Ratio for my quail

[BELLAPURPLEWOW]

Hello, so I now have one male and one female Coturnix quail, they have not laid eggs yet but he has been fertilizing her quite often do I need to separate them or will it be fine if they are together. please let me know I have no clue what to do they are my first round of quail and I thought it would be fine but I'm not sure now.

 

[Kiki]

How old are they?

 

[BELLAPURPLEWOW]

How old are they?

They turned 7 weeks today

 

[le_bwah]

He's likely to over-mate her since she's the only one he has to focus his "attention" on. If you notice she's missing a ton of feathers around her head or acting beat up, it might be worth separating them until you can get more hens.

Some hens don't start laying until around ten weeks. But by the time she gets to that age, the amount of daylight she's getting could be insufficient to trigger her to lay.

 

[BELLAPURPLEWOW]

He's likely to over-mate her since she's the only one he has to focus his "attention" on. If you notice she's missing a ton of feathers around her head or acting beat up, it might be worth separating them until you can get more hens.

Some hens don't start laying until around ten weeks. But by the time she gets to that age, the amount of daylight she's getting could be insufficient to trigger her to lay.

Ok thank you so much!! I have another question, does it matter if the eggs that my female lays are hatched and I use those eggs to be fertilized from there dad?? Will it mess up the eggs if the dad fertilizes the kids eggs??

 

[le_bwah]

Ok thank you so much!! I have another question, does it matter if the eggs that my female lays are hatched and I use those eggs to be fertilized from there dad?? Will it mess up the eggs if the dad fertilizes the kids eggs??

As in, is it safe to hatch the eggs of hens with their father? It's safer, genetically, to mate a parent with a child than it is to mate two siblings. People sometimes use line breeding to preserve certain traits in their birds (e.g. size, color), but there's a chance there'll be fertility issues with an inbred line (mutations --> some embryos will be unviable --> less hatch).

 

[HarleyQuailison]

Hello, so I now have one male and one female Coturnix quail, they have not laid eggs yet but he has been fertilizing her quite often do I need to separate them or will it be fine if they are together. please let me know I have no clue what to do they are my first round of quail and I thought it would be fine but I'm not sure now.

They may do that for a bit before she lays. Make sure they have plenty of calcium (crushed oyster shells) and protein (mealworms) and a comfortable place that feels safe....She will lay. I just had same thing but had two males and it was bad, but as I was taking the aggressive male out, that was NOT her mate, he got away. Now I just have the two. I was so worried because she was being attacked and it got really bad for 3 days until he was gone. That was just last week. To my surprise, Sunday she began to lay. I have 3 eggs now so far, and they were fertilizing for last couple weeks or so. I'd just wait and see. But she does need the calcium for the eggs and protein for her for sure.

 

[Fishkeeper]

You probably need to add more females. Coturnix are best kept with at least 3 females per male, preferably more.