What are the odds??

[Beckey2054]

So we recently had 23 quail hatch. They are just over 2 weeks old now. And wouldn't you know it, MOST of them are hens.. What are the odds of that. We have had a pretty equal hatch rate of males to females except for this set. We have at least 18 females that we can tell. They are the brown coturnix so pretty easy to tell.. The remaining are Tibetan (3 for sure are), or are darker black (maybe tuxedo??) so we are not sure of their sex yet. Could not believe it when the browns started getting their feathers and are all female!! The good thing is, our other group that are almost 8 weeks old now, we have equal males to female so now we can set aside some of the males for the hens in this group (once they are old enough).. Just thought it was curious we ended up with so many hens this group.

Anyone have a clue why? Or just luck of the draw

 

[michellekelly10]

I have no idea about quails but I had to just say they are adorable!!! congrats!!

 

[Little_Bigfoot]

lucky lol i seem to have bought the "rooster only" model of incubator lol im always lucky if mine come out any where close to 50/50... you must have an incubator blessed by the quail gods hahaha.

 

[Beckey2054]

. you must have an incubator blessed by the quail gods hahaha.

Wish everything else worked out that way.. LOL.. We have actually been fairly lucky with our hatching. Get about a 60% hatch rate from shipped eggs is good from what I have heard. My hubby build our incubator and it works pretty good. Its a very large incubator.. easily holds 200 quail eggs, probably double that even. We started off with about 200 eggs in it this time, down to 157 now. Hatch day is middle of next week so hoping to see around 90- 100 babies

(if we are super lucky, then more than 100) So hard to tell with Cot eggs which ones are progressing. At that stage where the eggs are all dark, so I cannot tell if any are quitters or not (unless they start to smell.. had a doosey last night.. phew!!) We are going to keep our fingers crossed that our Tibetan are male (or at least mostly..) but if not we will have more babies soon and have the others that are older to pair up with..

 

[Beckey2054]

Hope this works.. Took a photo of most of the babies and loaded it up. Have not had much luck posting photos on here yet but thought I would try again ... This photo has almost all the babies in it.. just have a few that were playing in the opposite corner.

 

[Peacerose]

You are lucky -- a good ratio for coturnix is 1 male to 3 females. These are not monogamous.

 

[Beckey2054]

So looking at these 7, would you say they are all Tibetan? We think they are all Tibetan based on photos we have seen and descriptions but were not 100% sure.. Tried to get good shot of them all at the same time.. But not sure if you can with these photos or not..

The one that is at the bottom left almost center is the darkest of all of the birds.. He has very little of the red/yellow/brown markings on his head, face or neck. But he is starting to get the multicolored feathers in the breast area like the rest of these birds. I will try to get better photos of the birds, maybe just 2 or 3 birds at a time,but they so do not like to cooperate.. lol..

 

[Little_Bigfoot]

rosettas maybe? the tibetans are normally less defined arent they?