GRAPHIC photo. Severely injured quail - urgent help needed!!

This morning I went to do my morning routine and was absolutely shocked to find one of my Jumbo Coturnix quail had severe head injuries from my other quail in the enclosure - they have pecked right down to the bone on her head as seen in the photo.

I have recently just introduced 5 new quail around 8-9 weeks old to my existing 5 quail who are around 10-11 weeks old. The 5 new quail were introduced Saturday gone and while I saw them chasing each other, there were no wounds or actual fighting at all, even when i checked them yesterday (and i check thoroughly).

I have immediately separated the older birds from the new. I live in Queensland, Australia and it is currently winter. They have a 24% protein food with added mealworms for treats and eat silver beet and other greens. There food and water is never low. I have NO males in the enclosure, all 10 are female.

What do I do? I am absolutely gut-wrenched as to what has happened.

When i found my injured quail we immediately placed her in a "quarantine" box with food and water. She is clearly shocked. Am i prolonging her death? Is there a chance of survival or should I end the misery now?

How long should i keep the quail separated before i can re-introduce them?

Please help, i feel absolutely horrible ): ): ):

This may have some infor that will help you
just happened to another Chick.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/995513/help-pls-with-pic-its-terriable/20#post_15486401

Good luck and make sure you keep her away form everyone else for now

Never just throw the new birds in... they need to be introduced slowly. I had mine in the same cage with a screen between them for 3 weeks before I allowed them to be together, I still had one older female that was a jerk but she calmed down after a while....

Unfortunately this happened because of the way you integrated them. In the minds of your original birds you just introduced a whole bunch of threats to their feed/territory. Quail are extremely territorial and have to be integrated a certain way to achieve any manner of success.

First, you should probably euthanize the bird in the picture. There is almost no possibility of that wound healing without infection and likely when the bird comes out of shock it will die anyway. It's a tough way to learn but most people who raise quail will at some point be responsible for the death or injury of a bird(s) at some point. Do it long enough and you'll be lucky if it only happens once. If you need a little guidance watch the slaughtering video in my signature, the practice is the same. If you've the fortitude you should clean it all the way and put it on the table, there is no sense letting good meat go waste if you can bring yourself to process it.

The best way I've found to integrate quail is to place them in cages side by side for at least a week(two weeks is better). After that time place all of the birds in a cage that none of them have ever been in. This eliminates them trying to "protect" their "territory" from the "interlopers". To take it one step farther you can mix the birds together in the middle of the night when they can't see well.

Keep us posted.

Thank you all for your help.

I couldn't bare to let here just stay there so I took her to the vet immediately and unfortunately have put her down. The vet surprisingly said that shock wasn't the issue, it was that there was a very high possibility of her blood becoming septic to herself. We discussed doing an operation to try and have her fixed but the survival was to low and we decided to put her out of her misery.

I have unfortunately learnt the hard way but a valuable lesson. My quail "groups" are now fully separated but next to each other and I will not reintroduce them until close to the end of July (I never want to risk that happening again). The thing that has shocked me the most is the quail attacked was actually my original, older quail and it was my younger, smaller quail that was introduced on Saturday that has done the damage.

Quail gang up on the weakest & take then it first. Thing is once one is down even it's own Covey will start attacking it. Are these all female or is there roos in there also? Anytime there is a roo it gets harder & of there is more then one roo it becomes almost impossible. I usually leave established Coveies alone but if I do want to change them up is break the who group up & move them somewhere different. That way no body knows anyone & it is new territory for all of them. This can take several cages. They get to know each other 2 to 3 days then I switch them again. After you do this a few times they will all be on equal ground when you put then together again. It seems to only take a few days to beak alliances. You will still have to keep an eye on them putting them all back together tho.

All 10 (9 now) are female - no males at all. Unfortunately we have limited space and equipment and only have the main cage which we have been able to divide. We are not going to reintroduce them until end of July and might work out some type of temporary cages to move them to, to "break" the alliance's but I am not sure if we can...

Any other suggestions or tips to help reduce this? We watched them so closely and there were no wounds or actual fighting apart from some chasing. We have estimated the attack happened at around 3-4am in the morning due the birds condition and obviously can't prevent this time of attack... When we reintroduce we will fully clean the entire enclosure and place down new sugar cane mulch and so forth. I really don't want this to happen again....

If I could find the main culprits who are the attackers, cull them and eat them I would be very satisfied.... however, I know that is not going to fix my longterm problem of wanting 15-20 quail and constantly having to deal with introducing new birds....

I must mention there is no issue with over crowding. They are very spoilt with space, food and their enclosure...

Well my suggestion would depend on your purpose of having them. While I enjoy watching & hearing quail my main purpose is to raise meat. If yours is declaration then you would house them different. Coturnix Quail don't need large runs. It never seemed to matter how big of an area they were in they all seemed to hang out in a corner with everyone writhen a 1' circle. Coturnix like being on to of each other.

I'd build several small cages in your coop if it were me but if your going for a different look that might not work for you. 20 would be a days processing for me.

My main purpose is eggs and enjoyment. We have discussed for meat but will only go down that road if I start to look at incubating bought fertile eggs or getting a male.

I would do small cages then if I were you. They will be easier to protect.

If you have people local that you can get your 2-3 males from would probable be easier but they need to be in quarantine for a month. You could be hatching & raising them yourself which would take about 10 weeks to be in production. I keep 6 hens to a roo for my breeders. Everything else in grow out cages. I'd put them all together until I could tell them apart pulling the males to their own cage. Then I'd pick what I wanted to breed from & process the rest. If you have all males together they will be quite happy taking care of each other but to many males to a females will cause fights & the females being wore out. I didn't even have luck with Colonies because all the males wanted the same girl leaving some of the girls not taken care of. Another problem with keeping them all together is you don't know who is passing on the bad genes.