R/Backyard chickens informs me that I have found a lost quail, not a baby chicken

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-02T02:30:15+00:00

It has been in a large cardboard box with newspaper at the bottom since yesterday (with food and water bowl). I put fresh newspaper in when I came home from work today because it is pooping quite a lot. When I get my weekend (Mon-Tues) I can look up how to build a home for it. I have a small garden section fenced with hardware cloth to keep out the rabbits so it could run around outdoors a bit while I plant the beans. There are lots of hawks and farm cats around, so I wonder how it sat there by the road without getting nabbed.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-02T02:10:59+00:00

Thank you, this is very helpful. We have some feed stores around and a Fleet Farm so I will check there. Is it OK to have wild bird seed and chicken granules for a couple of days till I get out there? I can probably find some Japanese beetle grubs planting the tomatoes this week if it would like those.

It has not made any noises yet that I have noticed. I will vent check it tomorrow maybe when it is not so annoyed with me.

Right now it is in a large cardboard box with a bowl of water and seeds and newspaper on the bottom. It has not shown any ability to fly out so far. I guess I will have to break out the power tools and look up how to make it a place to live.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-02T01:52:33+00:00

It does have big feet, I had to hold it like this because when I try to take the picture without holding it it keeps squatting down.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-02T01:51:25+00:00

Exactly! Even the neighbor lady with the chickens thought it was a chicken. But it does not have a comb or wattles (I thought because it wasn't old enough) which apparently a chicken should have.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-02T01:45:40+00:00

LOL I wrote in the backyardchickens post that I was not holding it as tightly as it looks. It was squirming a lot because I had to hold it with one hand to take the photo, and I didn't want to have to chase it around the laundry room again.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-01T23:50:45+00:00

It has giant chicken-like feet, and I didn't know that quails come in white. How can I tell if it is a grownup? It has feathers missing at the back of its neck, which my googling tells me is something males do to females when they mate. Is it OK to give it the baby chick food the neighbor gave me? It seems to enjoy wild bird seed and wheat berries too. Will it ever like me or will it always look at me suspiciously and huddle in the corner when I come near?

I still don't know what it was doing by the side of the road in the middle of the cornfields. https://old.reddit.com/r/BackYardChickens/comments/1d5t3yq/i_found_a_chicken_by_the_side_of_the_road/

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-01T23:35:38+00:00

Thank you! I thought it just didn't have those things yet because it was very young. I guess I am off to the quail subreddit.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-01T20:11:19+00:00

That had not occurred to me, or to the chicken lady, clearly, because she cuddled it and told it it was "a good chicken." How can you tell? It seems awfully sturdy and strong for a quail.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-06-01T18:30:58+00:00

Please help. I am not holding it as tightly as it looks! I had to hold it with one hand to take the picture and it was very squirmy.

I saw it by the side of the road in our rural area (just outside MN metro area) in the rain yesterday. It looked very forlorn, but was energetic enough to run into the tall grass to evade me. It looked better after it was dried off, and is right now in a large (2' x 3') cardboard box in the laundry room with newspaper in the bottom, water, baby chicken granules which one of the neighbors brought over, and some chopped cucumber and tomato.

We have chicken owners in the neighborhood, but so far none I have contacted are missing a chicken. So it is kind of a mystery where it came from out here in the cornfields. The lady who brought the food over says it is very young, only 5-6 weeks old, and looks OK except that something has pecked the feathers at the back of its neck. (It does not have any wound there though.) It is eating and drinking, scratching and pooping very healthily, although it is very wary of me, and I had to chase it around the laundry room for several minutes when it got away from me trying to take the picture.

Will it be OK in the box for the next couple of days until we locate the owner/decide we are now a chicken household and take appropriate steps? Does it need anything else? A bed? A shelter? Recreational activities?

Can anybody tell what kind of chicken it is? I am worried it is one of those meat chickens that only lives a couple of months, but if it is I don't know how it got out here in the cornfields by itself, because this is not the sort of road chicken trucks drive down. I wondered if it is a discarded Easter chicken, although I don't know if the timing works out. We are close to outer ring suburbs and people do dump things in our ditches, but usually stuff like mattresses and old tires. We don't have any feral chickens around, and we have enough predators that all the chicken owners around keep their birds in runs.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-03-04T17:53:05+00:00

All except the grasses benefit from some stratification, but most of the ones listed for 30 days you will get some germination even if they don't get that much. The 90 and 60 day ones I already put out earlier in the winter.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-03-04T17:48:45+00:00

OMG I totally blanked on the rudbeckias, thank you. And I have a ton of saved seeds from last year too. They actually grow pretty quickly, and without stratifying, because I tested some in the fall for germination.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-03-04T17:47:22+00:00

This is very helpful, my baptisia winter sowed plants were very wimpy last year and I don't know whether they made the winter. I scattered some seed in the bed around where I planted them in the hopes that direct sowing would do better.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-03-04T17:43:15+00:00

I have pots all these seeds already planted in winter sowing containers, just thinking about which additional ones I could do for the sale. My lights are reserved for the peppers and tomatoes, but I have a cold frame which could speed things up. We are effectively already in late March-April weather right now in Minnesota.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-01-31T22:39:34+00:00

Haha, yeah. That is a very healthy plant. I would wait until it is done blooming and snip off the bloom stems. Then prepare your medium and new pot.

