Cute, round birds who can fly but tend to move and feed on the ground. They eat plant matter - buds, seeds, leaves, berries - as well as insects. Quails prefer to move their bodies in an unconstrained fashion, scratching the ground and perching in trees and scuttling between bushes without fences, ceilings, and human interference restricting their movement through space. Quails prefer to choose which other quails to associate with, if anyone at all. Quails mate and lay eggs in hopes that they hatch into chicks, whom they raise to independence. Quails actually do not lay eggs for others to take and consume. Quail babies are precocial, meaning they are ready to run as soon as they hatch from the egg. They, like adults, do not want to be killed and eaten. They fear that distinctly. They would much prefer to run, fly, forage, perch, scratch, peck, preen, bathe, call, sing, rest on their own terms, on their own time, according to their own needs.
Quails are bred into existence to serve as experimental subjects for animal testing, as teaching tools for children, as sources of meat and eggs, as "game" to be chased and shot at...
more information soon
> United Poultry Concern: Quails - stories of quail rescue and insight into the inner lives of quails through observation
> [Allaboutbirds.org: California Quail]
> Getting poisoned from eating quail: [wiki: Cortunism]
> California Quails in the Okanagan
To the quail farmer: I don't think you count as a quail-lover if you are intentionally bringing quails into existence to later destroy. You may consider the quail's comfort and health momentarily, but farmed quails live within structures that are built around human schedules and desires. By design, farmed quails are forced to live and die how and when some random, uninvited humans decide. Quails did not invite you into this relationship. You imposed it.
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