Picked up my newly hatched quail Christmas Day. They matured really fast and started laying Feb 9th . Tons of eggs. For the last two weeks not one egg has been laid. Does anyone have any ideas? They are still on good food 24 % Protein clean water plenty of light.I don't see any reason they would be stressed. They are loosing feathers though. I
Maybe the quail are molting? Mine haven't done that but my ducks do. Do you give them extra calcium? I put oyster shell in their sandboxes
Not to hijack the thread (I have no idea why the OP's quail are not laying) but how do you know if you have to give them extra calcium? My layer feed has 2.5% calcium already and I've heard it's bad to give too much calcium.
My feed has the same amount of calcium as yours but it's not enough for strong layers. For mine anyway. If your birds are laying at or close to one egg per day per bird, don't worry about it. Mine would lay soft shell eggs or eggs with brittle shells and their laying rate went down. I just dump oyster shell in their sandboxes. they don't od on it that way- or I should say mine haven't had a problem with it. Since It's not in the feed, it's not mandatory- it's free choice. Hope that helps!
Any little thing or change can stress them. Do they have enough space in the cage? How many males to females? Is there a dog or cat checking them out? Did you clean the cage? Seriously, sometimes the smallest thing can stress them. With warm weather here now, I added a more permanent dusting bin to 3 cages. 1 cage quite laying totally, the other 2 decreased by 50%. All I did was open the door, slide in an aluminum pan and zip tie it to the cage. Freaked them out though. What brand feed are you using? Is it gamebird feed or chick starter? They could be molting. 4.5 months seems a little early for that though. If feed and water is good, and they don't appear sick and they're not fighting, give them another week to see if they start laying again.
