Rotating the male as alternative to polyamory?

[ForTozs]

Forgive my post title, it's the best I could come up with. I have been contemplating getting chickens for years, mostly for the eggs, but my recent move into a neighborhood with a HOA put the nail in that coffin. After some research, I've learned of the potential of Cortunix, and so I've decided to take the plunge. After a lot of debate, I'm starting to lean toward building my own cages. These will be about 36" x 18" of floorspace. I want my quail to be as happy as possible, and I'm not wanting to start big, so I plan on these being low-density units. Also, my wife isn't very keen on the idea, so I'm hoping this will keep the smell and mess down in my garage. I'd like to be able to track the egg production for each female to develop a good breeding line, and was wondering what is the best way to do this. I think dividing the cage would be helpful, but I'm unsure how to go about doing this. If I was to divide the cage into 3 partitions, would it be better to keep a breeding pair in each partition, or just keep one female in each partition, and rotate a male to a different partition each day (so the females are bred every three days). I'm leaning to the second way to avoid the females from being plucked bare by too much attention, but I've looked over the forum, and can't find anyone's experience rotating the male in such a way. It also seems it could stress the birds to have less of a daily routine, but it does sort of provide a healthy 1:3 ratio. Does anyone have any experience with this, or can anyone share their thoughts on this based on other experiences?

 

[Nabiki]

I do see a problem with your idea. Quail are not fond of change, and if you keep rotating your male around, it may reduce your egg production.

Leaving your male with one hen at a time may not prevent over breeding. It doesn't take long for him to scalp a girl if he's frustrated or not happy.

Good luck, and feel free to ask more questions!

 

[Whiskybear]

If you’re really just getting into it for the eggs, you don’t need a male at all. Just a thought.

 

[Nabiki]

If you’re really just getting into it for the eggs, you don’t need a male at all. Just a thought.

They did say that they wanted to breed them. That was my first thought too.

 

[Whiskybear]

They did say that they wanted to breed them. That was my first thought too.

Yeah. I was just thinking that if I didn’t want fertile eggs regularly to raise meat birds, I could get hatching eggs every couple years to replace my layers, and not bother with keeping males. I’d only eat a few birds every couple years, but would save money on feed and save a whole lot of headaches stem from behavior/compatibility problems.

 

[bhaugh]

Quail don’t really thrive by themselves so make the cage big enough to house 3 or 4 females. You could get leg bands to keep notes on each bird and track their progress

 

[ForTozs]

Thanks for the advise everyone. No males may be the way to go provided I can find some good layers. I was thinking along the lines of hatching eggs from the best layers to keep production up, or maybe even increase it. I have a bit of concern that the females won't be in peak laying condition for very long, so I was thinking it would be best to keep a steady supply of replacements. But hatching eggs shouldn't be much of a hassle really. I'm not gonna be strictly eggs. I was planning on at least growing out extra males for meat. And I guess I'll be eating hens when they retire too. Still kind of wide open for me at the moment though.

 

[ButtonNomies]

If ur only having 3 females, 1 male and not a massive flock then I really wouldn't stress urself out by separating them all and rotating. 3 females u won't need to replace for say (if ur lucky and take care to feed well and egg rest) 2 years. That's 2 years for you to get acquainted with ur tiny flock enough to know which girl laid which egg on sight. Every egg will be different between them but ull notice fast that eggs of a certain hue come from x bird and eggs with a big splot somewhere come from y bird etc etc ... I have 8 females (buttons) and I know who lays what on sight xx

 

[ForTozs]

Thanks Button. I appreciate the help. I'm not sure if that would work for me or not. I don't know that I'll be witnessing the hens laying eggs, unless I was to sit there waiting and watching each one to lay several for me to get a good idea. Perhaps I could isolate them until they lay a few and then breed the ones with the best eggs? I expect to have more than 4 quail too, it would just be 4 max per cage. My current plan is to start with 2 cages, and expand to 4 once I get the hang of things.

 

[ButtonNomies]

Thanks Button. I appreciate the help. I'm not sure if that would work for me or not. I don't know that I'll be witnessing the hens laying eggs, unless I was to sit there waiting and watching each one to lay several for me to get a good idea. Perhaps I could isolate them until they lay a few and then breed the ones with the best eggs? I expect to have more than 4 quail too, it would just be 4 max per cage. My current plan is to start with 2 cages, and expand to 4 once I get the hang of things.

Then u also won't know which hen u want to reproduce, in this instance where ur keeping small groups u can easily mark the eggs more on the male ... say u have a particularly docile and happy male tht ud like to emulate across ur operation ... for ease of management .. u mentioned ud like to have some for meat as well as the eggs, most will raise males separately and cull them at maturity for this purpose and it would be easier if u didn't breed any aggressive males etc. So u could in theory keep track of the eggs according to ur males rather than ur females ... then it wouldn't matter which hen they came from xx