Quail diary — 5. Feathers or fungus?

Emmet the quail - mysteriously bald

Drama. This morning Glenda (yellow) and Emmet (ringless) are suddenly tonsured like scabrous monks. All the feathers are missing from the tops of their heads, revealing scabby bare skin with an ominously green tinge, although they seem perfectly happy “in themselves,” as my mother used to say. Is this normal colouring for bald quail and they’ve just been badly mauled in the pecking order, or it is some dreadful fungal infection? I fire off a message to my supplier, quails-in-essex, and leap for Google, where dozens of even more alarming conditions assail me. Most of them featuring worms. Yuk. Must I inspect their bums?

There’s nothing for it, I shall have to climb into the run and medicate the little blighters to prevent the whole flock becoming contaminated. The girls watch in polite surprise, just out of reach behind their plant pot, as I concertina myself through their roof, wellies first, into a squashed lotus position — nose down in the guano. The damp seeps through my jeans. Who designed this run, anyway? And where’s Junior Teen when I need her? (At school).

It sounds unlikely, but I did it eventually. Dabs of ‘spot on’ parasite repellent squirted into the feathers at the base of their necks from tiny tubes gripped between my teeth while I clamped each outraged little wriggling body with both hands. All seven. Sometimes I amaze myself. And I got a proper look at their feet too. (Oeuf is white, Tom baby blue, Dick black, Harass red, and Nugget purple.)

But have I done the right thing? Must I take them to the vet? He’s only just got over having to treat our late free-range guinea pigs for mange caught from the foxes. Back to Google, I guess. Is anyone out there?