The Button Quail — also sold as King or Chinese Painted Quail — is the smallest quail in the trade, an ornamental aviary bird rather than a producer. A full-grown adult weighs about as much as a large hen's egg, and pairs are often kept on the floor of a finch or softbill aviary where they tidy up spilled seed. Hens lay tiny eggs but nowhere near the quantity of a Coturnix, and the birds are too small to be worth processing. They are quiet, charming, and startle upward easily, so a padded or low roof is worth planning for.
Quiet breed
Good with kids
Heat tolerant
Broody
Egg colorCream Speckled
Egg production100–200 / year
TemperamentDocile
BroodinessOccasional
ClimateHeat tolerant
PurposeOrnamental
Weight
Weight1-2 oz
How to spot it
Plumage
Wild-type male slate-blue with a black-and-white throat bib and rich rufous belly; many colour mutations exist
Sex differences
Marked — the male has the blue-grey body and black-and-white bib, the hen is plain mottled brown throughout
Call
A soft, piping two- or three-note whistle
Look for
Sheer tininess plus the male's black-and-white chin bib over a rufous belly
