Venting

[Acameron]

Hey everyone,

We vented our 14 quail tonight and I'm not going to lie, we are disappointed. We wanted mostly hens and ended up with mostly roos. We have six hens and the rest are males.

Are there any tricks for getting more hens? I know some animals if you keep the incubation temp at specific levels you get one sex or the other. Does that work with quail?

I also wonder if this is why they aren't laying- too many males?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Abby

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

It has more to do with your breeding males, they must throw more males.
I bought a dozen Bielefelder eggs 2 times from the same breeder. Both times I got 8-9 males and 2 females.
I told my husband, time for them to get a new rooster, lol.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

@Nabiki - do you have any advice to add?

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Quail it pays to sex multiple times. I found that many male's I thought I had were hens. They had been bred with before I got to them so they had a little foam inside thwm

 

[Nabiki]

Temperature does not affect the gender of your chicks. Also, it is not the roo that determines gender of chicks (unlike us mammals where the male determines gender), it is the hen. Unfortunately, if you hatch eggs, you're taking your chances. They are going to average out at close to 50/50, but you will get hatches with more roos or more hens.

 

[NatJ]

It has more to do with your breeding males, they must throw more males.
I bought a dozen Bielefelder eggs 2 times from the same breeder. Both times I got 8-9 males and 2 females.
I told my husband, time for them to get a new rooster, lol.

Nope, if anything they need new hens. It's the hen that determines the gender of the offspring in chickens and in quail.

 

[Fenrisulfr]

Beside the different gonosomal inheritance between birds and manimals, it is also a statistical factor.
If you breed small numbers, the rate could be easly odd. With incubate more eggs, the ratio gets more and more to 50/50 .... just simple statistic.

 

[muddy75]

the only tip is to hatch more and hatch either sex-link so you know gender numbers from day 1 or feather-sexable so you know at 3 weeks until you get as many hens as you want. only other option would be to purchase hens only that are sexable at the above ages. in general hatch is 50% gender in the long run, but everyone ends up with the odd roo-heavy hatch occasionally.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

Wow! Always learning something new! Thanks experts on all things quail.

 

[SteveUK]

Quail it pays to sex multiple times. I found that many male's I thought I had were hens. They had been bred with before I got to them so they had a little foam inside thwm

Excited: Thought you were going to say quail are like Clown Fish.
Disappointed: They were just doin the deed.