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CAN YOU BREED QUAIL(CORTURNIX) AS A COLONY? A FOR INSTANCE: 12 FEMALES AND 4 MALES PER PEN OR AN EVEN LARGER NUMBER OF FEMALES TO MALES IN ONE CAGE? OR DO YOU SEPARATE 4 FEMALES TO ONE MALE.
I keep a few colony pens. There is nothing wrong with colony breeding with coturnix! It just makes a pen space and accounting nightmare for me, but you can successfully do it, as do many others. For the most part I use single roo to (X hen set) pen setup, where X=1 to 5. It's just a more manageable setup for me due mostly to my pen situation.
If you are going to do colony breeding then I would go with 1 roo to 5 hens, and increase the floor space as much as you can. Going by the 1 bird to 1 square foot rule, then if you had a 2 roo 10 hen set colony, you would need at least 12 square feet of floor space, and the more the better. This can create a totally unmanageable pen situation for me, which is why I don't generally do it.
Nothing wrong with it, and you can use the same basic model I use for keeping the genes straight, just make a bigger flow chart
got to be honest joe. 12 sq feet is a lot of room for 12 birds to be in... i would think you can get away with a little bit smaller. look at those battery cages guys use.. my goodness they have 3-5 birds in 1/1/2 sq feet cages... thats a bit much IMO.. i just feel like i have 12 birds in a little bit smaller of a 12 sq foot pen and they do very well as a matter of fact. my pens seem to be pretty large "ground aviaries" but i dont want to say every bird has 1 sq foot to itself... noone is overcrowded on my farm.
