Coturnix in lockdown, when should I become concerned?

[bkquail]

How many of your quail hatched out? are they all doing good?

 

[Sustained]

Yup, be prepared to be a nervous wreck for the next couple weeks lol I don't think it ends until they're mature. Now I'm worried that they'll suddenly keel over on me so I'm constantly checking to make sure they're active and eating and drinking. And then there's the dying to know whose a roo and whose a hen! There's definitely something to be said for the sex-link breeds. Although those are never quite as interesting looking in my personal opinion. Hmmm and I'm not sure there's any sex-link quail. It never occurred to me to look. I'm going off of chickens

Well I only ended up with 4. That's not too bad out of 6 eggs in lockdown. And they're doing great! I just love the bright golden feathers. I saw some 'snowflake' pattern quail on ebay last night and I'm definitey going to be adding those to my flock. So cool looking

 

[bkquail]

Im already a nervous wreck

lol i swear to god ive checked them atleast 80 times in the last 3 days.
4 is not bad out of 6. snow flake sounds like it will look cool

 

[Sustained]

LOL I don't blame you. I put the incubator next to my bed, but low enough that I could just lay on the bed and stare into the windows. Oh did you end up bidding on those 2 auctions? Or did you talk yourself out of it?

 

[bkquail]

i decided not to. i gave my sell a scare last night when i was looking at the incubator the temp was at 101.6

i got it down so it was only on that for a few mins but it was at 100.6 the rest of the night while i was sleeping. Dont know if it was too hot and got it back down to 99.5 this morning

was to busy watching eggs to order anything but after looking at the snow flakes i think they are going on my christmas list

 

[Sustained]

101.6 is okay. Obviously, not the ideal but you don't really need to worry too much unless your bator hits over 102 for an extended period of time. A few minutes at 101.6 wouldn't be long enough to bring the internal egg temps up very much. It's a good thing you noticed though. If the temp was going up who knows where it would've topped out

Do you have a fan in yours? I didn't put one in and to help with hot and cool spots I put the glass craft marbles in the water tracks to help even out temp. It helped quite a bit. Not sure if the hovabators have the temp spot issues too

Haha aren't the snowflakes great? I really like the dark gray ones with the little black feather that flops forward on the males too (can't think of what breed the are at the moment). I'm starting to suspect eventually I'm going to have a few of every color and breed

 

[bkquail]

i have the temp recorded i 2 spots and its the same so i dont think there is really any hot spots. There are no fans right now but was possibly going to add one. im am for sure buying a bator with a auto thermostat. The only snowflakes i saw on ebay were button quail. The us is kinda lacking on morphs for coturnix quail from what i can see

 

[Sustained]

I meant the gamble quail lol with the one little black feather on the head that flops forward. I love it. There's some wild quail around here that I've seen running through my front yard that have it too. Definitely a lack of coturnix morphs. But that leaves an open niche for anyone who wants to start on a quail project....

 

[bkquail]

Ahhh yes i know what you're talking about now. lol my bad. Im going to have to start doing research on genetics i really want to play around with the morphs and see what will come up. and i want to play with the jumbos and see just how big they can get can you imagine getting a jumbo up to like 2 pounds or even a pound and a half? that would be crazy

 

[Sustained]

Not just crazy, that'd be AWESOME! Talk about a great sustainable meat source. Especially if they still matured at the same rate as the standards. I'd trade out my meat rabbits for those. Well, retire them anyway. Although if they got that big, that fast I imagine you'd run into the same issue that the Cornish x chickens have. It wouldn't be a problem if they were purely for meat I suppose. That's a really interesting idea. Hmmmmm.....