CheerfulChirp
In the Brooder
Hi,
This is my first flock of quail, and I'm happy to receive any constructive criticism, opinions, tips and advice about what I'm doing wrong, or should be doing right. I've been having this problem for two days, but I'll give you the back-story in case it helps you identify what's going wrong and how I got here. Feel free to laugh at my rookie mistakes, I'm sure there are some juicy clangers in here somewhere:
I have one rooster, Bento, in a 14 square meter converted chicken coop with six quail hens. Plenty of cover and hiding places. Two of the hens are his hatchlings, the rest of the batch turned out to be males so I sold them and bought five slightly older hens at point-of-lay so that there would be a 1:7 ratio when the rooster matured. One of these hens died, from cardiac problems, leaving me with 1:6.
I put the two groups in separate runs where they could see each other when the chicks were two weeks old. To my surprise one hen looked to be a bit broody, and she and the chicks were fascinated with each other in a way that didn't seem aggressive, so I put her in with the chicks and watched them very closely. She immediately adopted them as her own, did a brilliant job and was always very gentle with them - not at all what I was expecting given everything I'd read about quail.
The other hens looked to be more typically territorial, and so I waited until the chicks were four weeks old and two-thirds of their size before introducing them to each other on a large patch of neutral territory for a day until any aggression died down. They largely left the chicks alone, and focused on re-establishing the hierarchy with their adoptive mum. Then I moved all birds into their new, previously unseen coop. It was a very peaceful setup, with a brief unsettled period when the chicks matured and started testing the waters with the older hens, to find their place in the hierarchy. They stopped sticking together, and mixed in well with the group.
When Bento first started to mature, he was the lowest in the hierarchy, considerably smaller than the others and very cautious with the girls. He'd make nice with them, sit with them, clean their feet etc and then try his luck. The hens seemed to be very happy with him, and whenever I checked the eggs they were almost all fertilized, so it must have been working for him. Fast forward three weeks and he's a lot more confident, and it's causing problems. Does he needs more hens?
One mistake I made: I tried to see whether any of the hens would go broody on me if I left the eggs where they laid them. Well, who doesn't want a broody quail hen?
They all had a range of promising natural behaviors such as nest-making, laying exclusively in one nest box, and pushing the eggs out of my hand and rolling them back into the nest whenever they caught me with my hand in the box. Plus one had already adopted some chicks. It didn't quite work. The hen who had previously adopted my chicks went half-broody, or pre-broody, or something: she started running into the nest box every few hours, carefully turning all the eggs over and chirping to them. When the nest was full (25 eggs), she stopped laying but never had the instinct to sit on them. That was five days ago, just before the problems started. I took the eggs out and am attempting to incubate them now, but it's been five days and she still goes into the nest box regularly and appears to make the egg turning motions and chirping with imaginary eggs (?!?), since she can't find her own eggs there any more.
The reason I'm writing all this is because she seemed to have been one of Bento's favorites until she stopped laying. Now she's not laying, he doesn't appear to be interested in her at all, and her feathers are looking pretty pristine. One of his hatchlings hasn't started to lay yet at fourteen weeks old, and he isn't the slightest bit interested in her either. So really it looks like he considers himself to only have four suitable hens. Their heads are growing ever more bald, and their attitudes ever more tetchy. I've watched him, and he's at it once every twenty minutes for most of the day, more if the first attempt isn't successful. Many times it seems to be more of a submission/dominance thing than a genuine mating attempt. He'll stand on the hen for a few seconds, not try to actually mate, satisfy himself that she isn't trying to run away, and then appears to just rip a few feathers off the top of their heads for no reason before jumping off. Two hens are now hiding in the tunnels, one is openly aggressive to him in an apparent warning, and one is so terrified she is jumping all over the place in an attempt to escape. She's at the top of his to-do list, and because she won't stand still he ends up ripping feathers off her all day.
He drew blood this morning, so I've taken him out and am holding him in a pet carrier. It's not ideal. The wounded hen isn't in any danger from the other hens, they actually tried to get between her and the rooster, and herd him away, whenever he approached her, and have now all gone to sit with her in a big group.
This is my first flock of quail, and I'm happy to receive any constructive criticism, opinions, tips and advice about what I'm doing wrong, or should be doing right. I've been having this problem for two days, but I'll give you the back-story in case it helps you identify what's going wrong and how I got here. Feel free to laugh at my rookie mistakes, I'm sure there are some juicy clangers in here somewhere:
I have one rooster, Bento, in a 14 square meter converted chicken coop with six quail hens. Plenty of cover and hiding places. Two of the hens are his hatchlings, the rest of the batch turned out to be males so I sold them and bought five slightly older hens at point-of-lay so that there would be a 1:7 ratio when the rooster matured. One of these hens died, from cardiac problems, leaving me with 1:6.
I put the two groups in separate runs where they could see each other when the chicks were two weeks old. To my surprise one hen looked to be a bit broody, and she and the chicks were fascinated with each other in a way that didn't seem aggressive, so I put her in with the chicks and watched them very closely. She immediately adopted them as her own, did a brilliant job and was always very gentle with them - not at all what I was expecting given everything I'd read about quail.
The other hens looked to be more typically territorial, and so I waited until the chicks were four weeks old and two-thirds of their size before introducing them to each other on a large patch of neutral territory for a day until any aggression died down. They largely left the chicks alone, and focused on re-establishing the hierarchy with their adoptive mum. Then I moved all birds into their new, previously unseen coop. It was a very peaceful setup, with a brief unsettled period when the chicks matured and started testing the waters with the older hens, to find their place in the hierarchy. They stopped sticking together, and mixed in well with the group.
When Bento first started to mature, he was the lowest in the hierarchy, considerably smaller than the others and very cautious with the girls. He'd make nice with them, sit with them, clean their feet etc and then try his luck. The hens seemed to be very happy with him, and whenever I checked the eggs they were almost all fertilized, so it must have been working for him. Fast forward three weeks and he's a lot more confident, and it's causing problems. Does he needs more hens?
One mistake I made: I tried to see whether any of the hens would go broody on me if I left the eggs where they laid them. Well, who doesn't want a broody quail hen?
The reason I'm writing all this is because she seemed to have been one of Bento's favorites until she stopped laying. Now she's not laying, he doesn't appear to be interested in her at all, and her feathers are looking pretty pristine. One of his hatchlings hasn't started to lay yet at fourteen weeks old, and he isn't the slightest bit interested in her either. So really it looks like he considers himself to only have four suitable hens. Their heads are growing ever more bald, and their attitudes ever more tetchy. I've watched him, and he's at it once every twenty minutes for most of the day, more if the first attempt isn't successful. Many times it seems to be more of a submission/dominance thing than a genuine mating attempt. He'll stand on the hen for a few seconds, not try to actually mate, satisfy himself that she isn't trying to run away, and then appears to just rip a few feathers off the top of their heads for no reason before jumping off. Two hens are now hiding in the tunnels, one is openly aggressive to him in an apparent warning, and one is so terrified she is jumping all over the place in an attempt to escape. She's at the top of his to-do list, and because she won't stand still he ends up ripping feathers off her all day.
