Reptile tanks for brooder? Yes, please.

When I was first preparing for these chicks everything felt so hurried I didn't have much time to really think about my setup. I started them the way most family homes these days brood their chicks, plastic totes with a hardware cloth lid and paper towel floor, all tucked in under a heat lamp. This very quickly turned the designated quail corner into a dusty, stinky mess that I was cleaning every few hours. In just one month of brooding this system took a trash bag full of paper towels and a 5-gallon bucket of bird droppings collected. I realized early on this wouldn't be a sustainable brooding setup for my one-woman operation.

The fact that it took this long for my animal science brain to remember flightless birds are basically lizards with feathers is shocking. When I saw a deal on desert reptile habitat kits at the pet store it took a whole day of driving around to find them, find some shelves they would fit on, and set them up for small birds instead of a boarded dragon. Once they were ready it was worth every minute of the effort!

Using reptile tanks makes the brooding setup so much more efficient. It only takes half an hour or so a day to clean them, and with bigger feeders and water bottles they can be left to do their own thing for more time each day. I left the rock cave inside the tank and the quail love to hang out both on top and in the cave. The food dishes I kept around for offering treats and dust for bathing in. Even the heat lamps that came with the set were better for this setup than the ones at the farm stores. These tanks are made of glass, which makes them easily wipeable and disinfectable. They also feature front opening doors which means I don't have to worry so much about bumping heat lamps or scraping my arms up on the sharp edges of hardware cloth.

Another addition I made to the tank was a sheet of 1/4" hardware cloth folded every few inces to build a sturdy raised floor. This way the birds don't rest in piles of food, water, and poops they've scratched all over their floor. The raised floor fills close to 2/3 of the tank with the remaining corner lined in newspaper or paper towels, both of which theyve started shredding and nesting with inside their cave.

I've seen a lot of mixed opinions on the use of newspaper in brooding situations. My quail brood was older when I left them with an accessible newspaper floor, and I haven't seen any signs of it being eaten by them.

Now its only a matter of getting them used to the greenhouse climate before they get to move out to their permanent habitat. I've been weaning them off the heat lamps based on their behavior for a couple weeks now, and they're just about to the point of never triggering their sensor-based lamps. They've all feathered up beautifully, so it's just time to put on a little extra egging weight. For now they'll spend their nights in their tanks, but I can't wait to see them once they're in their bigger place full time. Then it'll be time to get going on the next brood to see how these tanks work through the whole process!