Does anyone raise quail on the ground?

[igorsMistress]

The ladies are still inconsistent with the number of eggs per day. We've doubled our egg supply in 10 days.

I saw mating going on in there the other day, two males are competing now.

 

[someusername]

get one male outta there!

 

[igorsMistress]

get one male outta there!

There are at least 6 males in there right now. No one is getting beat up.
Will make decisions on birds next weekend.

 

[le_bwah]

There are at least 6 males in there right now. No one is getting beat up.
Will make decisions on birds next weekend.

What are your criteria for which males to keep? Culling is my least favorite part of quail-keeping and I wasn't super picky the first time I had to choose—curious what makes a "good" roo, besides obvious traits.

 

[CoturnixComplex]

I have a lot of criteria, including mother and sister's egg production, weight, color, temperament (allowed a few weeks of misdirected teenage hormonal anger at females, no more than that or gets no females, not too jumpy around me, etc), overall shape, health and weight at hatch, thickness of legs/feet, and age of maturity/when they start chasing skirts.

 

[le_bwah]

I have a lot of criteria, including mother and sister's egg production, weight, color, temperament (allowed a few weeks of misdirected teenage hormonal anger at females, no more than that or gets no females, not too jumpy around me, etc), overall shape, health and weight at hatch, thickness of legs/feet, and age of maturity/when they start chasing skirts.

Cool! I'm still on the first generation (hoping to change that in the spring!), so knowing what to select for is helpful.

 

[CoturnixComplex]

Oh, and good beaks!

 

[someusername]

Yup, thye get really angsty as 3-5 week olders.

 

[igorsMistress]

What are your criteria for which males to keep? Culling is my least favorite part of quail-keeping and I wasn't super picky the first time I had to choose—curious what makes a "good" roo, besides obvious traits.

My criteria, these are my first quail, is color first because I have a few birds I'm sure are Golden mixes. I need a wild type male to go with them. Golden x golden can be lethal.

The next criteria are size of the bird, and whether I've seen him mating yet. I have one picked out already. He seems pretty gentle with the girls and he's one of the larger males out there, and I saw him mount a female the other day.

In chickens it's the hen that determines the size of the chicks not the rooster, although his genes will certainly have some influence. My biggest girl is a wild type, noticeably larger although not a lot. If I can figure out which eggs are hers I'm going to track her babies to see if it makes a difference in weight of offspring compared to the others. This would be a major factor for females for me.

 

[someusername]

I usually cull them by keeping the more agressive one in isolation with a couple other hens, for his sanity(yup one time i had a quail go crazy because he was alone), since I usually don't have that many quail, since cull just means remove from your breeding flock.