I wanted to fill the freezer with quail but.......

[fancyfowl4ever]

...... its getting rediculous now.

I have been hatching since november, brought all my Coturnix in the house and seperated into breeding pens to get the most colours. Its a full house to say the least(1 room cabin).
Plan was hatch lots, keep all females as replacements and keep a few males as replacements as well and the rest for the freezer before I sell eggs for hatching.
So far I have hatched ONLY MALES! My mother is whining of what to do with all the quail in the freezer now. My current batch of 8 chicks again looks like all males(sat brooding over the silvers last night forever trying to tell myself the 1 is dark enough to possibly be female, but it just isn't), am crossing my fingers the one wild type chick is female, it is kinda 50/50 chance on that one right now.... c'mon 3 months of hatching and no replacement hens yet.. what gives? Last year i hatched mostly females. Can't think of what i am doing differently, maybe location of my bator isn't "zen" or something

Or is it the year of male vibes? My chicken hatches have been 95% male so far too.


Sorry for the little Rant, but sexing those quail chicks last night just frustrated me.

Someone send some pink vibes to my next batch in the bator, due in about 1.5 weeks

 

[jbobs]

That is interesting! Frustrating too. I usually get about 60% males but the fact that your chickens are doing the same thing is just odd. I have never tested this theory, but a friend of mine who bred gekkos said that with reptiles, and overall high average temperature yielded more males and an overall low average temperature yielded mostly females. I don't beleive this is true for birds, though. maybe you need to switch up some of your stock?? You got me.

 

[fancyfowl4ever]

The stock is same as last years, didn't keep any of the hens I hatched then thinking I will hatch replacements around christmas.....

.

The temperature thing doesn't work in the way like it does for reptiles, but I have read several times that with chickens female embryos cannot deal with higher temps and die during incubation while males survive higher temps= in more males hatched.
Not sure how true that is, and I seem to hatch only males no matter if I keep my temps on the high or low side. But I have more deaths during incubation if I am closer to the higher end.

 

[jbobs]

wow that's crazy! I would think you would get at least the odd hen here and there. How many are you setting at a time? If you're only hatching a dozen I would say it might just be luck of the draw, but if you hatched say 30 or more and they all turned out to be males I would wonder what the heck is going on. Could be like Henry VIII who just kept throwing daughters no matter how hard he tried LOL

 

[MobyQuail]

nice thread there you folks from up north!
nice to see you posting.

 

[fancyfowl4ever]

I set around 30-40 at a time usually. I have one hen that rarely is fertile(of course she is my best layer) so by the first candeling I am down 10 or so eggs cause I am chucking 90% of hers. But I think that non-fertility is because she is a silver hen and I have put her with a silver male(crossing this colour to eachother has poor fertility).
I switched all my breeder pens around a bit and tried different pairings to see if fertility improves, should know by next week.

Maybe with improved fertility comes girls?

And I had been told hatching silver males is difficult.....

they never looked in my brooder, silver males anyone? And I swore I would keep any silver I hatched for breeding since they are so difficult to breed sometimes... needless to say I broke that promise and have several beauti silver males in our freezer.

 

[MobyQuail]

Im with ya on the 30-40 at a time, Im gonna try setting that many every month. If I can bag 16 decent birds per month that is more than enough for 2 people plus some giveaways.

What do these silvers look like? I know you have different colors that we don't have down here.

 

[jbobs]

silvers are my favorite! I never had any problem getting silver roos. I never bred for any specific colour, I just had a pen full of normals, whites, goldens, range, tuxedos. I had one silver roo and that was it for silvers. It seemed like a good portion of the offspring I hatched initially were silvers and half males. I would love to get my hands on some silver stock but they are hard to find in canada!

Fancy Fowl in Cranbrook, wanna send me an e-mail so we can keep in touch? I'd LOVE to get some eggs with silver possibilities this summer (depending on where I end up and if I have a place by then)