Listened to a podcast today by a few upland bird specialists that provided some more food for thought and put things into a better perspective. As I previously mentioned, eye worms have been documented in wild quail since the 1960s. There to date has not been a study conducted that proves that eye worms negatively impact a wild POPULATION of quail. Keep in mind that when we talk about wildlife we monitor and access total population in terms of the status of any given species. Wildlife management decisions are based on the population as a whole not on factors that negatively impact individuals within a population. Paraphrasing one of the speakers on the podcast today, we honestly do not care if an individual survives or dies when discussing wildlife management practices. This isn't veterinary science, where every animal is important. If that wasn't the case then we would prohibit hunting. Basically, meaning that if an individual quail dies from eye worms, it really doesn't matter in terms of managing the population. If 10s of thousands die then it might be worth investigating further. That has yet to be scientifically proven to be happening. Keep in mind only about 20% of the quail population lives over a year. So whether a individual quail dies from a predator, hunting, lack of food, eye worms, etccc. it is really not relevant as 80% of them will die from something within a years time. Something like the success of the Quail Guard product will be extremely hard to validate in a wild setting as you have to find 2 nearly identical populations on "identical" properties and then compare the data over several years as to population trends on those 2 parcels.
I did look at the Quail Guard website, pretty vague information on it which is to be expected. Information that implies the parasites are directly contributing to the decline in wild quail while, even though as I stated they reference the fact that 80% of wild quail do not live a year regardless of the specific cause of death. You also need to use their specially designed feeder for best results. I gathered from their website that you are only supposed to feed it twice a year, the rest of the year you should supplement with their super duper fortified quail feed. Eye roll. Seems like some other shyster wildlife entrepreneurs.
www.quailsafe.com
