Help!!!! Issues in the love nest.

I have two 4'x2' pens each housing 8 female Cortunix quail. I have 16 in all. I started getting 15 eggs a day so I wanted to start breeding for incubation. I added 1 male to each pen during the night hoping to cut down on any fighting. When I returned from work last ight the males were very badly bloodied and huddling in the corner. Any and all suggestions on how to match these males with females would be appreciated. Should I add more males to each pen. Change out the location of the meeting all together. Help!!!

dragon30276 said:

I have two 4'x2' pens each housing 8 female Cortunix quail. I have 16 in all. I started getting 15 eggs a day so I wanted to start breeding for incubation. I added 1 male to each pen during the night hoping to cut down on any fighting. When I returned from work last ight the males were very badly bloodied and huddling in the corner. Any and all suggestions on how to match these males with females would be appreciated. Should I add more males to each pen. Change out the location of the meeting all together. Help!!!

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Not maybe the way you wanted to learn it but you just got a crash course in game bird social structure. The good news is it's no big deal beyond some bruised (and maybe a little bloody) egos.

When a game bird is in the cage it calls home and you insert another game bird you will have a battle for territory. Birds believe they need every bit of food, water, and space they, all to themselves. To them territory is food and thereby survival. They will not tolerate interlopers in their territory.

As long as the roos are still viable, get them healed up and then you can begin to integrate them so that this won't happen again. Use Neosporin or any other triple antibiotic ointment, but be sure it doesn't contain any pain killer as it can cause circulatory system failure. If you use Blukote or bluecote (a spray antibiotic for livestock, named because it turn the area you spray blue) or whatever it's called, spray the same area you're spraying on the wounded bird, on all of the birds. They see colors better/different than we do so they tend to pick at anything different and a big purple/blue patch is like a target to them.

When I mix a groups of birds I take all of them and place them a cage I have just for that purpose. I leave them in the divided wire cage where they can see each other and begin to acclimate. If they're fighting through the wire I put a piece of clear plexi glass across the bottom six inches of the divider so they can no longer reach each other but still communicate. After a week or two (two is better) I put them all back into the cage they'll live in permanently.

Where aggression among adult quail is concerned you have to be right on top of injured birds. It goes back to that territory thing. Most game birds are not going to allow a wounded bird the chance to survive. Their reason for doing it is good if misguided. In the wild an injured bird not only poses disease risk and uses valuable food the others may need, it's like a giant neon sign for every predator within smelling distance. To protect themselves from those risks, they will kill bloody, badly injured, or sickened birds.

Thank you so much for the information. 1 of my males is healing but the other seems to be having trouble with his eyes. I wondered about Neosporin.

Wow, great info. Thank you. I had the same question and this helped a lot. Luckily, Im doing it correctly......so far