MF ratios and what are my options?

[Florence NightingQuail]

Right now, my covey of quails are just hitting 5wks old and all is well with them, but I’m aware my ratio is out and there may be trouble come breeding time. I’ve got 3 Roos and 7 hens. One of my Roos is very submissive, the other two are loud and dominant. I assume my options are :
1) shed a roo or,
2) gain a couple of extra hens

But is segregating one of the males using a divider in the coop an option? Will he get lonely? Should I segregate 2 males and just leave the most dominant big fella to his harem on the other side?

 

[Fenrisulfr]

I wanted to write this to the silent roo thread, but it is better to do it here.

It is unpredictable how a flock developes. It can work with 3.7 MF ratio, it may cannot.
You van run into the problem, that after a few weeks the females abandon the roo and scalp him.
The roos may scalp each other or even a hen runs to be alpha and tries to kill the submissive birds.

Even your silent roo may will become dominat, if the position as alpha becomes vacant.

Never knows.

I advise to watch the developments in the flock carefully and decide when it comes to problems.
There is no real 'do this and all will be good'

These little birds have so many shades of characters, that you never know what happens. You can only react.

One thing that always helps is space ... as more space they have, they can get out of the way from each other.

 

[Florence NightingQuail]

Thanks for your response - I guess I’ll just watch and wait; they have a generous amount of space, so fingers crossed they’ll be ok. I do dread returning home from work to find any of them minus its scalp, having said that! I’ll prepare a divider to have ready if needed, I guess.

 

[nao57]

I like that you pointed out that 1 of the roos was submissive and 2 dominant. This will hopefully help you get feed back on probable outcomes.

Unfortunately I can't tell you more since I don't have quail.

But thinking about it in terms of 'self sufficiency', I don't like the idea of only one male. What if something happens, and you lose him? Then you wouldn't be able to get anymore fertile eggs. And that would be worse if you are having covid shutdowns and can't go get more.

 

[Florence NightingQuail]

Yes, I see your point re risks involved of only one male. I really don’t know what will happen, I guess I was hoping that my submissive guy will pose no challenge to the other roos and thus be left alone and not have to be sent to exile. I hadn’t even considered that the alpha female could also have violent tendencies; she’s HUGE, if she kicks off we’ll all be ducking for cover!

 

[FloorCandy]

I currently have 9 hens and 3 Roos. Since I broke it down to this amount, (they were born 10 Roos and 9 hens) I’ve been concerned for 1 roo. My alpha Tiger millionaire and his second Aragorn have an area split worked out, and they get along fine. Aragorn is very submissive. Then there’s Red, he’s lovely, but he crows incessantly and roughly plays rapey chasey too often. I’ve had the bucket out to cull him 3 times, and he got a reprieve, like sudden thunder storm, or family emergency.

the males don’t bother Red, but I’ve seen him punk out at them, like run up to Tiger, kick up and jump, then run for his life, he doesn’t even hit Tiger, and Tiger doesn’t even chase him.

However, the hens HATE Red. If he gets one, 2 or more other hens run over and pull him off, he’s missing a lot of feathers in the side neck areas. They don’t really hurt him, no pecking no cuts. So I just keep letting him stay, I keep telling him his days are numbered.

I took him out to the breeder with some gals, I wanted his clutch first in case I have to cull him. When I prepared to put him back, he and Aragorn threatened each other thru the wire at first, but by the next day they were ignoring each other, I put him and his gals back in, and it returned to biz as usual. I removed Tiger Millionaire to the breeder with some girls, and Aragorn became alpha, and Reds life didn’t change. I put Tiger back, return to original behaviors.

the best advice is, give them lots of hides and space, get more hens ASAP, and just be prepared to cull. Don’t assume not crowing means submission, Tiger Millionaire does not crow and Aragorn crows maybe twice a week. They’re happy so they don’t complain.

 

[Mhays]

I had a lot of very polite roo babies that turned into sex-crazed hellbeasts pretty suddenly. The sex-crazed part happened before the fighting, so I'd keep an eye out for that: watch your hens' heads for missing feathers carefully.

We were planning to cull, but there were two that we were fond of - wound up having to give one away with one of our hens (nobody wants a lone rooster) and get a new coop for the other one. In between, there was some blood shed, but we fortunately got to it in time. Plenty of hides will help but a rooster bent on unseating the alpha can be really determined.

 

[Florence NightingQuail]

Oh lordy, I knew I was going to have to cross the bridge between culling being theoretical and real at some point, I just thought it’d be a couple of months off at least.... but nobody likes excessive rapey chasey! At what age does the sex crazed beast mode start? I might pop over to the Australia thread and see if anybody has a couple of spare hens going; I’ve been looking in my general area but nobody seems to keep quail anywhere near me!

 

[Nabiki]

Oh lordy, I knew I was going to have to cross the bridge between culling being theoretical and real at some point, I just thought it’d be a couple of months off at least.... but nobody likes excessive rapey chasey! At what age does the sex crazed beast mode start? I might pop over to the Australia thread and see if anybody has a couple of spare hens going; I’ve been looking in my general area but nobody seems to keep quail anywhere near me!

It can start as early as 5 weeks. 6 weeks is pretty normal.

 

[FloorCandy]

Oh lordy, I knew I was going to have to cross the bridge between culling being theoretical and real at some point, I just thought it’d be a couple of months off at least.... but nobody likes excessive rapey chasey! At what age does the sex crazed beast mode start? I might pop over to the Australia thread and see if anybody has a couple of spare hens going; I’ve been looking in my general area but nobody seems to keep quail anywhere near me!

I culled 7 males, 4 at 5 weeks or so, then the remaining 3 at about 8 weeks. The ones I culled at 5 weeks were wild pattern and visually sexable. The others I had to vent sex. I had one who had no foam until after 9 weeks, so maybe I culled 3 at 9 weeks, I’m not certain. At 5 weeks or so I had a sudden scalping, with no aggressive behaviors leading up to it, that’s when I culled. All females recovered and have regrown their feathers.