NO eggs. why?

[ftpagain]

i have been reading and from what i understand quail lay eggs even during the winter but less than during the summer. but mine have quit completely. id say i haven't seen an egg since october. i live in Oklahoma so it was still pretty warm at that point. this is how it all went down hill - i had 10 birds (2 roosters and 8 hens) all together in a chicken tractor type structure and a little coop to go inside. and they were laying like crazy. i incubated a bunch and got about 25 babies. CUTE! when they started to get bigger i put them in with the adults. there wasn't really any drama or fighting and every one seemed to be getting along just fine. but i started to get less eggs and they started to molt. so i figured that they were just molting and were on a break but they seem to be done now and look all happy and active. no one is fighting. but ZERO eggs.

this is my first winter with quail so i have no idea whats happening. i thought that since my chickens were not laying as well it had something to do with the lack of light, but i guess i miscalculated the age of the chickens and they were simply too young to lay, but are now just starting to even without extra light.
any suggestions?

thank you

 

[COsteveo]

They do a fall molt as the days get shorter and then stop laying shortly afterward. They can lay continuously but they need that extra light - at least 14hrs per day total. If they have already stopped it may take 2-3 weeks but with enough light they should start laying again.

 

[oktx]

We live in Oklahoma. We moved ours indoors to a heated shed and they are still laying. The eggs slacked off a bit during the fall molt but it's back to normal now. About to start our second hatch of the Winter since our first hatch was 22 males and 9 females (ebay eggs). We had a little over 40 hatch but only 31 made it past the first week. Anyway, hoping our second hatch has a better male/female ratio this time.

Last year we kept ours outside and although we had no casualties and no problems, we also had very few eggs. If you have any place you can move them indoors, I highly recommend doing it. It's made a huge difference for us.

 

[ftpagain]

We live in Oklahoma. We moved ours indoors to a heated shed and they are still laying. The eggs slacked off a bit during the fall molt but it's back to normal now. About to start our second hatch of the Winter since our first hatch was 22 males and 9 females (ebay eggs). We had a little over 40 hatch but only 31 made it past the first week. Anyway, hoping our second hatch has a better male/female ratio this time.

Last year we kept ours outside and although we had no casualties and no problems, we also had very few eggs. If you have any place you can move them indoors, I highly recommend doing it. It's made a huge difference for us.

are you doing anything with their lights? and how warm is your shed?
maybe we can move our into one of the unheated sheds and keep them under red heat lamp when it gets around freezing. do you thing that would make a difference?

 

[oktx]

are you doing anything with their lights? and how warm is your shed?
maybe we can move our into one of the unheated sheds and keep them under red heat lamp when it gets around freezing. do you thing that would make a difference?

Our shed is right around 70 with the heater going. We have a heat lamp going in the brooder some of the time (right now just a regular bulb as this batch is ready to move over to cages soon). Our shed is insulated well so it just takes a small space heater on low-medium most of the time to keep it at that temp. We turn on the flourescent shop lights around 6 AM and turn them off around 9 PM every night. Seems to be working well as egg production has not dropped off at all. As soon as we have enough of the new females laying we will go ahead and move the current ones to freezer camp since they were all hatched out last Spring.

 

[dc3085]

Be careful heating your birds like that if you dont have a generator. Your birds have no down now because you are heating them and will rapidly freeze to death if thw power fails. You dont actually need to heat them at all to continue full production in winter but at this point its too late for you to change that. Im sure they love the heater anyway so your only worry really is power failure.

 

[oktx]

Our shed is very well insulated and even in below freezing temps, the temperature in the shed only drops to around 50 with no heat. I do have a generator I could use if needed, however. Thanks for the concern.

 

[oktx]

By the way, I'm calling it a shed but it's really the workshop attached to our garage. It's very warm in there as long as the doors remain closed.