Quails are territiorial!

gregwoods said:

Hi Everyone

I have made a stupid rookie mistake, I thought I had read all that I needed to, but I evidently missed the bit that says how to introduce quail.

I started with 4 quails 3 hens and a roo, spent a month learning about them, and they did well, eggs came within 18 days everything was happy in the coup,

I have built a good sized coup about 90 sq foot on 3 levels, so the time came to get some more birds, I bought another 32 mixed goldens, natives, texans and a very nice cinnemon roo.

I read that ,golden roo's and hens should not breed. so I removed the hens, I gave them a native roo, and put three natives in with the golden, all seemed great, love was in the air. I watched them for around 4 hours whilst I was working on the coup, all was fine, left for an hour, on my return again all was fine, went to work, when I returned the hens had been attacked, one had minor injuries, one was bleeding badly from the side of the head, but the third had the top of her head pecked away down to the bone. she lived for about a week, but this evening has gone to meet her maker.

The lethal gene is not always present in all forms of golden and only results in up to 25% infertility in eggs. Nothing actually dies because of the lethal gene, just less things are born. There is no problem letting goldens breed goldens.

It would appear that quails are territorial, and that if you are to introduce new hens to a roo, you should put the hens and roo into a new environment.

Put all the birds in a cage they've never been in when you integrate birds. that way no one feels like they will need to dispute territory since they are all unfamiliar with it. Also mixing them in the middle of the night can throw them off a little and sometimes helps the transition. They can't see very far at night so they are pretty insecure.

I put this here so that any other rookies can make a note, and invite experienced quail keepers to offer their advice.

I thought she was going to make it, but today it was like she just gave up. I kept her segragated after the injury, I have emptied her coup, burnt all bedding, disposed of all food and water that was in there, and treated the coup with a probiotic that should kill any bacteria should there be any.

Probably not required but definitely a good practice in biosecurity.

My next challenge is incubation, I have 46 eggs in an automatic turning incubator at 39.2%C at 55-60% humidity, I have been advised to take them out of the automatic cradle at 15 days and to raise the humidity to 70-75% I was told that if the humidity is to high in the first 15 days, the chicks would swell and be unable to get out of the shell. again any advice welcome, they went in on the 24th August around 5pm.

Close but they don't swell. If the humidity is too high they actually physically drown in the egg. Some people run their humidity toward the top of the range 50-60% then lockdown 70-75% others run it on the low end 35-45% and 60% for lockdown. I prefer the higher numbers as I get better hatches that way.

I could also do with some advice re worming and ensuring mites do not take hold, my birds get a clean sand bath everyday, is this sufficient?

There isn't a once size fits all wormer so I don't worm unless I get worms (about 6 years of raising coturnix I've not had worms once). If you birds don't have access to soil and don't eat a lot of bugs you won't have many problems with worms just keep an eye out.

Mites will leave little visible egg patches on the birds and you will see them scratching. To treat mites you can add sevin dust to their dust pans.

Many Thanks

Greg

Click to expand...