Quails attack

[Lewis668]

Hi,
Ive got just a quick question and not sure if its just me or not. I have 3 chinese quails and 3 japanese quails (both 1 male and 2 females), Ive had my quails for around 4 months now and have never had any problems with them fighting etc. I'm not sure if its their hormones or not but only a couple of days ago they started laying eggs (woop) however the japanese quails are now attacking both male and female chinese quails (two of them with major wounds and i have now seperated them).

Could any one tell me why the japanese quails have all of a sudden started to attack and most likely tried to kill the others?

Thanks in advanced.

 

[Weirdness555]

I haven't heard of anyone keeping the 2 species together, I know that quail are very territorial and will attack other ground birds if they enter their space, but I've never heard of anyone having them together from the outset, I'd have expected you to have problems straight away. Either way, obviously it's a problem now, so I'd say that it's just because it's in their nature to protect their patch.

Also, the male/female ratios seem a bit wrong, which will cause all of them to be stressed, which might be why the issue has just shown up as they've reached sexual maturity, you'd be better of with chinese quail kept in a pair on their own (so I've read on here, though we kept ours for years as a trio and it didn't seem to cause problems) and with the japanese quail you need at least 3 hens with the male, and you're best with 4 or 5, because otherwise the male will exhaust the hens with over mating.

If I were you, I'd keep them separate from now on, and address the ratio issue, and then things should settle down.

I hope this helps

 

[TwoCrows]

Yeah, as Weirdness has brought up, you should not keep these two species together at all. The Chinese quail are kept in pairs, 1 male to 1 female and the Japanese quail are kept 1 male to 4 to 7 females. So get the Chinese out of there. The Japaneses may kill the Chinese.