Making button quail polygamous?

[702Quails]

I have 2 males and 4 females and I can see that only 2 females are being bred and have missing feathers on their heads. There's always 4 eggs laid everyday, but when I tried incubating them, I found that just over half of them were fertile. I guess the males could be occasionally breeding the other females, but I want them to do it on a regular basis. If I take out the 2 females that I can see are being bred, will the males start breeding with the other 2 females?

If the males do start breeding with the other 2 females, will they breed with all the females once the 2 females that were removed are re-introduced? I want to incubate eggs on a regular basis, but I want a male to female ratio more like Coturnix quail (1 M to 3-5 F). They're only a fourth the size of Japanese quail, but they still eat a surprising amount, so less males to feed would be nice.

 

[2 many chickens]

Separate them into 1 male and 2 female housing.
So 1 male per 2 females
I would not keep 2 males with four females.
The males will start to fight and could possibly kill each other.

 

[Serin]

Only keep buttons in male / female pairs.

 

[Quailobsessed]

Are these king (button) quails or japanese (coturnix) quails?

As Serin said, kings (buttons) should be kept in pairs (1 male, 1 female).

 

[blackoaktammy]

I keep my buttons in a variety of setups, depending on the space of the cage and the personality of the birds. They should have one square foot or more per bird. Since you have some hens with feathers missing, it looks like you have an overzealous male, or possibly you only have 2 hens. Can you tell if one male is mounting the hens more than the others? You may need to remove him from the group.

I'm not sure how experienced you are, so I'm throwing a few things out there Not all males have bibs. The true indicator of a male is blue feathers. Hens may have white throats or a hint of red on the vent, but they never have blue feathers.

If your hatch rate is low, I'm also thinking you may have a pair of pearls in the mix. The pearl gene is double dominant fatal, chicks will not develop in the egg if they have two pearl genes. All pearls have one pearl gene and one wild-type gene, so you will get both pearl and wild-type chicks.

I have pairs, trios, and larger groups. My most successful group is two males and three hens. They get along great and they have a hatch rate of 90% or greater. They are all fully feathered, run, jump, and play all day and snuggle together at night.

 

[702Quails]

I keep my buttons in a variety of setups, depending on the space of the cage and the personality of the birds. They should have one square foot or more per bird. Since you have some hens with feathers missing, it looks like you have an overzealous male, or possibly you only have 2 hens. Can you tell if one male is mounting the hens more than the others? You may need to remove him from the group.

I'm not sure how experienced you are, so I'm throwing a few things out there Not all males have bibs. The true indicator of a male is blue feathers. Hens may have white throats or a hint of red on the vent, but they never have blue feathers.

If your hatch rate is low, I'm also thinking you may have a pair of pearls in the mix. The pearl gene is double dominant fatal, chicks will not develop in the egg if they have two pearl genes. All pearls have one pearl gene and one wild-type gene, so you will get both pearl and wild-type chicks.

I have pairs, trios, and larger groups. My most successful group is two males and three hens. They get along great and they have a hatch rate of 90% or greater. They are all fully feathered, run, jump, and play all day and snuggle together at night.

I know there's 4 females, because there's 4 eggs laid everyday and only two of them have bibs. Out of all the eggs, just over 50% hatched when only two females were noticeably being bred. I can now see that a 3rd female is missing feathers on her head, so she must be regularly bred too. I'll have to see if the next batch of eggs will yield at least a 75% fertility rate.

 

[blackoaktammy]

I know there's 4 females, because there's 4 eggs laid everyday and only two of them have bibs. Out of all the eggs, just over 50% hatched when only two females were noticeably being bred. I can now see that a 3rd female is missing feathers on her head, so she must be regularly bred too. I'll have to see if the next batch of eggs will yield at least a 75% fertility rate.

The male may not be able to cover all of the hens. That is a lot for a button to cover. Another thought I had - are any of them pearl? Pearl is double dominant fatal, so if you breed pearl x pearl you will automatically have a lower hatch rate.