Introucing 8 Month Old Button Quail To New Button Quail?

[TheNeonPanther]

Hello everyone. I have what I think is a male button quail. He is almost 8 months old but his what I think mate died when he was only 5/6 months old. He has been lonely ever since. I have been thinking about getting 6 eggs and incubating them, raising them and slowly introducing them to my male. (All will be button quail) How will this work out? Again, all will be introduced very slowly and in a large aviary.

 

[DK newbie]

In general, more than 1 male pr. cage doesn't work well, if there are females around. There are exceptions to this rule, but I wouldn't recommend trying it.
Buttons are supposedly monogamous, so you should have just 1 male with 1 female, though I have 1 male with 3 females and most of the time that seems to work just fine. If you hatch chicks, it is likely you still won't have at least 1 female pr. male you end up with, so you will probably have excess males you need to get rid of somehow(or just have the excess males live together without females - I have 4 10 weeks old males living together right now, so far there have been no real problems). Also, you probably shouldn't introduce a very young female to a grown male - I would wait till the female is at least 3 months old. My suggestion would be to just buy a grown female for him - if 'he' really is a male. You can post a few pictures if you need help determining - though if he is white, a description of his behavior would probably do more good

 

[dc3085]

Usually when you have a trio or a quad that is going to nut up on you they don't do it till after theyre about a year old. Hormones or something. I've had success with both trios and quads but those were birds I took in from other breeders or pet stores, I firmly believe they should be kept in pairs. Stress level of the cage is substantially lower that way, and you'll never have hens turning on each other.

In regards to integrating buttons basically like any quail, you'd need to wait until they were fully feathered and up to their adult size. With buttons this is usually 8-10 weeks. You can't just plop them together either. YOu need to keep them caged in full view of each other for a couple weeks until you see them start to exhibit "caring" behavior toward each other. At that point you can toss them together, although it's best to do that in a cage neither bird has ever been in to avoid territory issues.

 

[TheNeonPanther]

In general, more than 1 male pr. cage doesn't work well, if there are females around. There are exceptions to this rule, but I wouldn't recommend trying it.
Buttons are supposedly monogamous, so you should have just 1 male with 1 female, though I have 1 male with 3 females and most of the time that seems to work just fine. If you hatch chicks, it is likely you still won't have at least 1 female pr. male you end up with, so you will probably have excess males you need to get rid of somehow(or just have the excess males live together without females - I have 4 10 weeks old males living together right now, so far there have been no real problems). Also, you probably shouldn't introduce a very young female to a grown male - I would wait till the female is at least 3 months old. My suggestion would be to just buy a grown female for him - if 'he' really is a male. You can post a few pictures if you need help determining - though if he is white, a description of his behavior would probably do more good

Thank you. I am trying to find a adult hen to him if he is male. No luck but would you think he could do okay with a finch just in case I can't find a hen locally?
I don't have any pictures yet, but he is a tuxedo with brick red feathers near the vent. He also sounds just like this:

 

[TheNeonPanther]

Usually when you have a trio or a quad that is going to nut up on you they don't do it till after theyre about a year old. Hormones or something. I've had success with both trios and quads but those were birds I took in from other breeders or pet stores, I firmly believe they should be kept in pairs. Stress level of the cage is substantially lower that way, and you'll never have hens turning on each other.

In regards to integrating buttons basically like any quail, you'd need to wait until they were fully feathered and up to their adult size. With buttons this is usually 8-10 weeks. You can't just plop them together either. YOu need to keep them caged in full view of each other for a couple weeks until you see them start to exhibit "caring" behavior toward each other. At that point you can toss them together, although it's best to do that in a cage neither bird has ever been in to avoid territory issues.

Thank you. I was planning on doing that with the cages, but I wasn't sure. Thank you for giving me details about the adult quail introduction!

 

[DK newbie]

Thank you. I am trying to find a adult hen to him if he is male. No luck but would you think he could do okay with a finch just in case I can't find a hen locally?
I don't have any pictures yet, but he is a tuxedo with brick red feathers near the vent. He also sounds just like this:

Definitely sounds like he is a male
I doubt a finch would do much good for him. I have my group with budgies, and the two species rarely interact - when they do, it's usually not in a positive way, but that's just because budgies aren't very friendly to other species, you probably wouldn't experience that with finches. But finches tend to like branches and buttons like the ground, so unless the cage is quite small, I doubt they would interact much.

 

[TheNeonPanther]

Definitely sounds like he is a male
I doubt a finch would do much good for him. I have my group with budgies, and the two species rarely interact - when they do, it's usually not in a positive way, but that's just because budgies aren't very friendly to other species, you probably wouldn't experience that with finches. But finches tend to like branches and buttons like the ground, so unless the cage is quite small, I doubt they would interact much.

Yeah, I was thinking that too. Well, thank you for all your help in this thread!