Please I need help quickly. Quail eggs won't fit into my quail rails!

[oktx]

Just for future reference, if I wanted to use my 120 slot quail rails (Little Giant) for James Marie eggs? About how many would logistically fit in them? Just planning for the future now that I know this could be an issue.

 

[Oregonbeek]

Most people I know that raise coturnix breed for big birds and big eggs. What you got from James Marie are some of the best eggs around. They have developed some of largest birds around and save you years of breeding to get to where you will be by hatching their eggs. I hatch in a roll-x and use every other slot in the quail egg rack. It is shocking to see the size of their eggs but very pleasing to see the size of the birds you get. Best of luck with your hatch!

Thanks! I have no problem with people wanting larger birds and I totally get why people do it. People just need to realize that if you go buy standard quail incubators and quail egg cartons and other "quail" apparatus, you are going to be in a world of hurt when you go buy jumbo quail eggs. It's definitely something people probably run into because if you go searching the internet for coturnix quail eggs, you are going to find that half of them are jumbo sized.

 

[Oregonbeek]

Just for future reference, if I wanted to use my 120 slot quail rails (Little Giant) for James Marie eggs? About how many would logistically fit in them? Just planning for the future now that I know this could be an issue.

I'm not sure how much the little giant differs from my Genesis Hova Bator, but it holds 120 quail eggs and if the eggs were small enough it would easily fit all 120 eggs. The trick is just getting normal/standard coturnix quail and not jumbo quail. My problem was that of the 100 eggs, some were huge and some were normal sized (as you can see from the photo). 30-50 were the right size for the racks and 50-70 were too big for the quail racks. I simply removed half of the racks and incubated the smallest 60 eggs.

I thought about going with the every other hole method the last poster mentioned, but they were too tall and were scraping on the other rails as the rails turned. That's why I had to remove half of the rails. The skinny ones sunk down into the holes more but the fatter ones kind of floated on top of the holes and rolled off of the rails at the slightest turn of the racks.

Maybe there is an auto-turning quail incubator that holds jumbo eggs? I'm not sure.

 

[underground chickenman]

Your eggs aren't too big, your rails are too small.

For next time:

If you seat one egg all the way in the cup, the one next to it will sit too high because the first egg crowds it. Balance them out so they are both a little up out of the cup, but not so high they fall out when the rack turns all the way. The eggs will rest against each other, and sit up off the bottom of the cup, but they should stay in. Also, make sure you put the pointed end down (air sac up). The other way around makes it harder to fit in the cups and will result in a bad hatch, if they hatch at all.

You will also have to go with only 60 (remove every other rack), or notch out the bottom of your racks with a dremel or other rotary tool, or the edges of the racks will crack the eggs.

It takes a little fiddling, but you can make it work even with those big eggs.

 

[TonysChickens]

I use the regular egg rails for the quail eggs. They fit fine in them and since Im gathering my own eggs now, i have enough room for a weeks worth of eggs, which is probably about as long as eggs can be held for before they lose fertility?

 

[Tammy N]

The Problem is your Racks are Probably for Button Quail
that is so sad your complaining about getting something that is gonna be a good thing the small eggs that fit in those Racks hardly hatch well with the Cortunix

you might of ment button instead of normal size and there you cant blaim robby for the wording you used .

I dont use the racks they dont allow much air to my eggs and i get better Hatches ith out them and hand turning at 6 am 8 pm and 2 am

But thats just me i enjoy it and dont mind the little sleep for these beautiful healthy babies ,

 

[StaticChaos]

I ran into this problem the first time I tried to incubate Jumbo brown eggs. No one told me they would be too big so I just assumed quail eggs were quail eggs. The eggs would hit the rail next to it and the eggs would get stuck and crack, or fall off the rack and crack. I have since purchased a second incubator and I use the standard chicken racks for the Jumbo eggs.

 

[StaticChaos]

After seeing your pic, I went ahead and modified my quail racks. Now I need to see if there are anymore clearance issues. Thanks for showing this!

Before:


After:

 

[Oregonbeek]

@Tammy N

Actually they are standard quail racks. I've actually been really nice and forgiving toward Robby.

My eggs through James Marie Farms were all different shapes and sizes (as I noted in my original post), and Robby said that he was going to send me a refund for the bad eggs. He claimed it was in the mail maybe half a dozen times but I still never got any refund, despite multiple emails claiming he had my right address etc. He then said he got cancer, lost 39 pounds etc, and I basically told him I was sorry for his situation and won't be pushing a guy to fill in his end of the deal if something bad like that happens to him. I haven't heard from him in nearly 5 months. Who knows what's going on with them and I've basically washed my hands with the situation and wouldn't do business with them in the future.

I definitely didn't mean button quail.


Since then I bought eggs from North West Game Birds: http://buycoturnixquail.com/

I only had a few eggs out of that 100 that didn't fit in the rails and had a far far better hatch rate and have been very happy with my birds that I got from them.

 

[StaticChaos]

This isn't the biggest batch of eggs I have ever had, but you can see how much clearance there is after I modified the quail racks. I don't think most Jumbo eggs will be an issue now.