urgent, please help.

[benjicken]

So I've been raising quail for the past couple of months and one of my new ones had been in the brooder for 5 weeks and therefore I put him in the avery. When I woke up in the morning, his head was all red at the top with his feathers gone and he was bleeding. 1. How do I help heal it? and 2. What on earth done this to him? I secluded the male so he couldn't attack the newbie. p.s he's completely motionless at the moment

 

[DK newbie]

1. Keep him warm and alone, feed him whatever he'll eat. Hard boiled eggs would be good.
2. If you just threw him into an aviary with quail that didn't know him, they will see him as a threat and act accordingly - even if they are all female. This could mean scalping him, or they could have just chased him so much that he panicked, boinked into the roof and scalped himself. Possibly followed by the others pecking at the blood and harming him even more.

Motionless is not good. Quail can survive pretty bad injuries, but quite often you'll see them acting almost as usual, despite their injuries. If he'll eat, he has a chance. If it's so bad he won't eat, you can try force feeding him, but stress is not good either in such a situation, so I'd let him rest for several hours and try to tempt him with different kinds of food before using force feeding as a last option.

 

[benjicken]

that's really helpful, thank you. He is now eating and drinking but only one of his eyes are opening. Surprisingly I put 2 in yesterday and only one of them was attacked

 

[Sill]

Your existing quail are seeing the new quail as interlopers and attack the keep the intruder away from their territory and food. They will keep doing this to new quail, especially if you only introduce one or two at a time. If you put in more than three the older birds might divide their aggressions and not injure one so bad, maybe. Sorry this happened to your bird.

 

[Ulladh]

best to do these things at night, I recently got new quail, same number as previous and threw them in with eachother at night, therefore all were pretty dopey and no chasing, next day there were scuffles for pecking order as such but nothing serious. Intruders seem to get the works, get out or be killed. Such violent little birds I find for their size lol