I'm stuck.

[jsanderson5110]

Hi, I'm new to this forum. I have chickens and quail, but my concern is for my quail.

We bought about 20 eggs from a quail farmer near where we live. We successfully hatched about 16 of them, and long story short, we are down to 7 -- 3 males and 4 females.

One male quail is separate from the flock because we suspect he will be killed. We've tried reintroducing him but the other males won't have him. Having 2 males to 4 females seems to be working for us now. I'm not sure what to do with the extra roo.

We only have one female laying right now, and that's every other day or so. The food we feed them is around 22% protein. The cage they are in is big enough and they get enough light during the day.

Another concern I have is two of our females have crooked necks. I assumed when they hatched that it was a genetic thing and there wasn't anything I could do about it. We are raising the quail for eggs so I wasn't concerned about the breeding option but those hens aren't actually laying at all.

The quail are 12 weeks old. I'm ready to throw in the towel -- I don't want to kill them and eat them and I can probably give them away but I know that no one probably wants the crooked neck ones.

I really wanted to start this as a hobby since I love birds. But through natural selection (too many roos killed each other to even out the ratio - bad luck) and a black snake incident (he ate all the eggs, ate two quail, and killed two more), I am emotionally exhausted and in dire need of answers, or validation that I can either start over or just be done and just focus on our chickens.

 

[Quail Whale]

Stay encouraged that’s just the way it goes sometimes. You had an awesome hatch rate from those eggs. Wry neck is from trauma or malnutrition. Quail are flying through protein and nutrients for the first 6 weeks of life. I had one line of true giant coturnix that would show signs of wry neck if they missed a meal it was crazy. Give them space and plenty of food. You can trim beaks to reduce damage done during aggressive mating. Also, the recommended number of male to female is 1 roo to 5 hens in breeder cages by the USDA. I know people that keep completely different ratios on a regular basis and just deal with the issues that can arise. Black snakes. Where about are you located in the US? Predators are always a problem especially with quail. Everyone goes through it. Good thing it was just a couple birds and not a couple hundred. That kind of stings what that happens. Two steps forward one step back. Make adjustments and keep pushing forward it will get better for you. Best of luck.

 

[le_bwah]

If the adults are eating and doing bird things normally, it's not too big a deal, but you can always supplement with vitamins (made for birds or babies, as long as it doesn't have iron). I've not heard of wry neck being heritable anyway, as it's usually due to a vitamin deficiency. 22% protein might have been a bit low for them growing up; a lot of people I've seen aim for 24-30%, especially for young birds. Try upping the protein in their feed for a few weeks and see if that changes anything.

One boy to two girls is not an optimum ratio; (1:3 should be about as low as you go, ideally). If the boys are over-mating the hens, it could be causing enough stress to keep them from laying. Adding more girls or removing a second boy are other things to try (you don't even need males anyway if all you want are eating eggs).

Quail can be tricky to get into. There are plenty of horror stories and bad starts catalogued on this site: predators, disease, poor genetics, unfortunate mistakes. But they're also an incredibly easy bird to keep once you get them going, and very enjoyable to raise. It just seems like yours haven't hit their stride yet. Try changing up their feed, try shaking up their gender ratios, make sure they have hidy-holes where they can feel safe laying. If all that fails, then it's time to start thinking about where to take them next.

 

[Erkenstein]

Sorry to hear about all of your struggles. You are learning a lot!

There's a lot of good advice above already. As it sounds like you've experienced, the violence can get apocalyptic, and it's not always males that can turn aggressive.

Goes without saying that your cages need to be predator proof.

I go with 30% protein until 12 weeks and then switch over to 21%. Hatchlings also get ChickStart powder added to their water for the first couple of weeks. I introduce sand and greens at 1 week old.

I keep my adult birds in separate breeding groups, one male to four or five females in different cages. There always needs to be an extra cage for aggressive or injured birds. Even among the breeding groups, I've had birds suddenly become aggressive, either one bird going after another specific bird or just being aggressive in general. Depending on the situation, I remove either the victim or the aggressive bird. Any blood and the victim definitely should be removed or the others will get in on the action.

I also hatch regularly, and I separate the extra males into a growout pen and process them when they get full-grown. An aggressive bird gets added to the processing schedule.

Your low lay rate is probably related to diet and probably stress as well. If you are going to stick with quail, I suggest you look at ways to correct your ratio so that it's minimum 1:4. Options:
1. Purchase additional females for your males. I suggest three separate cages. You also would need to be able to introduce the new birds without mayhem, so that's it's own challenge (I'd have three cages: one with one of your males and the four hens you have, give the lone male some hens but in a new cage so he doesn't get territorial, and move your other male to a third cage and give him some hens.).
2. Cull two males. Choose the biggest healthiest one to keep.
3. Collect and incubate eggs. Since you aren't getting many eggs and some of the hatchlings would be male, this would take some time and would require you learn to cull or find a market for your extras. Eggs will stay fertile for up to ten days while you are collecting if they are kept under 70 degrees and turned a few times a day. One issue with this is that your parent stock has issues and you don't want that being passed on.
4. Purchase eggs and incubate. Faster than #3 but also requires dealing with the extra males.

Since you are in it for the eggs, #2 doesn't get you closer to that unless you also bring in or hatch additional females. Also, you don't need males for the hens to lay eggs, so if you aren't into hatching eggs things will be better if you just get rid of all three males.

Luckily, quail is super tasty!