Quail Disaster

[lena_]

So, I recently hatched coturnix quail for the first time in my little 12 egg incubator. 6 out of 12 hatched and all was going smoothly until about day four. I came name from town and 2 were dead. After that all was good until week 3 I was driving home and got a text from mom. She told me 5 out of 6 chicks were dead. Only one golden male, Albert survived. Now he is 6 weeks old. He is really tame. But someone told me quail are social birds and can die without a friend/mate. What should I do? Sorry for going on and on.

 

[jojackc]

Sorry if this sound insensitive. But I would either get more quail to keep him company or just eat him. Since he is a male he is going to need 4-6 females to keep him from killing them by wanting to much sex out of them. If you don't think you can handle that many birds I would just eat him.

 

[eHuman]

I single quail will do fine until you get more IF you can spend a lot of time with him. He will bond with you instead of his covey. In the end, I would hatch or buy more but be very cautious when introducing them.

 

[lena_]

I can get more quail but should i get adults or more hatching eggs. I have ordered a aviary for my quails and my cockatiels.

 

[DK newbie]

As yours is 6 weeks old, he is almost fully mature - if you introduce him to females that are less than 8 weeks old, he might be too hard on them. If you can get ~5 mature females, I'd do that. If you hatch eggs, you'll still need to figure out what to do with the surplus males - and if you hatch less than 4 females, it's not enough to introduce them to Albert.

 

[Binki]

Ohhh poor little Albert! Can you give us a rundown of how your hatch went (any assists or difficulties?), what your brooder setup is like, what you're feeding them and what, if any, symptoms were shown in the chicks when they were alive and if there were any telling factors when they were dead - then maybe we can get some ideas about what happened to your other chicks to try and prevent it from happening again

I've had male quail I've had to seperate and some just sit there, "sad" and quiet and others will pace and crow and fret.

Since Albert hasn't met any girls yet he will probably be calm, at least until the hormones kick in, hehe. I would get him several adult girls and partition them apart so they can see but not hurt each other and hopefully they will become a happy covey in a few weeks

 

[lena_]

Ohhh poor little Albert! Can you give us a rundown of how your hatch went (any assists or difficulties?), what your brooder setup is like, what you're feeding them and what, if any, symptoms were shown in the chicks when they were alive and if there were any telling factors when they were dead - then maybe we can get some ideas about what happened to your other chicks to try and prevent it from happening again

I've had male quail I've had to seperate and some just sit there, "sad" and quiet and others will pace and crow and fret.

Since Albert hasn't met any girls yet he will probably be calm, at least until the hormones kick in, hehe. I would get him several adult girls and partition them apart so they can see but not hurt each other and hopefully they will become a happy covey in a few weeks

So the hatching was going just fine. but one egg took about 10 hours more the others to hatch. I wanted to help him but mom said to let nature take it's course. The egg hatched into a cute little tuxedo (The others were 1 pharoah, 2 texas a&m, 2 Italian and little albert). This happened in the morning before school. After school I came home and looked at the chicks. They all seemed fine, except the little tuxedo. He was rolling around with his head tucked between his legs. I tried to lift his head to where it should be. But he flopped it back underneath. I force fed him and gave him a tiny bit of water. Strangely enough he made it and at only two days old he started acting like a normal quail.

The brooder setup and feeding
It was a big black plastic box. with a folded cotton long sleeved top for the chicks to walk on. The heater was an ecoglow 200 by brinsea. I was feeding them wet mashed up chick crumbles.

Day 5
So i got home to find 1 of my ducklings dead and two baby quail. One was trapped behind the brooder, dead and the other dead under the brooder. We moved them into a smaller box. All goods from there

At 2-3 weeks they were back in the big box. No more incidents. When I got home from school after reciving the message I checked the brooder. There was blood smears on the towel and feathers everywhere. I suspected the family cat tinker. Albert was growing faster then the others so was able to fly on top of the bookshelf. For about 4 days after he was terrified and skittish. That's my reply-Feather Hearts.

 

[DK newbie]

Did you check the temp beneath the brooder? I've heard that type of brooders can have trouble getting warm enough for quail chicks..

 

[lena_]

The temp was fine... But one of the chicks was dead under the brooder. So not sure bout dat