➡ Quail Hatch Along🥚

[007Sean]

My 47 popcorns. It is night time so the only light is the red heat lamp. I don't like disturbing them unnecessarily. They have been on pine shavings for a few days and it's working out well. I added more shavings today - sorta DLM in the brooder. I'll continue to clean and start fresh once a week. They are getting big fast. They are 12 days old. The box is just a little hideout for them.
View attachment 1656617

For comparison, this was on 1/16, hatch day:
View attachment 1656618

Your running outta room in there!

 

[BReeder!]

Standing room only in there

None of them are in the box. I changed their water and they all came towards the waterer. With out the box there's still quite a bit of room. I figure, they go in the box, so it's not really taking away space but just gives the allusion of less space. Once they are off the heat lamp they'll be going into an 8' by 3' cage pictured here nearly finished:

Once the quail reach 8-9 weeks we will cull them back further. I am building 3 more 8'x3' cages in my shed right now too. The quail will be kept out in the shed coop most of the year. We will likely have to cull hard in late Fall/early Winter and bring the select layers and breeders inside Dec-Feb. I hope to build a two story brooder one day soon that will be mobile so I can move it inside for the winter/nasty weather and outside for the warmer months.

 

[Crazydoglady99]

How many birds are you putting in each 8' x 3' cage?

 

[BReeder!]

How many birds are you putting in each 8' x 3' cage?

Target number is 25 per pen, but it will be more like 20 when the breeder cages are in use.

 

[007Sean]

Target number is 25 per pen, but it will be more like 20 when the breeder cages are in use.

I tried that but I had to reduce down to 15 max...they just wanted to peck and harass eachother....you may and probably will have a different experince. They didn't read that book that said x number of birds per square foot.

 

[BReeder!]

I tried that but I had to reduce down to 15 max...they just wanted to peck and harass eachother....you may and probably will have a different experince. They didn't read that book that said x number of birds per square foot.

I'm curious to know if you kept all females in your cages, or was it males pecking each other? After culling at 8-9 weeks, I plan to keep the males in the breeders with 3-4 females. A few extra males will be kept in with the layers, but only 1 male per cage. I'm hoping this will avoid fights.

 

[BReeder!]

I'm curious, what do you do with older quail who have stopped laying. Are they still good for eating or do they get tough like old hens?

Edit: Sorry if this is a dumb question... I figured they are still good to eat because you would be eating mature quail when hunting them in the wild. If they are tough though when 1+ years old, they could become soup or dog food I guess.

 

[007Sean]

I'm curious to know if you kept all females in your cages, or was it males pecking each other? After culling at 8-9 weeks, I plan to keep the males in the breeders with 3-4 females. A few extra males will be kept in with the layers, but only 1 male per cage. I'm hoping this will avoid fights.

A mixture to begin with but way before breeding season and it was both female and males doing the pecking. I used the pen as a grow out until I put them in a large pen (5' x 6' x 20') at that time I ran 5 males and 20 females per pen, each species. Total around 45 birds to the big pen.
These were Bob's, and Blues, yes, you can raise them together. Gambles and Valleys need to have their own pen as they will fight amongst themselves regardless of the numbers.
In the wild, and here in South Texas, Bob's and Blues run together in the late summer until breeding season. Then they pair up for breeding.
I have the same experince with mine in captivity, the difference being in captivity the males didn't tend to fight like they would in the wild. They would get in arguments but not fight to the death.
With Cots, I raised them in breeding cages, a pair to a cage. Had battery after battery for them. That's one of the reasons I quit raising them took to much time(always building cages) and space for them to be raised that way.

With any birds, if you overcrowd them or don't understand their requirements, you'll have problems.

 

[Crazydoglady99]

By 5 weeks, my cortunix boys were fighting all day & night (with or without girls). I separated the two Tibetans with a divider in their apartment, they both spent every minute of the day trying to get to each other.

Did my head in!!

I'll be culling my boys as soon as the mayhem starts again. Little buggers!

 

[007Sean]

I'm curious, what do you do with older quail who have stopped laying. Are they still good for eating or do they get tough like old hens?

Edit: Sorry if this is a dumb question... I figured they are still good to eat because you would be eating mature quail when hunting them in the wild. If they are tough though when 1+ years old, they could become soup or dog food I guess.

My experince was the birds raised in cages don't get tough...can't get enough exercise. And feeding a high protein feed tends to make them put alot of fat on in a confined space.
I never ate a wild quail that was tough either, I guess because they probably weren't older than a year or two old.