My quail are almost 6 weeks old and no eggs!

[C&Rman]

Is that normal? I think I have 2-3 girls and about 15-16 boys

also allot of them have lots of feathers missing and some are bleeding is that normal for their age? Aren't they to young to fight??

 

[stephanie1992]

are the feathers missing from the back of there heads? and if there all in the same pen thats alot of males to be with females

 

[The Critter Place]

What kind of Quail?

And are they all in the same pen? If so, that's way too many boys and they probably are fighting.

What size cage? How are you housing them?

 

[TheRealTimShady]

holy god...i'd lose all buy 1 or 2 of those males unless you want them to just attack eachother b/c they fight over the hens.

if you have breeding pens, match them up now, and get rid of the rest of the males

 

[Chinchilla2]

Six weeks may still be a bit young to have eggs. 8 weeks is more common. I'm guessing these are the coturnix you have listed in your siggy line. Separate them out, two to a pen. Hens can look a bit like males at this stage of the game. If you have foam tested these and definitely have that many males, quail breast wrapped in bacon is excellent.

 

[shelleyd2008]

Is this normal??? Are you serious??
First off, determine how many females you do have and put them in a separate cage. If you have more than 5 females pick 2 males and put them in the cage with the females; less than 5 females and pick 1 male to put in the cage.

6 weeks is the minimum age for egg laying. This time of year, they might not even start laying if you don't give them additional lighting. The added stress of too many males will also delay their egg laying.

 

[C&Rman]

Oh... I am new to quail so I thought it was a little to early for them to fight over females. I am for sure that they are 3 females from the Jumbos. I will definatly get rid of the extra males tommorow. As for their pen size they are all combined in one 4'x8' pen, with a 2'x8' wooden part. I will try the foam thing tommorow as well. I was just going by the breast feathers. And they dont have any feathers missing on their heads just their backs.

 

[Chinchilla2]

C&Rman :

Oh... I am new to quail so I thought it was a little to early for them to fight over females. I am for sure that they are 3 females from the Jumbos. I will definatly get rid of the extra males tommorow. As for their pen size they are all combined in one 4'x8' pen, with a 2'x8' wooden part. I will try the foam thing tommorow as well. I was just going by the breast feathers. And they dont have any feathers missing on their heads just their backs.

Yeah, do the foam thing. Breast feather sexing works well with most of the coturnix breeds but the Jumbos can get a little iffy on ya. You might wind up with way more females than you think.

Sounds like the pen is fairly nice sized but you still want to do the 4 to 1 ratio thing. The males are some extremely amorous fellas with lots of stamina.​

 

[shelleyd2008]

If they are all browns you don't need to check for foam. Males have a reddish colored, non-spotted, breast and females have a cream-colored, spotted breast.
Male in front, female in back

 

[Chinchilla2]

Quote:
Shelley, that is a GREAT pic of a pair. Back when I raised them they never would stand that close together enough to get a contrast image like that. You must have those babies just spoiled rotten. Nice and healthy looking too.