Too many female coturnix quail

[Jheath74]

Hello all. This might sound like a hard to believe thread, but wanted to ask anyway. I incubated 48 quail eggs and 35 hatched and 2 didn't make it so I have 33 happy quail now at three weeks of age and outside in a pen. The problem is our of the 33 left I only see maybe 2 male and even they could go the other way because they do have some specks starting on their chest. All the others have whitish chest with specks covering the top half. I wanted the eggs to be fertilized but dont have enough roos to do the job if any. Has this happened to anyone before?

 

[RosieR]

Wow crazy! How old are they now?
I always have the opposite problem.

 

[Jheath74]

3 weeks old. I thought I would have 50/50 split at best

 

[Erkenstein]

You won't have awesome fertility with that ratio, but you will still have enough fertility to build up your flock. You'll just be removing more blanks at lockdown. But with that many hens, you'll have more than enough hatching eggs for a standard incubator.

 

[Hybridchucks]

Wow I envy you!

 

[cosmosue]

Sometimes I see a lot of spots at first only to have them go rusty and drop out. It may look different in another week or two!

 

[RosieR]

Sometimes I see a lot of spots at first only to have them go rusty and drop out. It may look different in another week or two!

I was thinking the same. At 3 weeks I’m overjoyed with all the females. By 4 weeks I’m counting mostly Roos.

 

[cosmosue]

Omg Rosie hahaha I just was thinking exact same thing last week WOW look at all the girls - crap nvm.... *sigh* hope I gave my sister 3 girls now I’m worried I made a bad call LOL

 

[Sara L]

I agree, I wouldn't count on that many hens since they are only 3 weeks. They are still growing their adult feathers and you will probably end up with a few more boys than that. If the numbers stay the same, you are lucky. My very first hatch with coturnix I had 16 hatch, 12 made it to adulthood and only 4 of those were boys.

 

[Jheath74]

Yeah I haven't looked in a couple days and after posting looked. Okay now it looks better. I am feeding 30% protein and most are completely feathered out. Like posted by a lot of you 4 more since feathering out have rusty breasts now so that is 6 males to 27 females. That's almost perfect. The females are feathered out with no red.