Help! Need to balance my grow out pen

[Hope It]

Hi, everyone, I am in need of some advice. I'm raising my first batch of quail (60 texas A&Ms).
They are 6 weeks old now. The boys have been crowing for 2 weeks now and the girls started laying a few days ago - yey.
Here's my problem: I sat out there like a madwoman with a blue sharpie and marked all the crowing birds and here's what I found - over 2/3 are boys! Poor girls are running away from them and losing weight from all the running.
These will pretty much all be food soon, but I want to give them a couple more weeks to 'beef up', just not sure what to do in order to balance the pen.

I have several hutches, where I can separate them out into. Should I?
Can I put all the boys into one large pen (1 square foot per bird) and girls into others? Or is it better to keep all together as they are all now?

Nobody seems to be fighting, except for one mean girl and I separated her a week ago.

Help! Any advice would be much appreciated.

Hope

 

[elch]

If you could make the pen dark for 16 hours a day it should make it not breeding season for them, and help them gain weight.

 

[Hope It]

Oh, OK, thanks!
If I separate a few girls just to sustain the egg production until my next batch is grown up (and keep lights on for them) but turn lights off at the boys' pen - would that work? If it's not breeding season for the boys - will they still get along as they do now?

 

[elch]

when it's not breeding season the males should be less active and attack each other less.

 

[Hope It]

alright, thansk! I'll do that

 

[dc3085]

Hi, everyone, I am in need of some advice. I'm raising my first batch of quail (60 texas A&Ms).
They are 6 weeks old now. The boys have been crowing for 2 weeks now and the girls started laying a few days ago - yey.
Here's my problem: I sat out there like a madwoman with a blue sharpie and marked all the crowing birds and here's what I found - over 2/3 are boys! Poor girls are running away from them and losing weight from all the running.
These will pretty much all be food soon, but I want to give them a couple more weeks to 'beef up', just not sure what to do in order to balance the pen.

I have several hutches, where I can separate them out into. Should I?
Can I put all the boys into one large pen (1 square foot per bird) and girls into others? Or is it better to keep all together as they are all now?

Nobody seems to be fighting, except for one mean girl and I separated her a week ago.

Help! Any advice would be much appreciated.

Hope

The advice they are giving you is for bobwhites not coturnix. For cots just throw all the males, you aren't using for breeding, in one pen and put them where they cannot see females. They shouldn't fight much at all and should crow less. I've had more than 60 roosters in one pen with no problem as long as space is sufficient.

Coturnix "breeding season" is 9.5-11 months of the year depending on environment and such, and even during the "non-breeding" season the males will still cover (breed) the females the entire time. they don't really have a breeding season, they have a couple months they don't lay eggs but they are like chickens in that they can breed every day of the year and will.

 

[Hope It]

Great info, thanks! Good to know that if they don't see females they will actually fight less than if there are a handful of females in the pen with them (eye-opening to me). I thought at least some females with somewhat passify them, but sounds like it's just the opposite.

I will do this today, trust me. I need these males to get fat and not be losing weight running after females and jumping around and crowing their hearts out!

Hope

 

[dc3085]

Great info, thanks! Good to know that if they don't see females they will actually fight less than if there are a handful of females in the pen with them (eye-opening to me). I thought at least some females with somewhat passify them, but sounds like it's just the opposite.

I will do this today, trust me. I need these males to get fat and not be losing weight running after females and jumping around and crowing their hearts out!

Hope

If your starter isn't medicated just keep feeding them the 30% gamebird starter, and pull their food about 8 hours before you butcher, so their craw clears(makes it easier to clean them)

If food cost isn't an issue I run my meat birds out to 12 weeks. They aren't really fully mature at 8 weeks, they are sexually mature. 8 weeks is also the top of the growth curve, but they don't fill out until 12 weeks. The growth curve is what commercial growers use to decide when they are spending too many dollars per ounce of added weight on livestock. There really is no comparison between an 8 wk and 12 wk carcass in size. Plus the 12 wk birds will have a little fat on them to hold the flavor while youre cooking, 8 wk birds will be totally lean.

If you're new to processing them watch my videos (the links are in my signature), they'll make your life a lot easier.