Impatient for eggs....

[ColleenC]

My quail are turning 8 weeks old this weekend, and they have yet to lay any eggs. Is this normal? From what I'd read, I expected them to start laying around 6 weeks old.

I've got 2 males and 5 females in an area about 2.5 by 3.5 feet. The males have been crowing for at least a week and a half, there's some foamy poo going on, so I know they're sexually mature. I haven't had any problems with aggression, the birds seem happy and healthy, just no eggs. Is there anything I can do to help encourage egg production?

 

[gamebirdsonly]

So you have cortunix quail? if so yes they should be starting any time. When I had them they usually took about 7 to 9 weeks to start laying sometimes a little longer.

 

[ColleenC]

Yes, sorry they're coturnix. I guess I just have to continue to be patient!

 

[dc3085]

You see a lot of conflicting information on coturnix out there but basically they will lay when their bodies get ready. You can't say for sure what a coturnix will do because there are so many people breeding for the traits they want. I have some birds that lay eggs that hatch on day 15 every time others will not even pip until day 17. I have had them start at six weeks or at twelve so all you can do is wait. I will warn you with two roosters in that space you will have some fighting eventually. I have had them go for weeks in smaller colony cages before one goes all Hannibal Lector on the others. If one rooster makes the other bleed the whole flock will kill the bleeding bird.

 

[ColleenC]

I wonder if the quail felt I was somehow publicly shaming their lack of eggs by posting online, because this afternoon, I found our first egg in their coop! So exciting.

The two males are certainly jostling each other a bit already. One is clearly smaller than the other and there's a definite alpha-beta relationship between the two. I was expecting a higher male-female ratio when they hatched, and planned on culling all the males except one, but we had only two males, so wound up deciding to keep both. (mostly because really, one quail seems barely worth cooking up...) We'll keep both as long as they continue to behave with some level of tolerance towards each other...

 

[Sycamore27]

I wonder if the quail felt I was somehow publicly shaming their lack of eggs by posting online, because this afternoon, I found our first egg in their coop! So exciting.

The two males are certainly jostling each other a bit already. One is clearly smaller than the other and there's a definite alpha-beta relationship between the two. I was expecting a higher male-female ratio when they hatched, and planned on culling all the males except one, but we had only two males, so wound up deciding to keep both. (mostly because really, one quail seems barely worth cooking up...) We'll keep both as long as they continue to behave with some level of tolerance towards each other...

That's kind of how our situation went. We got three chicks, two turned out male, one questionable due to coloration concealing sex. We got more confirmed hens and then our questionable turned out to be a hen too. We did end up seeing enough overbreeding and baldness in our hens, and stress from that leading them to go after the roos, that we did end up processing that lone extra male. With heaping side helpings one decently fat quail can stretch for a two person meal... if you're not super hungry.
Cheers,
Jessie