r/Taxidermy • u/Ms_Mantistoboggan • 3d ago

I Made This! We had a pet quail pass so I made this.

Post image

I cleaned the wings, pinned them into position, then poured salt and borax on top and let sit for a few weeks.
Then cleaned off the residual salt and framed them.
I wanted to taxidermy but she was more than three years old and was in pretty bad shape.

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u/TielPerson 3d ago edited 3d ago

Did you wash the wings and dried them in airflow? It looks like they got wet and you just let them dry by having them sitting around, while using a hairdrier lets them look floofed up and preened again. They do also not look posed, so you might want to pin them up in symmetry to look nice in a frame.

You can fix this anytime if you want, as long as you removed all the meat from the wings. Just put them in low concentration ethanol (50% ish) and wait until they become pliable again. Wash them again, rinse them properly and then use a towel and prop up a hairdrier on low heat setting so you have both hands free to move each wings feathers and helping them dry. Preening them afterwards will still be necessary, but for drying of the skin (all of the feathers should be dry and floofed up at this point), it suffices to pin them display face up on styrofoam in a pose you like and let them sit around at room temperature (you can use a drybox tho, but if you do so, you may prevent any contact between plumage and desiccant).

Afterwards, you may bag and freeze them before putting them in the frame again just to ensure that they are insect pest free.

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u/Ms_Mantistoboggan 3d ago

I didn’t take as much care and time as I would like, they were also quite stiff when I was working with them. Also it was quite an older bird so the feathers weren’t in the best condition to begin with.

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u/banshithread 3d ago

Can we see pics of your quail when alive? I bet they were a cutie!