Do female quails really crow?

[Livi]

Edit: Youtube video here:

Hi quail people! Me and my sons have very recently started up with quails. I had 4 quails many years ago but they were sold to me already sexed and I never bred on them so all in all I am pretty much a noob in all this. My quails are 3-4 weeks ago, I have coturnix japonica in A&M, honey, tuxedo and range (that is the "normal" browninsh color right?) I have been tea and cider sexing them for a little week now, everytime I saw one raising up and crowing I strapped a blue spiral band on him. Yesterday we started moving quails into our new quail hose (yay!) and since the pens there are slightly bigger than were I keep the growers I thought it best to sex them before we did that. I always believed that crowing was only for rooster in quails, so after several hours of reading my quail book on sexing, searching this board for eggsellent advises and googling and looking at youtube videos, we started up with the following procedure:

Color assessment when possible (mostly not)

Vent peeking (purely educational at this stage)

Putting him or her i a little cage placed near the other ones. This almost always make them raise up on their legs as tall as they get and start making the sound I always believed to be roo crowing.

But after a few hours of this we found 15 roos and only 6 hens. Of my 8 white ones I only found 2 hens. I suspected that my method had some faults maybe. One of e honey ones looked like a school book example of a female with spots on her chest but in the cage now she crows like the world is about to end so I am pretty sure about her at least. And when I got out to check om them this morning would you not believe that 2 of my socalled females raised up and crowed? :crazy:

So, I have probably been very unlucky with my hen/roo ratio, or I have misunderstood a crucial point: can females crow under circumstances as the one I described? (put in a cage alone)

Is beer sexing only reliable when they are in their own cage?



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Peacerose]

This is a crowing male coturnix. Only the male makes this sound. There are other loud calls that both male and female make, but they are locator calls, not crowing.

 

[Livi]

Thanks alot. I was afraid so I just thought that maybe I had misunderstood drastically. We will at least be able to have a quail feast in a couple of weeks then

So I really could not mistake it? How is "locator" sounds? All my quails are young so the crowing is not "hard" like the sound I hear on youtube but still is is not a cooing either. And as I described they stretch very tall before they do it.

 

[Livi]

Added link to youtube in OP

 

[Ntsees]

I do not have experience raising all quails and can't say the same for other quail species, but for my species, the females are capable of "crowing" just like the males.

 

[Livi]

What species do you have got?

 

[Livi]

Hoping for a few more to chime in with opinions to solve our wee problem

 

[Caribear]

I watched your video, and I don't think that's a crow. All of our males have sounded almost exactly like the one in Peacerose's video, just a little higher pitched. The sound your bird is making sounds more like a locator call.

A crow is three notes that kind of trill at the end. The locator call is one note repeated many times.

 

[Ntsees]

Quote:
Mountain quail.

 

[Livi]

I watched your video, and I don't think that's a crow. All of our males have sounded almost exactly like the one in Peacerose's video, just a little higher pitched. The sound your bird is making sounds more like a locator call.

A crow is three notes that kind of trill at the end. The locator call is one note repeated many times.

Thanks alot, exactly the answer I was hoping for! Guess I will just have to wait until they lay or otherwise learn the vent sexing.