Button Quail?? Sex? What’s up with his color?

[Cnorris22]

Hi everyone! This is my first post here so forgive me if it is “wrong”. I have brought home 2, supposed, button quail from work (zoo). They come from a very long line of inbreeding, and we’re originally going to be feeders. I want to know if these are for sure buttons, and why my male looks the way he does.

The “male” is the solid brown (no white) picture. The female is the one with white. I have seen the male breeding her, so I am of course assuming he is male. (Duh, I know). But he doesn’t look like any male button I have found while doing image searches. Any and all help//advice is very appreciated.

The newspaper substrate in the picture was not permanent, as they are now on wood chips.

 

[JaeG]

These are Coturnix/Japanese quail and their particular colours are not sexable. Just because one is mating the other does not mean they are a pair as Coturnix males are not fussy. If the other one is in fact a hen you will need to get a couple more as Coturnix males are very active and require at least 3 females to 'spread the love' around and prevent one becoming overmated and stressed. You can vent sex them but it's not that easy if one has been recently mated, and they tend to poop when you do it. Only if you see both crowing, or start to find eggs will you know if you have two males or a pair. After a move the females can take a week or two to settle down and begin laying (though that depends on the time of year/how much light they are getting as they are seasonal layers).

They look like they are 'Tibetan' coloured and the one with white is referred to as a Tuxedo. This comes from mating a white to a Tibetan coloured one (though it does not work so easily for other colours).

Hope that helps and there are lots of lovely quail people on here to help you if you have more questions.

 

[Cnorris22]

These are Coturnix/Japanese quail and their particular colours are not sexable. Just because one is mating the other does not mean they are a pair as Coturnix males are not fussy. If the other one is in fact a hen you will need to get a couple more as Coturnix males are very active and require at least 3 females to 'spread the love' around and prevent one becoming overmated and stressed. You can vent sex them but it's not that easy if one has been recently mated, and they tend to poop when you do it. Only if you see both crowing, or start to find eggs will you know if you have two males or a pair. After a move the females can take a week or two to settle down and begin laying (though that depends on the time of year/how much light they are getting as they are seasonal layers).

They look like they are 'Tibetan' coloured and the one with white is referred to as a Tuxedo. This comes from mating a white to a Tibetan coloured one (though it does not work so easily for other colours).

Hope that helps and there are lots of lovely quail people on here to help you if you have more questions.

The “not tuxedo” is for sure a male. The white one is still young-ish so no crowing heard this far. Thank you so so much for all your great info!! Could you tell me at what age the “hen” would start laying eggs?

 

[JaeG]

The “not tuxedo” is for sure a male. The white one is still young-ish so no crowing heard this far. Thank you so so much for all your great info!! Could you tell me at what age the “hen” would start laying eggs?

They can start as young as 6 weeks but can take up to 12 weeks and it all depends on how much light they are getting. They need 12-14 hours of light every day to be laying. Too much stress will cause a female to stop laying as well so if you feel like your male is too attentive you may need to put in a divider so that they can still see each other for company but she fl) gets a bit of a break.