Quail crowing question...and another quesion

[mrsengeseth]

Laser, my last quail male was all alone. And he'd crow, morning noon and night. It was pretty bad. Enough that ...even with him inside the house...i was sure that the neighbors would complain soon. Now I have bunches of quails. I do want to keep a male for a few females. To breed for ourselves, not for show or quality of type or anything that i read others breeding for. I was thinking more along the lines of for the freezer... If I keep a male and the rest females, maybe one male and six females...will he crow like a raving maniac like Laser did? Or will the company keep it to a minimum? Could Laser have been crowing out of er....how to phrase it...uh...frustration at not having a girlfriend...?

I am pretty confident on the sexes of my coturnixs. I have speckly chests and I have coppery ones with no speckles on their chests. The A and M's have me stumped though. As do the ...uh...Niki...what are the really dark ones I got? One looks tuxedo-y and the other looks like it without the white face... how do I tell those as far as gender goes? And the goldens, i THINK i have them figured out as a pair.

 

[cawooduck]

My quail roosters crow all day long, with my pen of meat roosters crowing all the time it seems. During the heat of the day is the only time i dont hear them, but first thing in the morning and in the evening its a constant sound around here now!!

While trying to sex the pen of coturnix that i didnt know which was what, i would wait for them to crow and take the rooster out, it was a very slow method, so i read some more on sexing and found that if you flip them over in your hand and press on the top of their butt you will see a foamy substance come out, i did that and everything i deemed a rooster has infact turned out to be a rooster!!

As for the goldens and the browns, they are easy!! If they have slick chests (no spots) they are roosters, and the browns will have the rusty color with no spots on the chest.

 

[Appaloosa Hill Farm]

Yup, the press-on-the-lump method is a pretty determining factor. Don't press too hard and don't hold him too close to your face...

My coturnix roos are happy with their ladies. In fact, in my browns' pen the ratio is 1m/4f and he very rarely crows. We're talking once a day, at most. Now, my pen with my A&Ms is a different story. I was supposed to have 1m/5f but I have 3m/3f and boy do those guys crow. They each probably crow a dozen times a day. I'm going to be getting those guys each a harem of his own, so hopefully they'll all be happier. I don't mind the crowing at all, actually, but I think the fellas are competing for girls and would be happier with more of them.