The white coturnix quail are doing well, enjoying the outdoor life.

 The past few weeks have been very interesting, what with learning how to keep and look after quail. A special quail house with an outdoor run has been built to house the tiny birds, and they seem to be thriving in it. Access to outdoor browsing and feeding is important for most game and poultry species, but it took the quail a few days to get used to grass, sunlight and soil after a lifetime spent indoors. They are let out first thing in the morning and return to their indoor quarters just before dark at night.

The quail are still being fed on chick crumbs, although they do seem to browse quite happily the grass, lifting up seeds and bits of this and that. It is sure to be a healthier environment for them than the cages of mass produced birds.

So far, the supply of eggs has dwindled into nothing, but we hope that over the next few weeks, the new diet and fresh air should get them back into the mood.

A juvenile Chinese Painted Quail - one of the most unusual Christmas gifts of 2011...

Of all the gifts exchanged over Christmas, the last thing we expected to receive was a group of quail. The birds were delivered on New Year's Day and we soon had the opportunity to inspect three white coturnix quail (two cocks and a hen) and three chinese painted quail, all of which are too young to sex. The chinese quail are extraordinarily small, and the freedom with which they moved in and out of their cage on their first night was quite alarming.

Thankfully, the white coturnix quail are a good deal bigger - something in the region of a black bird in size. They stay where they are put and the hen has even started to produce eggs, which are genuinely very tasty. The shed where they are being kept now rings to the odd musical chattering of quail, and the time has come for them to be housed outside in a purpose built run.

In the meantime, they are feeding on mixed bird seed, meal worms and chick crumbs, and the diet seems to be doing them quite well. Slices of cucumber are thrown in from time to time and the little birds hollow out the pulpy interior, leaving only the dark green outer skin.

The quail project was a nice surprise for the new year, but it was not something we had planned for. Over the next few days and weeks, we will be keeping the quail and collecting their eggs - yet another smallholding project to be documented on the Solway Feeders blog!

Although outside the realm of poultry keeping, pigs belong in the domain of the smallholder.

After a hard week selling poultry and game supplies, what better way to wind down on a Saturday than attend a pig keeping course in Cumbria? Many of our customers are smallholders, and thanks to some high profile publicity from television chefs over the past few years, it has never been more popular to keep your own pigs for high quality, environmentally friendly pork.

The course was run by two extremely well experienced pig keepers, both of whom have established a great reputation for breeding pedigree pigs from traditional British rare breeds. We saw saddlebacks, lops and hampshires, as well as the prettiest of them all, the oxford sandy & black. These pigs are a beautiful caramel colour, blotched all over with black spots, and despite the fact that they take a while to mature into good meat bearing animals, their pork is some of the highest quality of any pig breed.

Pigs are friendly and surprisingly intelligent animals, and as the day went on, it was hard not to feel quite attached to them. We were shown round some styes and had pigs come up and nuzzle at our knees, then went to peer into the farrowing crates, where piglets squirmed and squeaked at one another in the struggle to reach the nearest available teat.

You can keep pigs almost anywhere provided there is somewhere warm and dry for them to sleep, and the fact that they make short work of any garden waste makes them a real boon for the smallholder. We left the day with big pig plans for 2012 - watch this space!