SPCA advocates that all quail are kept in appropriate cage-free systems. Cages fail to adequately meet the physical, health, and behavioural needs of quail.

SPCA supports housing systems that provide quail with a Good Life where they experience positive welfare and their physical, health, and behavioural needs are met.

SPCA advocates for quail to be kept in enriched, well-maintained free-range systems, allowing easy access to an outdoor area with appropriate, well-maintained ground and vegetative cover, and suitable artificial and/or natural shelters that protect them from the elements and overhead predators.

For all housing, environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, ammonia and dust levels need to be controlled, and good litter quality and proper ventilation to ensure the health and comfort of quail at all times. The housing environment must include effective and suitable resources that allow for a range of species-specific behaviours such as nesting, foraging and dustbathing. Quail need sufficient space to move freely, turn around completely and perform natural behaviours such as wing flapping, preening and stretching. Quail should never be kept in continuous or near continuous light or dark.

Stocking densities should be low enough to avoid the risk of aversive social interactions and injurious pecking and maintained at suitable male to female ratios to reduce aggression.

SPCA opposes the practice of beak trimming quail.

Injurious pecking outbreaks should be minimised with improved husbandry and by providing the birds with sufficient space and environmental enrichment, therefore removing the need to beak trim.

SPCA opposes the handling and catching of quail that causes harm or distress.

Quail should be handled humanely at all times and be caught efficiently and in a manner that causes minimum stress. Quail should never be caught or carried by their legs or wings or inverted. Instead, quail should be carried around the body and kept upright. SPCA advocates for the development and widespread application of more humane methods of handling quail across the industry.

SPCA advocates for research and investment into improved slaughter methods for quail.

SPCA advocates that all animals slaughtered for food should be killed in the most humane way possible. A humane slaughter method is one that leads to immediate death or uses stunning that renders an animal instantly and entirely insensible to pain before slaughter and until death. A humane slaughter method should be non-aversive (minimising pain and distress).

SPCA opposes electrical water bath stunning and live inversion for the slaughter of quail.

SPCA calls for research into an alternative method of electrical stunning without conscious inversion, and the adoption of best-practice controlled atmosphere stunning.