Quail layed first time and hasn't since!?

[Jaysquails]

My quail layed 4 days ago for the first time. She is 5 months old now and it is summer in the U.K. So she has ideal conditions. She has been building a nest in hay but hasn't layed in it. Should I be worried that she hasn't layed again?.

 

[DK newbie]

What kind of quail is it and does she live alone?
Egg laying can be irregular when they just start laying, but stress can cause them to stop laying as well. Also, for the most common species 5 months is pretty late for the first egg - if you can figure out why she started laying so late, you might also figure out why she's only laid one.

 

[Jaysquails]

What kind of quail is it and does she live alone?
Egg laying can be irregular when they just start laying, but stress can cause them to stop laying as well. Also, for the most common species 5 months is pretty late for the first egg - if you can figure out why she started laying so late, you might also figure out why she's only laid one.

Good news is I've found an egg she had hidden it under the nest she made under they hay. She is a coturnix quail and she lives with one other male. The days have only just become longer and I think that is why she only just started laying because she had no extra light. Bad news is I think she is broody since she hid it. I picked up the egg then put it back in will she now reject this egg?

 

[DK newbie]

In general coturnix are best kept 3-7 females for a male, because the males tend to be very active breeders - they can over breed and stress a single hen (which could cause no laying).
Keeping them in pairs does seem to work for some people though, usually in planted aviaries or similar, probably because the female can get away from the male when she doesn't want to breed.
It is quite rare for a coturnix to go broody, so it's hard to tell what they'll do when they go broody - but my buttons definitely do not cover up their eggs when broody. If I find a covered egg it is almost certainly abandoned. If your hen is broody, she will spend most of her time on the nest, maybe leaving it for 15 minutes at a time - the egg should still be warm when you picked it up.
IF she was broody - then yes, your messing about in the cage or the fact the nest was empty at one point might make her abandon the project. She won't reject the egg due to you handling it, but the general disturbance of the nest could make her do it. But again, it's hard to say with cots as they so rarely go broody. One poster on here actually managed to move the nest from the kitchen to a spare room without making the hen abandon the clutch. And another one marked the eggs and removed spare eggs laid by other hens every day to keep the number of eggs in the nest down - this hen also succeeded in hatching the chicks.