button quail eggs. please help

[mystique26]

This is my first time incubating and hatching eggs and raising a game bird.I only want two quail so i ordered 4 eggs (the man told me i should get more than what i want in case some aren't fertile or "quit"?) when i went to the farm to pick them up the man had given me the rest of his hatching eggs since he usually gets large orders and had no use for the rest. I now have 8eggs and still only want 2quail. When and how will i know what two eggs are best to keep so i can take the rest out?

 

[dc3085]

Please remember to include the species you are raising when asking questions. Keeping practices are different for each species so to give accurate info we need to know if theyre bobs,valleys, coturnix, blue scale, mearns,harlequin, mountain, gambels, etc. or we cant be very helpful.

You're essentially making babies in a test tube. There is no way to tell which eggs will hatch best only which are developing or not. Hatching is a skill and until you develop it you cant be sure that youll get any birds to hatch so youre better off running all of them and selling or processing the extras.

If they are coturnix eggs you cant safely just keep two quail unless both a are female. The roos breed too aggressively to be left with less than 3-4 hens. Theyll literally breed the hens to death. When it comes to hatching eggs you will usually end up with 50/50 roosters/hens.

 

[TwoCrows]

Don, the subject line says Button Quail.

Pick the best looking eggs. Not necessarily the largest nor the smallest. Somewhere in between. Set eggs that are of good shape, nothing oddly shaped or out of round. No discolored eggs, no cracks, no funky eggs at all. Just pick the most perfect looking of all the eggs.

It is hard to say how many will hatch. If you want 2 birds, you are taking a risk at setting only 2 eggs. You may only have one hatch or none at all. So you might bump this up to 4 or even 6 eggs. Not all eggs hatch for various reasons.

Good luck and keep us posted!

 

[mystique26]

Don, the subject line says Button Quail. 

Pick the best looking eggs. Not necessarily the largest nor the smallest. Somewhere in between. Set eggs that are of good shape, nothing oddly shaped or out of round. No discolored eggs, no cracks, no funky eggs at all. Just pick the most perfect looking of all the eggs.

It is hard to say how many will hatch. If you want 2 birds, you are taking a risk at setting only 2 eggs. You may only have one hatch or none at all.  So you might bump this up to 4 or even 6 eggs. Not all eggs hatch for various reasons. 

Good luck and keep us posted!

Thank you. I looked it up online and found a Couple pages that said to leave all the eggs till day 7then candle them and remove the ones that show nip growth or signs of early death and keep the ones that seem to be growing well. Is this accurate? I'm only on day 4

 

[dc3085]

The hazards of early morning mobile browsing..

 

[Fat Daddy]

Thank you. I looked it up online and found a Couple pages that said to leave all the eggs till day 7then candle them and remove the ones that show nip growth or signs of early death and keep the ones that seem to be growing well. Is this accurate? I'm only on day 4

Yes this is exactly how I would choose which ones to keep... The developing ones should be dark. Infertile ones will glow much brighter than developing eggs. Blood ring means that cell division started but bactiria contaminated the egg and it died early on....

 

[mystique26]

Yes this is exactly how I would choose which ones to keep... The developing ones should be dark. Infertile ones will glow much brighter than developing eggs. Blood ring means that cell division started but bactiria contaminated the egg and it died early on....

Ok thank you so much for the advice This is my first time hatching eggs so any other advice on button quail chicks and their development would be much appreciated.

 

[ameracaunagirl]

I just hatched my first batch of quail eggs recently. I lost most, mainly because I was inexperienced (trial and error). Once you find out what eggs are fertile, you should go through and try to hatch them all. Even if they all hatch, the chicks are very delicate and sensitive so there is a possibility that you may lose some in the first couple of weeks. It will also give you time to determine what chicks you like most. Who knows, you may like them all. You can always sell or give away the ones you don't want.

 

[mystique26]

I dont know anyone around here that will take Any extra. But i will take your advice and hatch a couple extra just in case. Do you know why yours passed? I have a heat lamp tiny food and water things so they don't drown or get cold,proper feed...

 

[ameracaunagirl]

Two were infertile from the start and two died early during incubation from reasons unknown to me. Another pipped at the wrong end and suffocated because it didn't get to its air sac. The last two were moving when candled before lockdown but never pipped. I candled again a day after my 5 hatched and there was still movement so I put them back in the incubator but today no movement My incubator was homemade so I'm sure that had a lot to do with it. I only had 5 successfully hatch out of 12.