Button Quail not laying

SunnyAlberta

Songster
8 Years
Mar 30, 2012
617
36
161
Canada - Garden Zone 3
I bought two Buttons six weeks ago and haven't seen any eggs yet. One is silver and one brown and both were fully feathered. I don't know when they hatched. They are in a large aquarium in our living room. Its warm in there, but I just added a LED light shining to one side of the glass in case the fact that the curtains are drawn interferes with hours of brightness. They have a hut to hide in. I feed duck crumbles, hemp seed, alfalfa hay and sometimes meal worms. Is there anything else I should do to get eggs? Do they need a quiet room? I haven't been able to find a boy yet.
 
Can you post pics of your birds. There are two different variations on silver, slate and ivory, that can be hard to sex. The males don't get the white bib and often have no traces of red on them. And blueface males don't get a bib, but the have a dark slate blue chest and face. So it is possable you may have 2 males.

How long is their light cycle? Some hens prefer 14 hours or more light to lay.
 
Here they are, Crash (brown) and Bop (silver). They have no real variation in their colours or patterns, no bibs, no red, etc. They get 16 hours of daylight filtered through curtains. I put a LED light next to them only just today.

 
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You have a red breasted hen and a silver hen. You should get infertile eggs soon if they have a long enough light cycle. It might take a little more time for them to lay.

Just to be 100% sure, can you get a pic of the silver one from the front?
 
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You're welcome.

Just as a thought, you might want to lower their light cycle during the winter to give them a break from laying. This will help your girls live longer, since egg laying is hard on hens.
 
Just as a thought, you might want to lower their light cycle during the winter to give them a break from laying. This will help your girls live longer, since egg laying is hard on hens.

Since I'm not breeding at this time and figure that Button eggs aren't much to eat, I likely won't encourage laying for long. Its mostly a curiosity on my part. That said, I assumed that laying was an indication of the girls' well being and I worried I wasn't doing right by them since they weren't producing eggs.
 
the led light might not do much good they need full spectrum lighting. even sunlight when it comes through a window glass can cause it to loose some of the uv and uva rays. You can buy full spectrum bulbs.
These two look like hens to me as well.
Are they on a high protein diet? 25-30%. And do give them either crushed oyster shell or chicken egg shell finely crushed for added calcium.
Enjoy your birds.
 
Some LED lights are full spectrum, but they would be marked as such. I just hung a reptile uvb/uva full spectrum fluorescent over my quail who haven't been laying. I'll report back if they start back up.
Cheers,
Jessie
 
Thanks for the tips about lights.

My birds get duck layer crumbles. I think its 22% protein, plus they get hemp seed that's high protein, plus meal worms. Yes, they get a grit/oyster shell mix.
 

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