Celadon questions and integration questions!

[kurby22]

These hatched the same day, they are 2 days old. The small tux is from my original celadons, the big silver Egyptian thing is from crossing my original celadons to the Myshire snowies, then those celadon carriers back to my original celadons. As you can see, the size has remained significantly larger, even after 2 generations of outcrossing to smaller birds.
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They are definitely notably larger! That is good to see! I don't mind the smaller ones since they're mainly for eggs and pets...but I don't want them to be sickly or too inbred either! Love those cute little fluffy babies!

 

[ChanP]

This is probably too late, but my celadon females are fully grown and are still smaller then my Japanese and Italian quail, however they had no trouble fitting in even though there was a big size difference

 

[kurby22]

This is probably too late, but my celadon females are fully grown and are still smaller then my Japanese and Italian quail, however they had no trouble fitting in even though there was a big size difference

I'm glad you have had no trouble! I have had horrible issues! The only hen is super timid and being picked on a LOT by all of my non-Celadons And the Celadon males are picking on each other to fight over her when I keep them separate from the non-Celadons. Right now I have a male non-Celadon nursing wounds in a crate and the Celadon hen nursing her wounds in the brooder bin alone. I'm not sure what to do next!! It turns out my non-Celadon hatch was all males and one female...so the two hens are WAY outnumbered and I am afraid to re-integrate the injured hen...sighhhh quail are way more mean than chickens!!

 

[ChanP]

Sorry you've had so much trouble. I hand-raising the two Celadon females and they were very trusting and actually held their own quite well! How many males and females have you got together overall?

 

[kurby22]

Sorry you've had so much trouble. I hand-raising the two Celadon females and they were very trusting and actually held their own quite well! How many males and females have you got together overall?

I have 7 males and 2 hens...my celadon males seem to be getting along better now that they are with another male and a Falb fee hen...so I am thinking I might be able to reintegrate the celadon hen with them...but I am so afraid she will get beat up again. She is SOO gun shy now, the poor thing. I am working on finding my males a new place to live...I plan to keep the celadon males if they behave, and my silver coturnix male...but the other 4 males are being evicted. The Grau Fees are AWFUL to everyone...I tried the apple cider vinegar spray to mask scents and help them reset...but it did NOT work. UGH.

 

[ChanP]

I think the best plan would be to get rid of some of the males. I had to do that with some that I hatched, and although it's hard, it stops you from the hassle of separating any injured females. Maybe you could look into getting more females? In my experience, males do have different personalities and some are bossier than others. I have 12 females and one male and they all get along very well. Added another male and it got a bit too much. Are you breeding them or just eating their eggs? Because if the eggs are for eating then the less males the better. I just made an article on my quails - maybe it would help with their general care?
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/keeping-egg-laying-quail.1474600/

 

[FloorCandy]

I have 7 males and 2 hens...my celadon males seem to be getting along better now that they are with another male and a Falb fee hen...so I am thinking I might be able to reintegrate the celadon hen with them...but I am so afraid she will get beat up again. She is SOO gun shy now, the poor thing. I am working on finding my males a new place to live...I plan to keep the celadon males if they behave, and my silver coturnix male...but the other 4 males are being evicted. The Grau Fees are AWFUL to everyone...I tried the apple cider vinegar spray to mask scents and help them reset...but it did NOT work. UGH.

If your ratio is not right, no time out, ACV, or intro time will help. I’m not sure if I’m understanding the numbers correctly though,

1. how many total quail do you have, and what are the genders

2. How many are you trying to integrate together, and what are the genders

3. what size is the space you are trying to integrate them into

I’m not sure if it was that you are trying to integrate 7 males and 2 females into a larger group, or are you trying to keep 7 males and 2 females together in total? If that’s the case, you need to put 2 females and 1 male together and put the rest of the males somewhere else until you sell them, eat them, or get many more hens. Your males can hurt or kill each other and the hens, and giving them bad experiences will make them harder to integrate into a larger group later. Perhaps for now you can put the 2 hens alone in the brooder and the males together in the larger space?