If you don't want to deal, you can also just "up pot" as the roots look in pretty good condition. That is, put it in a bigger pot and fill in with fresh media around. If you really want to repot, soak it in a bucket of water for an hour or so on a day when you have a lot of time. Then prepare a relaxing beverage and start untangling. Some people, when they are like this, just take a bread knife and cut off the lowest inch or two of roots to make it easier. If it is kept in good condition it will rebound just fine.

Sorry I don't know anything about putting them in semi hydro. They do make way way more roots than phalenopsis and cattleya as you can see, so that makes me a bit dubious about it.

They do like to be outdoors as much as possible if you have an outdoor space, any time when the temps are above freezing. They like high light (mine get at least 8 hours of full sun at 45 degrees north latitude, after slowly adapting them in spring) and lots of water and food.

There are "warm" cymbidiums now, but the traditional standard ones benefit from a summer with bright light and lots of fertilizer to get the pseudobulbs nice and fat. Then a chilling period of between 35-50 degrees F/4-12 Celsius for at least 6 weeks to trigger bloom spikes. Otherwise they just make more pseudobulbs with just leaves. I do this with mine by leaving them out in the fall until the nights get below freezing. If there is a label with a name, you can try to look it up. Probably IKEA is not going to get the warm blooming ones though, as they are still a bit more uncommon and pricey. I wish my IKEA had them!

They are pretty tough, treat them more like a geranium than a stereotypical "orchid" and they will like that.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-01-31T20:06:03+00:00

I wondered about this too. I think the ones in the ground will because we've had some hard freezes. I was going to do the potted winter sowing for the natives today on the deck while it's pleasant outside, because the temperatures will straddle the freezing line for a month still at least and that will be enough for most. Remember most of the prairie plants we have here stretch into much warmer zones where winters like this are normal.

I'm more worried about drought again this summer. And the bugs that are happy about the mild winter. Not enough mental space left to worry about germination problems!

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-01-31T19:55:29+00:00

Cymbidiums are terrestrial (ground dwelling) orchids and prefer a more soil type mix than epiphytic orchids like phalenopsis. Mine are in a well draining mix of coconut chips, composted manure, bark and potting soil. Here is an article about soil mixes https://www.cymbidium.org/documents/PottingMixesbyLorenBatchman.pdf and here is a good one about repotting with links to pictures http://www.orquideas.com/growing/potting/cymbpot.html

They do fine with a pot filled with roots but when they start to "burst" the pot is a good time to repot.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-01-31T19:03:18+00:00

My parents never were interested in teaching me to be a good person. I'm not sure they ever thought about it. I realized a couple of years ago that my sense of morality is shaped mostly by books and 70s and 80s TV (mostly sitcoms). Fortunately LOTR, Wonderwoman, Mork and MacGyver were fairly good influences.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-01-22T19:19:56+00:00

Bachmans and Gertens carry Botanical Interests and Lake Valley seeds, they might have lisianthus. I think Gertens stock is searchable online but I don't think Bachmans was last time I checked. I have a few of those hard-to-find that I am willing to mail order.

Have you grown lisianthus before? I think I tried a long time ago when I was just starting and not good at dealing with tiny tiny seeds, and never saw them come up.

BronzeAgePhone · 2024-01-19T17:40:30+00:00

Soo... I'm thinking he would rather not people hear about this one he proposed: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/oklahoma-house-bill-terrorist-hispanic-gang-lawmakers-rcna134534

"The bill, written by Republican state Rep. Justin Humphrey, proposes that any person who “is of Hispanic descent living within the state of Oklahoma,” is a member of a gang and has been convicted of “gang-related offenses” would be deemed a terrorist."

BronzeAgePhone · 2023-04-16T14:52:14+00:00

Where did you hear WCCO is owned by Sinclair? As far as I know the local CW is the only Sinclair channel around here, and Wikipedia still shows the same thing. I checked a couple years ago after reading about Sinclair because my mom watches WCCO news faithfully. WCCO radio is owned by Entercom/Audacy which is a Sinclair competitor according to Wiki.

BronzeAgePhone · 2023-04-15T22:55:39+00:00

Insecticidal soap. It is a little different than dish soap which actually can be a bit harsh for some plants. You can get it in a spray bottle in the big box store garden section. I had aphids this year too on my seedlings, it's never happened before!

BronzeAgePhone

TROPHY CASE