My Button Quail was um assaulted

[mochicken]

I have been working hard to separate the males and females out a a button quail "colony" that my uncle gave me of 14 buttons. I have 6 white ones so its kind of hard to tell on those.

I have a silver one with darker speckles that I knew was a female because she has been dropping eggs like the easter bunny for the last 2 weeks and had been witnessed doing so by myself and my wife. Yesterday when cleaning her pen she flew up to the divider and right into the "bachelor pad" where I have 5 sex unknown quail, lets just say 2 of them at least are males lol, the second she hit the ground one started chasing her which I thought was a game until he bred her, before I could catch her another one ( white this time ) jumped on her and tried breeding her, I then caught her and put her back in her own pen before any other assaults could happen lol.

Maybe im an idiot but when I read that they are monogamous I figured they picked their own mate to live their life with, however if you just stick a male and female together in a pen do they just "accept things"? I dont know how good I am at setting up arranged marriages lol, but I guess I could figure it out.

I do have a BEAUTIFUL silver male that would make awesome babies with her.

Here are pics of what they look like, they are not my pics but almost identical in appearance

 

[shelleyd2008]

The first is a red breasted hen, not a silver. I don't let mine choose their mates, I don't have that much time to just sit and watch them to try and figure out which ones decide to 'pair up'. If you put a male and female together they will eventually bond or kill each other....so far I've not had any do the latter

 

[mochicken]

just out of curiosity, why they call them red breasted when they dont have any red on them?

 

[shelleyd2008]

Because the males are red breasted (color) and this is the female of the same color. Female buttons don't get red on them at all, but this is the one that 'throws' that color. Just like with a red golden pheasant, the male is red and golden but the female is brown. That doesn't mean the female is not a red golden, she's just a female

In most birds the males are the more colorful version of the species.

 

[mochicken]

Ahh gotcha, I have an over abundance of male red breasted