Aggressive male Cotournix

[Sachasmom]

I'm having some issues with my quail, hopefully someone can tell me what I am doing wrong here! My males keep killing the hens! I had one paired up with one hen for a long time (six months or more) and he ripped her up, I took her out, gave him two new hens, one of which he killed the next day. I switched him out for a different male, who was fine til last week, he killed one last week and another last night when I added a new pair of hens to the cage.

Help? Both of them have killed hens paired singly or when in a trio or quad. One male per cage.

I also have trouble with males in grow out picking on the females or weaker males.

I really had not had any trouble at all until this last six-eight months. Can I just not introduce anything new at all? I trimmed the ones beak after he killed the hen the other night.

I'm really frustrated that they keep doing this!

 

[TheRealTimShady]

My stance on aggressive males is easy, CULL. you don't want to breed aggressiveness in your birds.

also make sure you have plenty of females for said males, I use to run a 1:4 or even 1:5 ratio and never had any issues.



In all honesty tho, just cull the aggressive ones, then you won't have to worry about it.

 

[Sachasmom]

Yeah, but if I cull them I will have NO males at all. I can up the # of hens in the pen, just don't understand why they were fine for well over six-eight months and then they got aggressive.

I shipped the younger ones to the auction, I figured they were just competing. I did wonder if it had to do with hormones, if the males can smell each other or something?

 

[blueeyeddemon]

Cull doesn't always mean kill

 

[TheRealTimShady]

are your coops lit up at all, maybe the a change in season caused it.

Honestly what I would do is collect come eggs, do a new hatch and get rid of all those aggressive males, usually, but not always, males that grow up together get along better.