Help!!! Quail keep dying!

[MamaMoore14]

I need help! We started with 9 adult quail (1 roo and 8 hens) and then hatched 35 babies. All went well with raising the juveniles and when they got big enough we put them in with the adults. There was no fighting and the hens were still laying great. Our quail pen is 7 ft tall and 12' x 12'. It is covered with a mesh tarp so that they dont hit their heads. We have branches for them to hide in and plenty of food and water plus a hutch for shelter. The birds did great together for about 2 months (6 months of having them completely) and then about the end of Aug the hens stopped laying and then birds started dying. 1 or 2 a day, one time 6. They have no marks on them. We check on them multiple times a day and they will die in between checks. We are at our wits end. All of our original hens are dead and we are down to 7 of the juvenile with 2 more dying today. We have checked for all of the quail diseases but there have been no eye discharge/ coughing/ or acting different. They seem perfectly happy and then dead. If you have any idea how to help us I would greatly appreciate it!!!!

 

[DK newbie]

I'd start by removing all males but one to a different cage. You mention no removal of the young males, which could mean you had about a 1:1 male-female ratio when releasing the young ones. It should be more like 1:6 and only one male in each enclosure.
Depending on how old they were when you deemed them 'big enough' and released them, a couple of months could be just what it took for them to fully mature - and begin raping every female in sight. This can cause a lot of stress for the females, though I'm unsure of the exact cause of death as you say you see no wounds and they probably can't kill themselves by boinking - unless they boink into the sides, not the top. The location of the dead bodies might give you a clue there.
If you wan't to know for sure why they die, I'd find a chair, sit next to the aviary and wait for something to happen. Most likely your presence when you 'check on them' stops whatever it is they do, but if you sit still long enough, they should forget about you.

Of course there is also the option that something about their feed isn't as it should be. Make sure they get 24+% protein and a calcium supplement.

 

[MamaMoore14]

Thank you for replying, no we didnt remove the male quail from the juveniles because my husband is wanting to raise flight ready quail. Should we put all the males together for that or would it be all females? We were unable to find any info on the best way to do it so were kinda going blind on that front. The juveniles were about 10 weeks old when we put them in the grow out pen and about 14 weeks when we put them with the big birds at the beginning of Aug. We have plans to build a 16x30 flight pen but with the numbers dwindling we have lost hope. We are feeding them 24% feed and they calcium supplements as well. I clean the pen weekly. Also we are finding them dead usually smack in the middle of it. I should also mention that these are bob whites and read that they didnt mature until quite later but really thought the roo would kill the juvenile roos if mating was the case but the adult hens were some of the first to go.

 

[DK newbie]

Ohh.. Usually when people just say 'quail', they mean coturnix. So I assumed that's what you had. As it's bobwhites, quite a bit of what I just wrote isn't correct and the rest I can't really vouch for - most of my knowledge about both coturnix and bobwhites come from this forum and people write quite a bit more about cots, so I know more about them.
I do remember a website where they sold bobwhites for release though - and as I recall, they had large pens with males and females together. So you might not have been going wrong by not separating the sexes. Might still have been a bad choice to put the young ones with the old ones though, but I'm not sure.. :/

 

[Tikvah]

Hi sorry to hear about the death of your bob whites. Did you ever find out the cause. Thanks

 

[MamaMoore14]

Hi yall, we arent sure what exactly happened but we started treating for quails disease and we havent lost any other birds. So hopefully that is finished, but we arent exactly sure. They didnt show any outward symptoms and we didnt do an autopsy. Fingers crossed the problem is fixed for now, our last 8 are holding strong!

 

[KatDar]

Hi yall, we arent sure what exactly happened but we started treating for quails disease and we havent lost any other birds. So hopefully that is finished, but we arent exactly sure. They didnt show any outward symptoms and we didnt do an autopsy. Fingers crossed the problem is fixed for now, our last 8 are holding strong!

Hi I realize this is an older post but what quail disease did you treat for and how did you do it? We had a mixed group of about 15 bobwhite and all but one female has died. The males seem to be unaffected by whatever has killed the females. There is nothing obvious but we noticed that one female that was weak and dying seemed very thin. We feed them organic game bird starter, and supplement with sunflower seeds, oyster shell, grit, fresh vegetables and fruit. Thank you

 

[Mallards and Quail]

Hi I realize this is an older post but what quail disease did you treat for and how did you do it? We had a mixed group of about 15 bobwhite and all but one female has died. The males seem to be unaffected by whatever has killed the females. There is nothing obvious but we noticed that one female that was weak and dying seemed very thin. We feed them organic game bird starter, and supplement with sunflower seeds, oyster shell, grit, fresh vegetables and fruit. Thank you

How old are they? How many males do you have? How many females did you have before they died?