males to females ratio for egg laying

[quail42]

Thanks to everyone for answering all my questions. We have build our pen and are ready to order our quails. I have decided to get hatched chicks instead of trying to incubate right now. We will keep them in the garage in the winter and the deck in the summer. The pen is 18 square feet including the nesting box.

Todays question - what is a good male - female ratio? We would like at least 1 male in case we want to breed them later. We don't want too much noise as we have neighbours. I am thinking to get 2 males and 8 females, would that work? Would our space be large enough that they don't fight? Or should i do 9 females and just 1 male?

 

[I Love Layers]

Thanks to everyone for answering all my questions. We have build our pen and are ready to order our quails. I have decided to get hatched chicks instead of trying to incubate right now. We will keep them in the garage in the winter and the deck in the summer. The pen is 18 square feet including the nesting box. 

Todays question - what is a good male - female ratio? We would like at least 1 male in case we want to breed them later. We don't want too much noise as we have neighbours. I am thinking to get 2 males and 8 females, would that work? Would our space be large enough that they don't fight? Or should i do 9 females and just 1 male?

I usually say 1 male to 8 females is a good ratio.

 

[cshma11]

I have 1 male and 5 females - edit: they do well and lay about 1 egg a day. The male has 2 favorites but mounts them all.

 

[JaeG]

Unless you have an planted aviary type situation it's best to stick with one male per pen, otherwise there will be fighting which stresses the hens which leads to them not laying well. So one male and however many females you can fit sounds like a good idea. One male should only crow briefly early morning and evening once he's settled in with his girls and secure in his territory, whereas competing males can crow a lot more trying to out-do each other.

For breeding (if you do want to try your hand at it) it's best to have less females to males, even as few as two to ensure the eggs are fertilised and it's best to breed them in their first year as fertility does drop off dramatically after that. I can attest to that having tried to hatch eggs from our two year old birds - 9 chicks developed and hatched out of about 50 incubated!

 

[I Love Layers]

Unless you have an planted aviary type situation it's best to stick with one male per pen, otherwise there will be fighting which stresses the hens which leads to them not laying well.  So one male and however many females you can fit sounds like a good idea.  One male should only crow briefly early morning and evening once he's settled in with his girls and secure in his territory, whereas competing males can crow a lot more trying to out-do each other. 

For breeding (if you do want to try your hand at it) it's best to have less females to males, even as few as two to ensure the eggs are fertilised and it's best to breed them in their first year as fertility does drop off dramatically after that.  I can attest to that having tried to hatch eggs from our two year old birds - 9 chicks developed and hatched out of about 50 incubated! 

I agree with everything you said!

And if you really want to breed I have had 1 rooster to 30 hens and always had 90% or more hatch rate. And to make it easier you could just put 3-4 hens with your rooster alone to ensure maximum fertility