 

[kurby22]

If your ratio is not right, no time out, ACV, or intro time will help. I’m not sure if I’m understanding the numbers correctly though,

1. how many total quail do you have, and what are the genders

2. How many are you trying to integrate together, and what are the genders

3. what size is the space you are trying to integrate them into

I’m not sure if it was that you are trying to integrate 7 males and 2 females into a larger group, or are you trying to keep 7 males and 2 females together in total? If that’s the case, you need to put 2 females and 1 male together and put the rest of the males somewhere else until you sell them, eat them, or get many more hens. Your males can hurt or kill each other and the hens, and giving them bad experiences will make them harder to integrate into a larger group later. Perhaps for now you can put the 2 hens alone in the brooder and the males together in the larger space?

I have tried a number of things…originally i had all my non-Celadons in one pen that was apparently 1 hen and 6 males. And a Celadon pen with 2 males and one hen (none had crowed yet so I had no clue who was male yet). That resulted in one of the males getting severely beaten in the head area. We learned he was male while he was in isolation healing and crowed for an hour each morning at 5am. So, I let him heal and tried putting him back and it started up again…so I thought okay, male jail then…I’ll put all the crowing birds in one and hens in another.

I made the males only pen…and they practically took the eye out of one of the males…there were 4 in a 8 sq ft pen…

I didn’t realize that one of my falb fees that had some speckles on its chest was a male…nor the other grau fee that is never seen crow till they crowed at me two days ago…so I thought I had 4 hens together in a 9 sq ft pen with Silvie my super passive male. This resulted in the ones that were males that I thought were hens—to gang up on the Celadon hen.

So now, I have the super beat up male in isolation. I have the 4 males that seem very aggressive in the one pen that is 8 sq ft. And I have the two most passive males and the two hens together in the 9 sq ft pen. I have someone willing to take three of my males but not till Wednesday…so I’m just trying to find a dynamic that will work till then without one of them just plain killing one of them. Although at this point that might resolve a lot of my issues I think my Rosetta that escaped and got attacked by my dog was the other hen and it messed with things it seems :-(

 

[kurby22]

If your ratio is not right, no time out, ACV, or intro time will help. I’m not sure if I’m understanding the numbers correctly though,

1. how many total quail do you have, and what are the genders

2. How many are you trying to integrate together, and what are the genders

3. what size is the space you are trying to integrate them into

I’m not sure if it was that you are trying to integrate 7 males and 2 females into a larger group, or are you trying to keep 7 males and 2 females together in total? If that’s the case, you need to put 2 females and 1 male together and put the rest of the males somewhere else until you sell them, eat them, or get many more hens. Your males can hurt or kill each other and the hens, and giving them bad experiences will make them harder to integrate into a larger group later. Perhaps for now you can put the 2 hens alone in the brooder and the males together in the larger space?

I have 9 total, to answer your basic question. And 7 are males. My biggest issue is that I have one that is a nasty little shit that none of them seem to like…so he is either picked on or doing the picking. So after many attempts to mix them all around I just now removed him. Obviously 2 hens and 2 males isn’t ideal either…but when all the males were together there was fighting too. Sighhhh. I wish I’d just left them all alone and removed the butthead Celadon…but now they’re all being jerks. :-(

 

[FloorCandy]

Ok so there’s 9 birds total, only 2 are hens? Someone is taking 3 males, which will still leave 4. If you’re going to keep 2 males, you should separate the 2 males and 2 females you have together until you have more hens, or the males will fight eventually, even if they aren’t yet. The other 2 males need to go as well, I know you feel like it will be better when the other 3 are gone, but when the tyrants are gone, other more docile birds will step up and fight for dominance.

It’s an unfortunate scenario, I wish you had 7 hens and 2 males, but it didn’t work out that way. IMO you should put the 3 males somewhere until the person gets them, and cull 3 of the others. Let your females live with 1 male and hatch some of their eggs to add more females. It will be heartbreaking if you end up having to cull a bird after it has been painfully wounded beyond help.