They are both boys I'd say. Females should not show any rusty colour. It's best to not breed birds like this as it doesn't preserve the ability to easily visually sex these birds.
#1 is definitley a male as i seperated him, no eggs, and he crowed. I have now removed #2 to isolate if they lay eggs or not. #2 really hates #1 he drew blood on him so i had to put them both in seperate cages from rest of flock.
Here are some others from my other hutch. These should be easier to identify as they are lighter colors. I think #1 and 2 is male and #3 and #4 is female but would like other peoples opinions
3 and 4 definitely look like females to me, 1 and 2 are probably males, but the speckling on the throat of 1 makes me less sure of that one. These look like the golden/Italian coloring, so males should have the solid colored reddish breast, but I have had some males who were a lot lighter in color on the chest and were harder to tell for sure.
How do they behave towards each other? If the males are sexually mature they will try to mount the females by grabbing the feathers at the back of the head and standing on their back.
Sometimes just watching them can help determine whether male/female if the feather color is unreliable.
2 is def male as its crowed. Im about #1 if thats male or female as unsure as I have 10 quails in my 2nd hutch. The only way i could tell if i seperated them like i had to do in hutch 1 and realized no eggs were being laid.
I have in Hutch 2, 10 quails in total. There is either 3 or 4 roosters by my count and 6 or 7 hens. They reached maturity after 6 weeks in winter, and started laying eggs late around week 10 when it was winter. At first its 1 then 2 then 3 now they are onto 4 eggs a day. So im estimating there is atleast 4 hens there. As they usually lay one a day.
In that cage is 4 of these Italian types, 3 Manchurians, 1 Rosetta, and 2 Browns. One of the Manchurians is def male as he tries to mount all the other birds. Including the 2 other Manchurians.
Im not exactly sure whose laying the eggs. But in Hutch 1 it was only one quail. So after my first set was identified there is 1 female and 3 males in one cage. So i removed the 2 males and kept the one who is the better breeder in the cage.
in above post 3 is def a girl. I put her in a separate cage and she laid an egg. I then integrated her with my older breeding pair. And the male quail that could possibly be her father tried to mount her as soon as she got put in the cage.