Have you ever heard of this!!!

[magikchick]

I have a pen with 10 quail in it, 2 males and 8 females. The males were a little on the small size but not much smaller then the females. I've seen signs of mateing, feathers missing from around the heads of some of the feamales. Yesteday I found one of the males lying on his side. When I picked him up I noticed he was very light in weight other then that he looked fine. He died shortly after that. I checked the other birds they all seem healthy except the other male was also under weight. So I watched them when I fed them and I was amazed to find that the females were starving the male. Everytime he would try to get to the food one of the females would grab him by the neck and pull him away. Now this wasn't just one female but all of them. I took the poor thing out and hand fed him but it may be too late for him also.

My other 3 pens are all fine everyone is fat and happy. Just this one pen has behavior going on. Is it because the males were small?

 

[becky3086]

I usually have two spots in the pen where I put food because I did notice that some were not as aggressive as others and wouldn't get enough food.

 

[AndreaGS]

I've had something similar happen, where I had a particularly large female in one of my pens. I had to put my biggest male in with her. All the other males she would chase after and nearly scalp! I had a little recovery cage for her two victims.