Quail crowing collar

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

Hello,
I am pretty new to quail. I've heard some folks have had good results with chicken roosters by putting a no-crow collar on the rooster. My male quail are crowing a LOT. I live in the city and I need them to be relatively quiet - like the female quail. Today I got some wire velcro ties sort of like these: wire ties

The birds didn't exactly like it, but since I've put them on, I haven't heard a single crow.
Any thoughts ... will this work long term?

 

[mdees88]

How many quail do you have, males and females?

Are you keeping them to eat the eggs or to hatch the eggs?

How many males do you have and are they housed together or housed with females?

If housed with females what's the ratio of males to females?

 

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

How many quail do you have, males and females?

we have 23: 11male, 12 female

Are you keeping them to eat the eggs or to hatch the eggs?

for meat and eggs. In time, I want to scale up to a lot more females for eggs and less for breeding.

How many males do you have and are they housed together or housed with females?
If housed with females what's the ratio of males to females?

I'm using these cages:
https://hatchingtime.com/collections/quail-cages/products/quail-cage-4-layer

and for the cages with male/female combos, I have it 3:1. I intend to increase it, but again, I only have so many quail right now.

For the rest, the males are housed alone in each of the individual cells.
Some of the worst crowing males are housed with females. "Crow Crow Crow Crow" ... my wife counted 4 crows in the time she was pouring one bowl of cereal. It is a LOT.

I will eat some of the males, but I want to wait a little bit so that when all my females are laying I can be sure to have a male who is capable of doing the job.

For what it's worth, the velcro has worked ... they aren't crowing, but I dont' know how they'll fare over time with them.

 

[mdees88]

I was just thinking if you weren't going to hatch any you could eat all the males and keep the females for eating eggs. Some people don't realize they'll lay without the males.

Never heard about the collars before especially on quail. Will be interesting to see how well they work on the quail over time....

 

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

There was an old thread here:
OLD THREAD
They mentioned it - but the thread didn't definitively give any guidance / pictures.

 

[feedman77]

If you can keep Male to female ratio at 1:6 or 1:8. Segeregate the rest of the males away from the other birds if you can. That should help with the crowing a lot. A happy Male quail with plenty of females wont crow much. The separated males that cant see females will rarely crow.

 

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

Well, day number 1. Of my 11 males, one had its beak stuck in the collar. There were many yesterday which had this problem (because I was too scared to put it on tightly). So, I fixed those yesterday and this one this morning by tightening them up.

Of the 11 males, two have crowed this morning. I tightened up one of the collars and I still need to tighten up the other one. However, I've seen the collared males reaching through the cage to eat.

So far so good. When I get a chance, I'll take a picture of what they look like. When I put on the collar, the males take on a "defeated" persona for a few hours and fight / flap around. However, this morning, most were back to their "normal selves" if that makes any sense - except for SIGNIFICANTLY less crowing.

For the hour I've been around the birds this morning, I've heard 5 total crows. I've already explained that I had to tighten up two (I've gotten one of them already), but I had to stand there and wait to figure out which one it was. That 5 per hour compares to about 10 per minute yesterday morning.

Major improvement!

 

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

Well, day 2:
Had some crowing this morning from 2 or 3 males, but we're making progress. The difficulty with these collars is that I don't want to strangle them to death. Moreover, their necks (after you get under the feathers is about twice as big around as a pencil. The feathers are awfully deceiving. One additional thing which has made the task more difficult is that the birds are now seemingly aware that I'm out there to tighten their collars. When I go out there ... it's silent. When I go into the house (I have them in the attached garage) ... BOOM, one of them will crow. <Sigh>

"A watched pot never boils" and "a watched bird never crows."

For the majority of the birds, we're not hearing much crowing. One of them when it tries to crow sort of screeches now - it's a sad sort of crow. If I was a quail, I'd feel sorry for the guy ... thinking to myself, "Wow, what a pansy he must be!"

My wife and I worked together and tightened a few of the collars of the offenders which we could identify this morning. That has pretty much shut them up for the day. After we got through a few collars which were loose this morning, it's been quiet almost all day.

The male quail are back to somewhat normal behavior. I see them eating and walking around in the cage. We'll see how the next several days go. At some point soon, I'm going to just send the extra males to 'freezer camp' but I just want to hang onto them in the short run.

I don't know if any of you are aware, but due to COVID, getting quail right now is next to impossible - many of the online vendors are WEEKS behind with no time guarantee for delivery. I'd rather not go short-handed on my birds until I've got solid breeding established.

-What's my name again?

 

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

Sooooooooo.... day 3 was not so good.
I butchered 2, ate 1, and removed all of the collars. I found that it was inhibiting their eating and drinking...and crowing. Two of the three of those are necessary for life . . . so, for those of you out there thinking that this is a good idea - think again. It's not.

For what it's worth, I'm glad about a few things:
1. I documented this out here so that some poor sap like me can read this and think "gee, what if I used a collar on quail like a chicken rooster collar to prevent crowing?!?!" Don't ... just don't. The moment you get that strap tight enough on their pencil thin necks to stop the crowing ... you then stop them from normal quail things at the same time.

2. I'm glad I tried. Lots of folks have had success with rooster collars. I figured this would be an extrapolation of that. Hmmm... while it is an extrapolation of that ... the extrapolation lead to a false conclusion - <if you're into math like I am> this function has a point of discontinuity between chicken and quail. <For those of you who are not math-minded, let me put it simply> it was a bad idea.

3. I learned something: if your birds are too noisy. Just eat them. If they're still too noisy - next time, make a bigger dinner or invite guests.

4. I'm looking to keep quail for meat and eggs, I will pare down the rest of my males so that crowing won't be as big of a problem.

-What's my name again?

 

[WhatsMyNameAgain]

Just a brief update for some poor soul who happens to stumble across this thread. After paring down my numbers to 3:1 female:male - which admittedly is a small ratio (others have recommended larger), but my cages aren't really all that big - I've had very very very little crowing. They collectively crow less than 5 times per week.