My Quails won't lay eggs

contactvidura said:

I think the problem is with the Male Female ratio... You must have 2 males per 8 or you can try removing male for unfertilized eggs.

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So your suggestion is to add a male (have two males total), or take a male away (have zero males total)? Sorry, but that does not make any sense. Also, the males have little to nothing to do with egg laying unless the males are harassing the females (usually if you have too many males). If the males are not harassing the ladies, having one male to 4 females, or one male to 4,000 females isn't going to make a difference in egg laying.

Edit: There are some studies that show that an immature female hearing or seeing a mature male can cause her to develop to maturity slightly faster. But there is nothing I know about that says having one male to 8 ladies is going to somehow impact their laying patterns. In fact, the vast majority of opinions seem to say that a good ratio is between 4-8 ladies per male if you want to still have good fertilization, but also reduce aggression. Adding another male is not going to change anything for the better, and depending on how aggressive the new male is, could actually make it worse. Removing all the males is an option, but if the ladies start laying when he is gone, I will guarantee that it was pure coincidence

contactvidura said:

I think the problem is with the Male Female ratio... You must have 2 males per 8 or you can try removing male for unfertilized eggs.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I used to have 2 males and 8 females. However one male got really crazy and was chasing and pecking all other quails so I got rid of it.

contactvidura said:

I think the problem is with the Male Female ratio... You must have 2 males per 8 or you can try removing male for unfertilized eggs.

Click to expand...

You absolutely do not need more than one male. One can keep 7-10 females fertile. The extra male would just harass the hens and the males would fight unless raised together and maybe even then.

Quote:
If I have 75 females and put one or two males, Can I get fertile eggs for incubation? Once I had 12 coturnix females and 2 males. They layed 4 - 5 eggs a day. I introduced another male, and got about 10 eggs a day. Might be some other reason, but because of that I thought you need one male per every 4 - 5 females...

contactvidura said:

If I have 75 females and put one or two males, Can I get fertile eggs for incubation?

Once I had 12 coturnix females and 2 males. They layed 4 - 5 eggs a day. I introduced another male, and got about 10 eggs a day. Might be some other reason, but because of that I thought you need one male per every 4 - 5 females...

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Correlation does not imply causation. Common quote. You went from 4-5 eggs per day to 10 eggs per day for some other reason, possibly just by chance or because more of your ladies matured by the time you added the second male. Maybe there is a 1% chance that adding another male factored in officially somehow, but it is a super small chance. There is nothing scientific to back that up as far as I have ever read. Doesn't mean adding a second male didn't factor in, just that I am not aware of why or how that would happen. There was the one study I mentioned where adding a male where there was none before caused females to mature faster, but that was going from zero males to one. And it was not increasing eggs production in mature/already laying females, but was simply causing females to mature and lay sooner than they would have if no male was present.

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Don't take my comments as being hostile please. I am glad you contributed your experiences. I just have not had the same experiences and I have only seen evidence that adding more males is usually a bad thing.