Introducing quail. Need help!

[weirdones]

Really getting frustrated. Trying to get groups of breeding quail. We had a good group and lost a male and they won't accept another male. We even swapped two females out. I am so confused.

We have a Rosetta male that has Jumbo brown with him and any other female we have tried to introduce gets picked on.
We just hatched a&m's and meat makers and only got 1 A&m female. Not sure what to do because if we keep a male and her, I am afraid we won't be able to add more females later.
We never had issues like this with chickens.
We can't keep building cages to put them in when they don't get along and end up with no breeding groups.
At this point about ready to cull them all and start over.
What do you do?

 

[DK newbie]

I don't have coturnix myself, but from reading this forum, the advice goes:

1) Cage them next to each other for 1-2 weeks so they can see and hear each other - maybe even touch each other through the wire.

2) When introducing them, this should preferably be done in a cage that is new to all of them, so no one considers it their territory. If this is not possible, heavily rearrange the interior of the cage, move the cage - do whatever you can to make it seem new to the old birds.

3) Just before the introduction, toss some treats in the cage - a big pile of grass clippings or something like that. The idea is they become distracted and once they loose interest in the grass or whatever you chose, they've forgotten there are no longer bars between them and the new bird.

Large cages and lots of hiding places in the cage increases the chances of success, but is no guarantee.

For the a&m, I'd just keep them with some meatmaker hens. If they are all coturnix, hybrids shouldn't be a problem at all, unless you really want a group of all a&m's.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

Giving them a sand pan usually helps too. They would rather scritch around in the sand than fight.
I consolidated some breeders one time and no matter how I paired them up I had 3 hens that didn't like anybody else. Putting them in the frying pan solved their attitudes and made mine and the other quail's lives much better.
I run about 6-7 birds per breeder cage and I've found out when I need a few replacement birds it works better if I cull the whole cage and get a new group from the grower cage rather than trying to replace indivdual birds.

 

[weirdones]

Well tried to introduce them all in a new cage and they beat the crap out of the male. They are just brutal hens so they will be culled.
Think we will do it the cull and replace from now on when ever possible
So is sand okay?
We had sand baths and someone said it causes impacted crap so I put in oyster shells but they don't seem interested
Maybe need to grind it up more?

 

[ChickenLegs13]

If they ate the sand, it would pass through their system without any problem.

 

[lomine]

Really fine sand, like sand box sand, can cause impacted crops. Courser sand is fine.