With the weather picking up and not being all dramatic now... I'd like to start hatching some eggs. I've got 1 male to 4 females. I'm not against sectioning him off with only 2 females, just felt keeping them all i n one cage would be fine. I see ruffled feathers here and there but I'm not they're ruffled because he is doing his job. I inspect them about 2-3 times a day and all he ever does is sit there in a cool corner and peck the ground. I've caught him moving the eggs in a corner and leaning/sitting on them too. Now I check if he is male, and he is MALE.... so I don't get this behavior. Does it mean he did his job and he's protecting the eggs? I mean he doesn't fight me when i grab for them but he does growl. Do just place the eggs in the incubator and hope they're fertile? candle them in a week?
I also have some quail I have seen my two males mate with the hens a few time in the morning before I go to school so that's how I know my quail are doing what they need to! With chicken you can usually see a small white dot with a ring around it which is a sign of fertility! Maybe it's the same with quail eggs but I'm only guessing! I don't know what quail kind you have but my Chinese Blue Breasted quail hens have lost some feathers on their back from mating! But sometimes this happens just because they peck at each others' feathers! I think the best way would be to incubate them and candle them after 3-4 days and see if you can identify a small heart and veins! This will probably be the surest way to find out if they're fertile! Hope this helped. Good luck!
There is a possibility that he's doing his business, just not when you are there watching. He also hears you coming by and ends up in the corner where you always find him. One of the things I am planning on doing is to put a video camera on a tripod for the egg layers and video their daily interactions, just to make sure. After I was certain that all is well, I would take the camera away unless something was going on during the daytime while I am at work that wasn't happening when I'm home. I'm also planning on putting a different colored tag on each bird, to see who is and who isn't doing their part.
If you've got a male in there with females, and assuming he's not a chick still, I can guarantee you that he's taking care of business, multiple times a day. I kept my game birds for about 3 months before I ever saw a male mounting a female, granted I wasn't sitting there at the cage 24/7 either. Put them in the incubator, and 3 days later shine a flashlight in the egg in a darker room- if you see veins or any dark mass or any red, they are fertile
If you want to see for sure carefully crack an egg in a bowl and look for the bulls eye just like chicken and duck eggs.
