We make cages for quails with our own hands

Increasingly, quail grown on household plots, although they are the smallest variety of poultry, for their residence, the poultry farmer will have to create comfortable living conditions. You can build cages for quails from different materials, while the task is within the power of not only professionals, but also home craftsmen, armed with a minimum set of tools.

Varieties and requirements for quail cages

Before starting work, it is important to know that separate housing is required for different age categories, and in separate cells they contain:

• chicks aged 1 to 10 days;
• young animals up to one and a half months of age;
• adult livestock;
• laying hens giving a table egg;
• quails for meat purposes;
• parent groups.

A do-it-yourself brooder for quails differs from other cages by serious protection from cold and drafts, necessarily by a lighting and heating system for small chicks that do not tolerate cooling and overheating. All walls, except for the front one, are preferred by home craftsmen from plywood, fiberboard or chipboard. The floor and ceiling of this design is made of a fine mesh through which debris and bird droppings can easily penetrate, and the quails themselves move confidently and do not risk injuring their legs.

For this age, a self-built quail brooder is equipped with a feeder and a drinker. This equipment, as well as the heater and lamps, are mounted inside the cage.

A video telling about making drawings of a brooder for quails with your own hands will not make a mistake even for those who, for the first time in their life, decided to breed such an interesting bird as quails.

The older the bird, the larger the mesh of the metal mesh can be. Grown up young growth is better adapted to environmental conditions. It does not need an enclosed space, and it is much easier to clean open quail cages.

For adult birds, cages are built at home from a variety of materials available. Not only plywood or chipboard is used, but also metallized mesh, metal and even plastic. Laying hens are housed in specially designed houses with a bottom inclined to the outside. A chute is attached to the outside, where the laid eggs fall.

In order for individuals of the meat direction to gain weight better, quail cages are made mesh and rather low in order to artificially restrict the movement of the bird. This technique allows you not only to achieve the desired weight faster, but also to delay the onset of puberty. Therefore, the meat of such quails is more tender and juicier than that of those grown in ordinary cages.

Before you make a cage for quails with your own hands, carefully weigh the safety of the future structure, the possibility of its sanitization and cleaning, as well as the correspondence of the size of the house to the number of birds placed in it.

Calculations of the size of future cages for planting quails can be done based on the given norms for a livestock of 10, 30 and 50 birds.

DIY quail cage drawings

The most popular and convenient design of a quail cage is a wooden or metal frame, sheathed with mesh on the outside and on the floor, and on the rest, at the request of the owner, with materials available to him.

A drawing of a do-it-yourself quail cage, pictured, includes:

• 1 - frame;
• 2 - drinking bowl;
• 3 - door;
• 4 - feeder;
• 5 - a chute for rolling eggs;
• 6 - cage floor;
• 7 - tray for collecting litter and droppings.

A reliable functional design will accept more than one generation of layers. It can be installed on the floor, while it is important to provide legs 15-30 cm high, or be used as a tier of a “multi-storey” structure. This way of placing the cages is very helpful for poultry farmers who do not have enough space to install free-standing bird houses.

Collected in a multi-tiered structure, quail cages must be securely attached to each other and to the vertical surface of the wall next to which they are located.

If you want to save money and simplify the manufacturing process, the master can refuse the frame. In this case, the drawing of a cage for quails presented in the photo will help to cope with the task; even a novice poultry farmer will make such a design with his own hands. As a material for the side walls and pallet, you can take thin metal, strong plywood or fiberboard sheets.

To prevent the egg rolling from the inclined floor from falling, a gutter up to 10 cm wide with a limiter is provided outside. The bottom is made of fine metal mesh, suitable for quick and efficient cleaning of cages.

DIY quail cage: step by step instructions

Homemade designs are simple, affordable and do not require special knowledge to manufacture. It is only important to consider:

• the number of quails raised;
• the need to install heating and lighting systems for chicks;
• trays for laid eggs;
• the ability to clean quail cages.

If the master chose wood, plywood and metal mesh as raw materials, he will be useful in his work:

• hacksaw;
• scissors for metal;
• stapler with staples for attaching the mesh;
• self-tapping screws for assembling the frame.

If you assemble a quail cage with your own hands, according to the step-by-step instructions, at the first stage, blanks for the back wall, two parts for the sidewalls and the top of the box are cut out. The dimensions of the future structure are calculated according to the table above.

The frame, sawn from wooden bars, is fastened with self-tapping screws. To use the quail cage safe and long, it is better to sand the wood and soak it with a poultry-safe antiseptic.

Further work is started when the impregnation is completely dry. A blank for the front wall is made of material with a large cell, which allows quails to freely use the fixed feeder and drinker.

The future floor of the bird house is cut out of a mesh with a small mesh. The egg collection tray is an extension of the sloped floor with an upward curved edge to prevent eggs from rolling. This must be taken into account when preparing drawings for quail cages.

It is convenient to attach the mesh to wooden structural parts using large furniture brackets. Below, under the inclined floor, a removable tray is made for collecting droppings and litter.

Quail cage made of plastic boxes

An economical and very simple version of the quail cage is based on the use of vegetable packing boxes made of lattice plastic.

Such material is not only easy to process and durable, it is perfectly cleaned and washed, which is extremely important when keeping poultry.

Before proceeding to the step-by-step instructions for building a quail cage with your own hands, you need to prepare everything you need to work. The master will need:

• three boxes of equal dimensions;
• flexible strong wire;
• file for work on plastic and metal;
• sharp knife.

A box that will be in the center of the structure and is intended for quail keeping, should have a height of about 30 cm, other boxes may be lower. One of them will serve as a pallet, the second - a ceiling and a cover:

1. At the first stage, all protruding parts along the upper edge are cut off from the main box.
2. Then, using the existing grooves and legs, it is joined to the bottom drawer.
3. The construction is crowned with a second low box.
4. The resulting structure is fastened with wire, and if it is not there, other materials at hand are used: strong twine, double-sided or strong mounting tape.
5. On the lid of the resulting quail cage, a future door is marked, convenient for cleaning and removing or sharing a bird.
6. The hatch is cut on three sides, and the fourth is folded outward. For ease of use, a wire loop-lock is attached to the improvised door.
7. Several slots are made on the outer wall for feeding quail in the cage.
8. A trough feeder is attached a little lower, a drinker is mounted next to it.

Do-it-yourself construction of a cage for quails in the video reveals in all details all the tricks of the process and will help in a matter of hours to acquire the housing necessary for birds.

Making a cage for quails - video