What's the oldest a male can be without foam?

[dand883]

How many cages do you have?
One male per cage.

Just the one, although I do have a second bigger hutch that I am building for them right now.
I had planned to have one male of the 6 birds, I've just been having no luck vent sexing them to confirm. The one brown tibetan produces foam any time I check, but so far I haven't been able to get any foam from the other suspects.

 

[Sasha-chickens]

11 weeks but some will go a little longer

 

[dand883]

Well, i'm starting to think some of my quail are defective. I tried to vent sex my 6 again today, one with obvious foam, one that's my obvious egg layer.

The other 4 are still mysteries. They're now (4) 15 weeks and (2) 13 weeks old and i don't see any obvious bulges, no foam, no stretched out vents as if they had laid. I've even added some lights, just in case a lack of light was causing them to not lay.

The only thing i did notice was that most of them seem to be molting right now. How long does the molting process usually take? I'm still hoping that once they're done they will start laying, but i'm starting to think i might have to keep my one layer and start over with the rest.

 

[thelittlegraybarn]

How about the chest feather method?

 

[dand883]

How about the chest feather method?

They're all just a random mix of parents, so not a set colour variety and could have mixes of colours from their parents.

3 are tibetan/rosetta coloured and can't be feather sexed. 2/3 of these are my confirmed male and female.

One is a standard colour with both speckles on the chest and rusty breast feathers, but no foam.

The other two are italian/machurian looking, one is all speckled and i would assume female, but no egg from her, one has orangey chest, but doesn't have the full brown head that i see as male in some pictures, but i'm pretty new at it and not 100% sure, so even by feather it's a mystery.

 

[muans]

Well, i'm starting to think some of my quail are defective. I tried to vent sex my 6 again today, one with obvious foam, one that's my obvious egg layer.

The other 4 are still mysteries. They're now (4) 15 weeks and (2) 13 weeks old and i don't see any obvious bulges, no foam, no stretched out vents as if they had laid. I've even added some lights, just in case a lack of light was causing them to not lay.

The only thing i did notice was that most of them seem to be molting right now. How long does the molting process usually take? I'm still hoping that once they're done they will start laying, but i'm starting to think i might have to keep my one layer and start over with the rest.

this is so strange for me since all japanese quail lays at 6-8weeks or maybe as late as 10weeks..and a rooster mature more quickly than a hen at around 5-6 weeks when they started crowing and then about the mine were before 9 weeks

 

[FloorCandy]

They're all just a random mix of parents, so not a set colour variety and could have mixes of colours from their parents.

3 are tibetan/rosetta coloured and can't be feather sexed. 2/3 of these are my confirmed male and female.

One is a standard colour with both speckles on the chest and rusty breast feathers, but no foam.

The other two are italian/machurian looking, one is all speckled and i would assume female, but no egg from her, one has orangey chest, but doesn't have the full brown head that i see as male in some pictures, but i'm pretty new at it and not 100% sure, so even by feather it's a mystery.

Let them finish molting and see if adding the light helped. If not, you may need stronger or longer lighting. If you post front pics of your feather sexable ones we can try to help you figure out the gender.

 

[dand883]

Let them finish molting and see if adding the light helped. If not, you may need stronger or longer lighting. If you post front pics of your feather sexable ones we can try to help you figure out the gender.

This is the first question mark, the golden one. To me his chest says male, but no foam.

 

[dand883]

The second unknown. Standard colour as far as i can tell, but again, no foam, no bulge, but no eggs/stretched vent either.

 

[dand883]

The third unknown, who is molting hard right now and looks like crap. I assume female, but no egg/stretching, no foam.