soonershooter

Some people believe quail are easy prey for predators if they're educated to feeders. I'm not sure I think they get more predation on the nest. Anyway I'd like to hear some thoughts and get ideas on the best type of homemade quail feeder.

North Texan

If your interested in quail management, read Beef, Brush, and Bobwhites by Fred Guthrie. As for feeding, there are positives and negatives. You have to pick what you feed and place your feeders carefully to maximize the benefit to quail without making them so vulnerable to predators. Coyotes and bobcats aren't much of a problem. If they hang around an area too much, they usually get taken care of. Hawks are a different story. Your not supposed to shoot them, and they figure things out pretty quick. It also seems like they find quail a lot easier than everything else. I had a feeder out, but I couldn't keep the hawks off of it. They got bold enough to take birds from the feeder, even when it was right at the house and people were around.

As for the feeders themselves, it is hard to make one that the squirrels, coons, and everything else won't get into. I just had a regular chicken feeder, which the quail liked. I think maybe a person could take some cattle panels or hog panels and make four sides and a top and put it over the feeder. Something the coons couldn't get through but the quail could.