The Parent Trap - Day 4

Comfort food. That's what was in the Coleman cooler that accompanied our chicks. Specifically, frozen Japanese quail. The frozen part I know you will understand. but why Japanese quail? Well, they are small, a bit smaller than a pigeon, have a decent amount of flesh on them (and you would be surprised how little flesh a big bird has on it) and they are relatively easy to raise for the purpose. Oh, and most importantly, peregrines don't like chicken. Seriously, they don't like light coloured meat and quail is darker. So the chicks arrived late last night and I got them home, installed them in one of our bathrooms - easy to clean, has a fan, more soundproofed than other rooms and the door locks so no unexpected guests. Birds stress easily and though these chicks are captive-bred then are not hand-raised and they are wary/distrustful of humans. Exactly the way we want chicks that are being released into the wild. With birds safely ensconced in their bed-and-breakfast, it was time for me to do something about said breakfast. Oh, did I mention that the chicks need to be fed every four hours? I know that the parents among you will be able to relate! So after poking at the first of many quail, I decided that the kitchen knives that have always seen eminently suitable for every task were not going to be of much assistance, so off I went to unearth my dissecting kit with its lovely, sharp scapel. I will refrain from recounting the technical aspects of the process to your imaginations and simply say that when I was done, I had quail breast for my guests. It was shortly after midnight on Friday morning, the chicks had settled down, the house was quiet and time for room service at Casa del Chick, so with forceps and quail in hand, I went to introduce myself.

There was no way to feed the chicks in their carrier, so I had to find a way to give them the support they needed when sitting up. "Our" chicks were hatched on June 10th and 12th, so 17 and 15 days old respectively. Too young to know the gender without a blood test and growing so fast that their joints are still a bit loose. Mostly they sit on their butts and "walk" by popping and pulling themselves along with their feet rather than actually walking - not enough strength or coordination yet. So when feeding them, I wanted to be sure that a) they were stable because they would be grabbing for the food and b) safe from falling or injuring themselves while I had my hands full. My solution, a towel in the bathroom sink. Worked like a dream.



The chicks ate their fill - you can see their distended crops full of dinner, its the bald spot in the middle of their breasts - and then went back into their carrier to nap until their next meal at about 4 am. Seeing how much they were eating already, I set to work on another couple of quail, cleaned up the kitchen, set my alarms (plural) and went to bed. Needless to say, 4 am came too quickly but the excitement of being a new temporary foster mum made it easy to bounce out of bed and head off to the bathroom with forceps and bite-sized pieces of quail. The 8 am feeding also brought with it rain and high winds and the acknowledgement that I was going to be taking the chicks to the Hotel today, or at least not unless it warmed up alot by mid/late afternoon. It wasn't until very late afternoon that it started to clear by which time, it was too late to take the chicks to the Hotel for any length of time before the temperatures dropped below the threshold for chicks outside on their own in a nestbox. So with extra time and the chicks secure, I went chick food shopping, or rather, supplemental chick food shopping as nothing is as appealing as quail but as I didn't know how long it would take for Trey and Princess to foster the chicks (if they agreed to foster the chicks) I needed to ration the quail and add in other meat. Chick thighs and chicken organ meats specifically. The dissecting kit got a lot of use and I'm pretty sure I won't be making anying involving chicken for a few weeks yet. But the chicks were well-fed and I had the preparing/cleaning/feeding routing down pat by the time I hit my final (that would be sixth) feeding for the day.