Quail progress and questions. Three generations!

[CaptainPooka]

I've been at this quail thing for probably two months. I purchased my first adults, 12 female and 3 male, and have them all in one cage. I purchased some eggs and an incubator and have my second generation and bloodline, they're about 3-4 weeks old. I have them in a cage outside. Then I saved up 53 eggs from my first generation and hatched them. I came out with 39 healthy birds.

I have set up automatic watering and feeding systems, but I'm still testing and perfecting all of it. I've also set up a waste collecting system that, hopefully, will work. I feed all of them Turkey Startena and supplement every once in a while with granite grit. I know oyster is suggested, but they're only available in larger looking pebbles around here. I purchased a pack of the oyster stuff and the smaller granite grit.

1. Is Turkey Startena enough nutrition for them? Do I need to supplement with something else? The reason I ask is because one of my second gen. quail has a wry neck. This could be because I fed everyone bad startena for a week (had weevles, it smelled bad compared to other food but I didn't know what a "bad smell" for food was at the time. Recently I have thrown that food away and they have been on the new food for a week or week and a half)
- Also all my second gen quail have a greyish complexion. Don't get me wrong, they look like normal quail, but slightly greyish.
-My first gen quail are laying eggs. Rarely an egg might come out with a soft shell (like a deflated one, or sometimes one that's like... a basketball with a little less than full air). Also some times eggs are glossy, some times they're sandpapery. Maybe not that gritty, but a little grit. Any difference? Or is that just how it goes?
-And lastly, are my female supposed to scream when they lay eggs? Not really screaming, sort of like their own crow. Only when they lay.

2. For breeding quail I'm going to have four to one. Do I need to have each set in separate cages? Looks like that's not required from current experience, but fertility rate may raise if I have groups of five only. Also, two out of three of my males are missing lots of feathers around their neck area and you can see their skin. Not sure if someone's pecking or what... I don't notice reason they're losing their feathers there and I watch them a lot.

3. I've had to cull baby quail, very few, because of splay legs and such. Right now I have 39 healthy chicks, however I've noticed three of them are runts. Two of them are getting pecked a lot and I'm sure the third will be soon. I've separated the two from the rest and probably will soon separate the third. The idea is to separate them, let them grow a little more, then reintroduce. Will that work? Or should those just be culled to avoid the torture?

4. Granite grit sounds like a dumb substitution for oyster and sounds like it'll only work for digestion. I haven't googled it, but I don't think granite contains the calcium needed - something that, if introduced, may solve some of my problems. This bag of oyster grit... the pebbles are the size of the tip section of my pinky. Is that right? Do they just peck at that? Or should I be looking for something that's equivalent in size to the food they eat?

5. My waste system includes a tray that I'll clean once a week. I put newspaper at the bottom and plan on throwing pine shavings in there every so often through the week to absorb moisture and smell. The tray isn't right under them. Maybe 6" under them (and more in the back due to cage tilt). Will this have any adverse affects?

I'm out of town at training for the next week so I'm short on time Work on top of that is VERY demanding. My wife is a little worried about some of these things - I left her in charge

Thanks

 

[JaeG]

I'm still pretty new at this myself so I'll tell you what I know. Young quail need around 30% protein so supplementing with hardboiled egg mashed up should bump up their protein if the turkey starter isn't enough. You can also feed them alfalfa sprouts for protein. It sounds like you do need some calcium grit for them so try and find finer stuff like you would feed budgies/finches. Pet shops should have fine grade oyster grit.

Eggs do vary from glossy to rough but the soft shelled ones are probably due to not enough calcium.

The males losing feathers may be them mating each other (males aren't fussy about partners). It depends on the nature of the males as to how many females they need. I've had complete bullies no matter how many hens, compared to my first male who was absolutely fine living with 2 females.

Your second lot of quail that you say look grayish - it may be their genetics seeing as they are unrelated to your others and they seem perfectly healthy. I have some calm, friendly, beautiful, big, round quail that I got from a lady. Another lot I got from someone else grew into small, nervous, birds and the boys were bullies. Needless to say I won't be breeding any of the second lot.

I can't help you with the cage setup as mine are inside, on fermented feed (this cuts down on their smell immensely), and just on oaten chaff as the litter inside their cage.

Hope some of that helps.

Good luck with your quail endeavours.