look really pretty.
http://cgi.ebay.com/12-extra-CHINESE-PA ... %26ps%3D20

They have really nice coloring. Does anyone have experience with these?

(realize I'd have to incubate them. I did that a few decades ago with chicken eggs and a fish tank. hehe)

[Sally]

No experience with any button quail, but these are particularly beautiful!

[Ursula]

Button quail = Chinese painted quail = Chinese painted button quail ..... It's all the same...

Here are a few sites with helpful information:

http://www.cyberquail.com/

http://www.zebrafinch.com/NewButtonquail/MainQuail.html

http://www.voy.com/13979/

I have buttons in my aviary, they are fun and lovely birds and come in all sorts of color mutations. I didn't incubate eggs, I actually bought 2 pairs from a breeder and got them shipped because I couldn't find a breeder near me. They lay a lot of eggs when they are young and if you don't want babies you can collect the eggs, hard boil them and feed them to your birds. (I also "blew out" some eggs and used them to make tiny painted Easter eggs... ) After 1 year I let my hens sit on eggs and had 8 babies that luckily hatched from the 2 females (4 each) only a few days apart. I had to give some away because buttons are NOT SOCIAL birds. They do best in pairs! If you have too many you will have some fighting. I still have 3 of my original birds (one female died recently) and 2 of the male offspring. I do have my 1 female in a separate cage within the aviary because she was getting too much "attention" from the males, they were chasing her to exhaustion. If you have a smaller aviary I recommend you get only 1 pair, and have babies only if you know what to do with them once they are grown. The babies are too cute though!

I couldn't imagine my aviary without them! They clean up spilled seeds from the floor and love to eat seed moths and other little insects. (I even saw them attack pretty big roaches that I had in my aviary for a while before I could (hopefully!) get rid of them by putting up traps.) They do need their special diet too besides finch seed, they do best with game bird crumbles high in protein. They also like mealworms of course...

[JohnBoy]

I raise button quail. I have a few hundred of them. I do not keep them in my aviaries when birds have young. Please note that some will kill and eat baby birds that fall out of the nest. Some will peck to death and eat fledglings that can't escape their grasp. They do not bother adult birds. And if not kept clean as Nixity says, they stink to high heaven!
I have these 3 pieds in my aviary with my larger finches. They will be removed when I have hatchlings in nests.

[CandoAviary]

Yikes

[nixity]

I had buttons

I bought shipping eggs from Ebay and incubated them.
My roommate at the time's father built me this beautiful, elaborate outdoor coop (in Florida) for the buttons and my single, gorgeous, Columbian Bantam Cochin hen.

Prior to that, I had 4 other Cochins, and a small duckling..
The 5 buttons I had out-stunk all of the other fowl to HIGH HEAVEN.

They are really not suitable to be kept indoors in larger numbers (I would say no more than 1-3 per 6ft aviary).. they really do smell, really, really horribly. I'm not sure what it is.
They also have a terrible habit of shooting straight up into the air when they are startle - potentially knocking themselves unconscious or potentially even severely injuring any birds they may run into in their fits of anxiety.

Even though I incubated mine and hand raised them, once they were "on their own" they became very flighty and skittish..
I couldn't deal with them again.. though I would love to have another Cochin or Silkie.. she was so friendly and fluffy and just adorable.

[BillD]

I had no idea they were stinky birds. They do look pretty though. Thanks for all the advice.

[mickp]

have a dozen running around in my aviary ( 3 cocks & 9 hens) and have never had a problem.
they leave the finches alone, the birds even share a food and water dish.
even when they have young they pose no problems for the finches

[Pukasand]

I have 3. One is a male left from a pair I bought, the female 'boinked' and broke her neck. The other 2 are, fortunately, female, from eggs that I bought on ebay and incubated myself. They all get along fine, but I think that is due to the 1 male/2 female ratio. They and the finches all get along and even eat together. The only problem I had was feeling guilty of only getting 2 viable chicks out of 12 eggs. I was very careful about being exact and sterile. Also, I was getting up in the middle of the night to turn the eggs. My incubator doesnt have an automatic turner, so I was doing it by hand. It was a wonderful project, though, and they really are 'cute as a button'. (That's where the phrase came from). I ordered the 'crumble' feed from an ebayer also. I got chick feed and adult feed for a very reasonable price. Oh, I don't find that mine have any kind of odor, either. Mine are a blue 'frizzle', pearl and brown w/gold tips. I put them in a screened 10 gal. aquarium when they hatched, with a 60 watt black light resting on 2 upright bricks for heat. At one week old, the dark one got out of it so I put them in the flight with the male. He, literally, took them under his wings and nurtured them! I was amazed. Good luck if you try them.

[Ursula]

I think the probably smell more than other birds but if you clean regularly you shouldn't have a problem with that. Maybe it also depends on their diet!?

Mine get along great with all other birds.

The problem with my female is the male (4) to female (1) ratio. I agree, more females than males is ideal.

[emessis]

Though we no longer have them now, we kept buttons indoors for sometime and only ever had fighting issues when there were too many males. Even two males was sometimes too much... As for the smell, these guys weren't horribly stinky unless you went and got practically right into their cage. They're great little birds, we loves HEE HEE HEEing back at them when they began calling.

[Hilary]

I have eight of them, and haven't noticed any smell either. They've attacked their own hatchlings (the only time I didn't really pay attention to a pair incubating), but I've never had one hurt a finch. I think they're amusing, and every visitor asks about the pair in the cage in my living room. I feed Purina game chow (the unmedicated), and keep only one pair or a single female in each cage.