Don't count chickens... pet a quail instead

Quails are being touted as the ideal urban pet - easy to look after, requiring very little space and giving their owners a plentiful supply of eggs.

Experts say the market for them is growing in London and sales of a £340 designer quail house are booming.

The plastic quail run, called an eglu, is a smaller version of a chicken coop. It contains a sleeping area and a covered wire run. Each can hold up to six birds.

Johannes Paul of design company Omlet, which makes the quail house, said: "Quail are perfectly suited to London, because they require so little space. We've just starting selling [the eglu] and the demand is huge. The birds are very low maintenance. If you look after them, you also get an egg pretty much every day, so they are the ideal pet."