Quail Questions: Oh Boy.

[Garick]

So my Corturnix quail are starting to become adult now and oh boy I had my sexing backwards. Now I think I have 4 male and 3 female I am sure at leat 2 of them are male they are quite vocal right now but most of my quail are still young. Any suggestions on keeping them? I had thought since I have 4 boys and 3 girls I might consider that a positive and place 1 boy with 1 girl and let them lay for a month then rotate the girls and hopefully come up with a good breeding stock.. Or would that cause genetic issues?

 

[007Sean]

I would be more concerned with compatibility issues than genetic. Switching pairs may or may not work...it's a trial and error type situation. Some females will get along together others won't just depends on the individual birds personalities. Males in general should not be run together as they will fight eachother for dominance and will injure or kill other males in their territory.

You may try having 2 pairs in separate cages/pens, you would have a odd male out that way, you could put it either in a seperate pen/cage or find another hen or have it for dinner.

There are no tried and true answers for your situation, you'll just have to try different things until you find a scenario that works.

 

[Ulaidian]

Unfortunately you will have to consider either culling, or moving on most of your males (for your number, I'd keep one, maybe two at a push in a large cage).

 

[Ebony Rose]

One Japanese coturnix quail cock will cover 3 to 8 hens. Five hens being the average for a reasonable percentage of fertility. These types of quail do not do well with one cock per hen as he will over breed her, causing injury or at the very least, enough annoyance that she refuses to lay. Three hens is considered an absolute minimum (and some say optimum) number of hens per cock for the breed. You will need to cull, re-home or process for the table all but one of your cocks, or they'll do that for you... as the cocks will fight to the death for the right to breed. The wounds incurred involve missing eyes, being thoroughly scalped, etc... Given the agony that the losers of such battles endure, it's far kinder to them to do the deed yourself.

 

[Garick]

Would it be possible to keep my 3 females with one male then retain the other two males for some future females. I'm really interested in raising and hatching more Quail and hope to retain a good clean bloodline for future babies and eggs for meat/eggs for myself.

 

[el dorado quail]

The males would fight if you separated them together