For bird enthusiasts, hearing about the negative impacts of habitat loss on bobwhite quail isn’t anything new. In fact, this issue has been largely blamed for North America’s shrinking bobwhite population. However, parasites may have a larger effect on wild quail than previously thought, especially in Texas and Oklahoma.

2024  East Foundation study reveals zero eyeworms in South Texas. 743 samples were collected from Jim Hogg County and Kennedy County.  Necropsies were performed and none contained eyeworms confirming previous studies that eyeworms are not a major issue in South Texas. However, Cecal parasites have been documented at over 80% of bobwhite quail in South Texas.

Now approved by the FDA, a Texas scientist’s parasite-fighting feed could be a game changer for the South’s beloved game bird

Since April When the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of the drug Fenbendizol on wild quail, sales of QuailGuard medicated feed have been brisk, according to Quailguard, LLC President Joe Crafton.

Use of a Holistic Approach to Study the Complex System of Bobwhites and Their Parasites Within South Texas. There is no greater concern about a game species in Texas than for bobwhite quail.

The northern bobwhite is a game species of ecological, economic, cultural, and recreational importance in Texas. South Texas is regarded as one of the last places in the state with suitable habitat for bobwhite populations have been ; nevertheless, bobwhite populations have been declining.

Author: Matt Williams | Published:  June 8, 2024 It’s been a while since quail managers across Texas have had much to chatter about, but hopes are […]

Author: Chris Dorsey | Published: May 29, 2024 With ample rainfall, healthy cover, and an abundance of quail in the summer of 2010, hunters in the […]

The most important advance in 80-plus years in our understanding of bobwhite quail ecology – or, more to the point, bobwhite quail mortality – has been the discovery that a certain parasitic eyeworm, Oxyspirura petrowi, not only has the potential to devastate quail populations on a landscape scale, but to do so with breathtaking, even frightening, rapidity.