My first Quail. A mini blog.

[FatherFalcon]

I knew I was going to have a ratio problem with these poor hatches.

The last batch of 18 had 14 hatches, 12 males, and 2 females.
Lots of breakfast soup... I put eggs out for the next go around. I'm hoping for hens ... so far 1;3 ratio is going well considering the larger size, and I've been doing assisted insemination.

 

[pac]

Plan for the worse, hope for the best.

 

[pac]

Well shoot. Now it's looking like one of the females changed her colors so to speak.
I'm seeing three roos now.

That guy on the right

This one

And this one

It's going to be (if I'm lucky) four weeks before I can put more chicks in there, so even the four younger quail will have reached maturity by then.

I'm giving some thought to moving two of the males into another cage I have well before then. A cage I was going to use as a brooder.

Either way, I think another full size hutch is in my future. Sooner rather than later.

 

[catesquire]

I know that pain

Though I admit our extra boys contributed to dinner rather than getting their own bachelor pad

 

[Nabiki]

Well shoot. Now it's looking like one of the females changed her colors so to speak.
I'm seeing three roos now.

That guy on the right
View attachment 4133242


This one
View attachment 4133243

And this one
View attachment 4133245

It's going to be (if I'm lucky) four weeks before I can put more chicks in there, so even the four younger quail will have reached maturity by then.

I'm giving some thought to moving two of the males into another cage I have well before then. A cage I was going to use as a brooder.

Either way, I think another full size hutch is in my future. Sooner rather than later.

The two you have marked as male are, indeed male. That's one reason I try not to rush even with feather sexable colours. Sometimes the males lose their spots a bit late.

 

[pac]

I know that pain

Though I admit our extra boys contributed to dinner rather than getting their own bachelor pad

That's certainly a possibility. But I don't want to run into a problem growing them out to 8 weeks or so with so few females in with them. I thought pulling two out early to finish growing would reduce the chance of me walking over there only to see a bunch of beat up birds from fighting. Let alone the hens. 1 roo to 2 hens is bad enough if I remove the two.

The way my hatches have been running who knows what sex I'll have with this new batch. I'm on a bird to bird basis. I'm not getting the numbers to have the convenience of keeping some for breeding and egg producing and some for the table out of one hatch. I've got to keep an eye on things because my group is so small. Isn't that when problems are more likely?

Plus I've got the other batch on its way that is taking over a week to get here. I was hoping to incubate two batches of eggs at once and get a decent size number. Now these batches are going to be staggered by weeks. If I even get any to hatch out of the eggs still in transit.

This whole quail experience is not going according to plans

Hey, look at this guy from yesterday. I have no idea what was keeping him so interested.

 

[pac]

Interesting the way my five quail have cleaned out the grit from it's bowl (and some of the oyster shell, which is not so interesting).

I guess even if they don't need grit if on a commercial food, they still like grit.

 

[Nabiki]

Interesting the way my five quail have cleaned out the grit from it's bowl (and some of the oyster shell, which is not so interesting).

I guess even if they don't need grit if on a commercial food, they still like grit.

They do like grit. If you're feeding them anything other than commercially milled food, they NEED the grit, so it's built into their instincts to like it. There are some studies that imply that grit is beneficial to them even if they are eating nothing but milled feed.

 

[pac]

My 8 wk old laid her first egg.
And it's BIG.

So how do y'all store the eggs you intend to eat?
Is a bowl or basket OK? Or should I still try to store it big end up? In which case I'll have to buy some quail egg cartons.

Of course, I plan on eating this one tomorrow morning

 

[catesquire]

Double yolker!!

I just have a little basket in my fridge, though I imagine they'd be fine on the counter for quite some time. Don't see why orientation would matter outside of eggs for hatching