Quail Hazing

[Anarchist.Quacker]

When I brought home by first batch of coturnix a few weeks ago, I had some juveniles in the group (~4-5 weeks old). Since then, from time to time, I've come out to find one of these hens nearly comatose and severely pecked on the head. It *seems* to be the juveniles who are getting this treatment, but I'm not 100% sure.

Is it typical for adults to harass maturing birds?

 

[CoopCrazy]

Yes .. I wont house different aged birds together just for this reason, the large birds will always pick on the smaller ones... Also what is your male to female ratio you may have too many males and that will cause issues as well...

 

[shelleyd2008]

Different aged birds put together is fine, but don't mix different sizes. If you have jumbos that are 8 weeks old and jumbos that are a year old, it's fine to put them together. The problem is probably that the juveniles are not ready to breed, and the others are trying. Never put a too-young-to-breed bird in with breeding-aged birds.

 

[chickenwhisperer]

When I saw the thread title, I swore it said "Quail Glazing", and my stomach started growling . . .

 

[FenDruadin]

chickenwhisperer--you are too funny .

Thanks for the excellent insights, guys. Anarchist.Quaker is my husband, and he is in the garage building a new quail palace, so I thought I'd step in and respond. When we bought the birds, the guy had all the quail of various ages and sizes in one big pen--probably his sales pen--and none of them were damaged, so we didn't think to separate the juveniles. Then the adult birds left the juveniles completely alone right up until they reached adult size--so it totally makes sense that the adults are trying to breed and the juveniles aren't quite ready, and thus the conflict.

Thank you. In the future, all birds will be in like-age and like-size groupings.