Incubating quail eggs for the first time : )

[sniper338]

Im suppose to have a hatch today.. we will see

 

[LindsayB]

Good luck!

 

[LindsayB]

I noticed when I was candling that one egg has a small crack on its side. Its also the one with the biggest embryo so far...should I just leave it alone and see what happens?

 

[sniper338]

You can put nail polish on it amd seal it so I have heard

 

[sniper338]

Or finger nail paint... womens stuff... stuff they color their nails with...

 

[LindsayB]

I gotcha. I'm a woman with plenty of "nail paint". LOL I'll put a thin layer of clear over the crack when I turn them next. Thank you!

 

[sniper338]

I bet you do have some paint then! lol. But yes, that what I have read on here a few places, they said to put a little on there and maybe it will save the shell, maybe it wont... not a perfect solution as nature is going to take its course either way, but it has helped severel people hatch cracked eggs.

 

[LindsayB]

Just wanted to share a pic of the cracked egg with the embryo growing inside. I decided not to seal the egg after doing a little research. I'm just going to let it be, if it makes it to hatch that will be great. He's going strong so far though! I'm not going to candle again until day 8 or so we'll see how everything works out. 10 out of 15 are growing!

...Just candled the 5 I thought were duds...One is developing! So I have 11 out of 15!! yay!

 

[LindsayB]

I have somewhat of a stupid question for y'all... the eggs I'm incubating now are all a&ms and I plan on only keeping a male a 2 females. I have 24 variety tuxedos coming in Feb and depending on what I can hatch from that, I'm only keeping 3 or 4 birds for breeding. I mainly want to raise quail for meat but I thought it would be neat to play around with their colors. If I had an a&m male with the tuxedo hens, would they still produce a better meat bird? And what color pattern would come out of that?

 

[dc3085]

The thing with A&Ms these days is that it is mostly a color name for white quail with a black spot. Tuxedod are created by crossing an A&M (or an english white) and a rosetta/tibetan/golden. All the colors I mentioned here carry the "jumbo" gene and can be bred to be pretty large. As far as a color experiment, crossing a white of any sort with a tuxedo will usually only result in tuxedos since that color is dominant. By crossing the white in for multiple generations you can create chicks that have more white than normal but thats about it.