Injured Female Silver Quail

[georgie82]

Hi everyone

I have an injured female silver king quail that i've separated from the rest of the flock, but am just wondering the best way to keep/treat her.

She's one of 6, 4 males 2 females - not an ideal ratio i know, but to this point I have had no issues whatsoever with fighting or aggression as they are in a very large aviary with lots of ground space and places to hide, and live very harmoniously in a happy little flock. She has bred for me before, and it appears that the other female doesn't breed at all as the boys don't even bother with her. This has caused the problem, my little breeder has been continuously raped and is totally bald, with a scabby swollen head and is currently blind due to the swelling around her eyes.

I have separated her into a small hospital cage so that food and water are within easy reach. She's seemingly very well, apart from her head looking awful, but i'm wondering if i should bring her inside in the warm to help her heal? She's currently in the air lock of the aviary with plenty of shelter and is out of the wind, rain etc, but not getting a huge amount of extra sunlight. Also I don't know if I should do anything else for her injuries (bathe them, medication?) or to leave them to hopefully heal on their own.

I am currently looking for more females to dilute the flock, or to swap with a few of my males but this is proving very difficult - no one in my area wants males nor will they sell females alone. I will keep her separate long term, but will struggle to separate the others with sufficient space as I only have the one aviary (which they share with lorikeets etc) and it will be hard to divide up the ground space.

Thanks in advance!

[avinet]

You are certainly right about not having a good ratio of males to females - if this is the first real problem you have been very lucky!!

In general either keep only males, or keep one male to several females - which is a problem since they generally produce as many males as females. When we had our bird shop we always had excess males - which is why we sold the females for 3 times the price of the males, and if someone wanted a pair they essentially got the male for free. We also kept males and females in separate aviaries, with a sight barrier between them to avoid the males get over stimulated in the testosterone department.

Now for your female, I would suggest moving it inside if possible. Our standard treatment whenever scalping took place was - if it was a fresh wound - to bathe it in warm salty water, then dry it with tissues and put an iodine based antiseptic powder onto the wound. We generally buy the EDP antiseptic powder that come sin a puffer pack, from a chemist. There are other brands as well but make sure it contains iodine. Be careful not to get it in the eyes but otherwise apply liberally.

If the wound is well scabbed over then I don't do anything, a matter of leaving well alone and letting nature take it's course. You can do more harm than good if there is a nice healthy scab. Just keep her separate until it has healed up completely - and it is unlikely that any feathers will regrow over the head.

With the eyes it may be worth while trying to bathe the eyes in salty warm water to open them up- I assume there is no scab around them? If the eye remains closed for a while then some damage might be done by a build up of discharge around the eye, and it might be the eyes are shut due to discharge gumming up the eye-lids. Hard to make a firm recommendation on the eyes though without seeing them.

cheers,

Mike