My button eggs are hatching in my aviary.

[quailbrain]

I would not feed them meal worms yet. Not sure about the stats on meal worms where you are but here at least the worms are fed high fat diets for reptiles mostly. They are more of a treat. When chicks are young you don't want them to fill up on treats but more on the foods high in protein and nutrients. Kinda like us eating veggies vs. icecream.

 

[smallbluejellybean]

quailbrain, but kids love icecream!!!

I am just feeding them as a treat once in awhile.

Still too dark this morning to see if I can see any new chicks. Will have to wait a couple of hours.

 

[kooltex]

I keep my males together, they get along fine, as long as there are no females in sight! lol.

 

[smallbluejellybean]

Quote:
I have heard of people like you doing it successfully.

With sight you mean they can't see the females, what about hearing them?

It's just hard in suburbia to have enough space to have hundreds of pens. I want to sell pairs, but if I have a couple of males left over, I don't want to have to put them all seperate pens.

What is the best way to pair them up? Should I get for example 3 females and put them in with 3 males or will there be too much fighting?
Or should I do it one pair at a time in seperate pens and then put them together after they have paired?

They wont be housed by me very long. As I have people that already would like to buy them from me.

 

[quailbrain]

They do pretty well till they become sexually mature together. Once they have a reprodution perogative the fighting will begin. If it was for a short time you could probably do it. One problem you might have is having a group of males living together who have figured out boundaries and then adding in a newbie. The newbies probably would get picked on pretty bad.

 

[smallbluejellybean]

Quote:
Typical males - testosterone and territories. Thats with all animals even us humans. I wonder if anyone has ever got their male button quail neutered?
Gosh wonder if that is even possible?
Sorry another one of my crazy thoughts.

 

[smallbluejellybean]

If you would like to see some photo's I posted them in a different thread.
Here they are:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=285943

 

[kooltex]

Mine can hear the females, they just can't see them because their cages are on top of each other, but they don't fight, they some times try to mate each other, but nobody is ever brutalized.