BrandonsBirbs
Thanks HopKat for my PFM ♥
Not a worry! Real life comes first!I apologize for the delay! I definitely forgot to reply. No excuses.
I did separate the boys from the girls early on at around week 5-ish, because we were seeing fighting. That settled things down...sort of...for a short time. Then they started up badly enough that we culled heavily at week 6 because of incessant fighting and crowing, leaving just our potential breeder males (and all the ones we couldn't sex. We are REAL bad at vent sexing. Also we had a few feather sexable ones who looked like girls but turned into boys.).
In fact, we sadly had to cull one this week because she turned out to be a he, and the two other (much more mature) males beat him up so bad we didn't feel trying to doctor him up would be humane since he was going to be a meat bird anyways. "She" was G011, and isn't going to be included here with a dress-out wright because we didn't process him for meat, as we were concerned for the safety of the meat (worried about infection--we probably could have eaten it safely, but didn't want to risk it). His final (live) weight was 171.3g.
So--yeah, violence has definitely been an issue, even though we have been stocking them at 1 to 2 sq ft per bird.Guess they're just ***holes. (We have an order in with Myshire for a shipment of eggs and will be very interested to see how the temperaments of those birds compare. If they are significantly less aggressive, we may just cull this entire batch and replace them with the Myshire birds. But that's a story for another time.)
Anyhow, sorry for being late with this. We had a very busy weekend and didn't get to weigh them until today ..though I don't think we missed any real growth. It's been over 100F here a few days this week and our feed consumption has dropped considerably, and the birds in the outdoor coop have basically not grown...at all, which is disappointing. The birds in the screened porch, meanwhile, are still growing just fine, so we're fairly sure it's the heat putting them off food. This week's data should be taken with a grain of salt--I look forward to seeing how the next batch compares.
Data for week 9:
ID Sex Color Wk 9 Other B006 F Egypt 185.6 B008 F Pharaoh 250.7 B018 F R Tux 230.1 G001 F Pharoah 189.4 ** G002 F Pharoah 265.1 G003 F Tux Pharaoh 329.2 G010 F Red 258.8 G015 F Pharoah 312 G019 M Pharoah 230.3 # G021 F Pharoah 280.1 G024 F Pharoah 296.6 G025 F Pharoah 323.1 G026 F Egypt 221.9 G030 F Pharoah 266.2 G039 F Pharoah 271.5 G045 M Pharoah 233.6 G067 F Falb Fee 313.4 G076 M Falb Fee 230
** I don't know why she lost so much weight. She is in the outdoor group, and definitely feels too thin. I'm worried about her, especially since she is the only bird we have that happily comes over to investigate treats and eat out of our hands. Hoping she isn't ill. She seems okay other than being thin.
# This guy will probably be out breeder. The girls like him and he doesn't mind sharing girls with other males.
Our plan was originally to make final breeder selections and harvest all other birds this coming weekend. We have family who will be here then though so they may be a few days later than exactly week 10 in deference to that, but will update with final weights at that time.
Yep, quail are horrible to each other. I don't know if where you get them from will make much of a difference, our quails have always been like that no matter where we've sourced the eggs.
We've been suffering from the heat too, our birds reduced their consumption and instead have been absolutely guzzling their water. I really can't blame them honestly!
That's a massive weight loss, wonder if it is just to do with the weather? From what I've read birds can choose to unstore fat to help deal with increasing temperatures. Though it's never explicitly mentioned quail so maybe they can't. Hopefully she's okay.. our favourite little birdie died last week (super cuddly one), sucks!
