Quail pecking heads

[QuailMom14]

Lately my corturnix quail have been pecking eachothers head resulting in loss of feathers and a bit of bleeding. I have both male and female mixed together. I thought this was because of mating but they haven't layed any eggs. sometimes i see them chase and peck eachother, it seems as the cortourix quail are more agressive then the bobwhites. Is this common?

 

[BuffOrpington567]

Id try and separate them all for a while and let them calm down.

 

[Crazydoglady99]

How many have you got all mixed in together?

I'd only be keeping 1 Male with your hens. Remove the other boys, and keep an eye on them in case you have an angry hen.

 

[QuailMom14]

I have 17 birds together but I am unsure of the sexes I got them when they were a few days old. Thank you!

 

[Crazydoglady99]

17 holy moly!!!

I'm afraid to say you need to figure out the sexes of them (there's tonnes of pics and vids if you just google).

Leave only 1 (yes ONE) male in with your girls. You need to remove the other boys.

The boys would be fighting, and it wont get any better unless you remove the boys. And there won't be any egg laying while everyone is so stressed.
Keep the boys together, rehome,nor process them.

Good luck!!!!

 

[Urbanduckfarmer]

Bobwhite are aggressive. Don't mix coturnix and bobwhite. They'll fight and mangle each other, the bobwhite and coturnix. What's the ratio of bobwhite to coturnix in that pen? Were they raised together or recently introduced? How many males of each do you have?

 

[paneubert]

Yeah.....at first I did not realize you had coturnix mixed with bobwhite, but I was going to ask about it since the quail on the far left looks very bobwhite'ish to me.

Not going to work out if you keep them together. Like.....just not ever going to work. As you have already started to see. Bobwhites are very territorial. Pretty much work only in pairs, especially if they do not have TONS of space to roam and get away from each other. Sometimes a trio consisting of 2 females and one male can work if there is space. They like to pair up WAY more than coturnix do.

Pretty much the same goes for the coturtnix. Although with coturnix you can pretty much have as many ladies as you want, but almost always only one male will be tolerated. I have been able to keep 3 males in with a group of about 20 females, but that was in an aviary that had about 60 square feet of space for them to roam and hide and play. They got along. But when I hatched a bunch a couple years later, it was a bloodbath as soon as they reached puberty. So it is hit and miss as to success with more than one male, even in a large enclosure.

 

[QuailMom14]

Ok so i've made a plan to rehome most of my males I sexed them and have way to many males together.

 

[Marycat]

I have a pair of 2 females and 2 male bobwhites together since last spring.
They are doing fine and i have gotten about 50 eggs already this spring. Not sure if this helps but it has worked well for me. I have not seen any aggression
With mine.

 

[Ebony Rose]

I have 3 female and 3 male Japanese coturnix quail housed together (started with 10 but when the hormones kicked in, one of the males lost his scalp (really)). Only 3 of the 10 were female, so I carefully observed which of the male quail got along with the other males AND the females, and ate the 'unwelcome' excess males. I was prepared to take it down to just one male, but these fellas are getting along perfectly and they're not overbreeding the hens. Saved their lives, I'll tell ya