Quail

[GilpinGuy]

A big, long overdo, TYVM for those who went through the blog to Amazon after my blatant plug. I know some of you did from the dates of orders.

I made a gigantic mistake with the flock last week. I still can't believe I did it. Here's the text from my post:

Man, this is a tough one to post. But the whole point of this blog is to help folks out who want to raise coturnix quail, and mistakes help us learn. This was a big one and it’s embarrassing. But I can assure you it won’t happen again.

So, about a week ago we were preparing to leave our place for 5 days to visit Jenny’s family to celebrate her birthday and the birth of her new niece. Time was short and I had a lot to do before leaving, including culling a bunch of quail and getting my neighbor squared away so he can watch over the flock when I was gone.

With maybe 4 hours of sleep the night before, I decided it was time to cull some of the older birds, plus most of the young males from the latest hatch, and get the younger birds into their laying cages. This is the standard rotation. I make enough room in the laying cages by culling the older quail and replace them with the younger birds. Routine stuff.

All went well and I got about 20 quail into the freezer. We went on our merry way to Iowa and had a great time. My neighbor took care of the quail just fine – all survived and looked healthy when I got home. It’s always a relief to get home to be sure the flock is ok.

After a few days I noticed that the young quail weren’t laying as well as they should be. In fact they were hardly laying at all. The older birds were laying great as usual. I checked the supplemental lighting timers and they were set correctly. I started thinking that maybe the younger quail were just stressed from being in new cages and having a stranger feed them for a few days…….then it hit me.

I was filling one of the feeders and noticed more than one male in the cage. I normally put 1 rooster and 5-6 hens in each cage. Did I miss-sex one and accidentally put 2 males in this cage?
Unfortunately, no. I accidentally culled the hens and kept all of the roosters from the last hatch. The first words that came out of my mouth cannot be repeated here. What a rookie mistake! I’m still kicking myself. Lack of sleep, in a rush, etc. Still no excuse for this.

At least they are all packaged nicely in the freezer, ready to be grilled, so they weren’t wasted or anything. But man, I cannot believe I did this!

Here is what males and females look like. The rooster is on the left and the hen is on the right.


Male quail (roosters) have the rust colored chest and little or no speckling. The females (hens) are speckled on their chest and have no rust coloring, or VERY little. With most of the quail I’ve raised this coloring and speckling is pretty darn obvious by the time they start laying (about 6 weeks).

I know what a my next post will be about: Sexing coturnix quail.

[Irving]

Haha, oh man. So do you have enough hens to recover and continue your flock? Do they fight a lot in that situation? What did the final ratio end up as far as male:female?

[GilpinGuy]

Yeah, I have plenty of hens to replenish the flock. I should have 50 eggs incubating within a few days. The whole thing is just a "What the hell were you thinking?" experience.

I haven't seen any battles so far and they aren't all beat up, so I think they're keeping the peace for now. I found one dead bird the day after I transferred them to the cages but the cause of death wasn't obvious. I've seen birds that got murdered by other birds and it isn't pretty. They can be pretty vicious.

The ratio for the f-ed up cages is 1-2 hens with 5-6 roosters. Exactly the opposite of what I intended. Those poor girls have to be getting pounded. Tomorrow I will combine all of the hens and keep the best looking rooster. The rest of the boys get whacked.

[GilpinGuy]

Quick update. After the debacle I posted about, I started a new batch of 50 eggs in the incubator to replenish the flock. 2 days before hatch the incubator failed - it just shut down completely. It's an IncuView and I really like this incubator a few reasons (my review), so I was disappointed that it crashed 2 weeks after warranty.

I contacted the company (Incubator Warehouse) and they sent me a new power supply even though it was out of warranty. That was the problem. Good on them for being understanding and taking care of me when they really didn't have to.

So, 50 more eggs go in tomorrow. Hatch in 17 or 18 days. It's been weird not having a GIANT surplus of eggs since I unintentionally culled so many hens. It'll be fun to give away eggs again when we get back up to speed.

[Jonsey]

Bummer! We lost a few batches with power outages one winter. I hope you have a good hatch next time!

[GilpinGuy]

I have chicks hatching. Here's a couple of videos for anyone that's interested.

[Irving]

I gave your videos ThumbsUp. You have your account monetized right?

When they are born, do you have to dip their beaks in water and food to teach them how to eat and drink like chickens?

[GilpinGuy]

I don't have it monetized. I figured I'd see if I get any views/followers first. I have almost 200 followers not and a few of videos have thousands of views, so I should probably do that at this point. I was hoping to drive some traffic to the blog, and it does do that, but maybe it's time to monetize the videos too.

When I put them into the brooder I have food and water out for them. The food I just put in a pile on the floor and I drop one or two of the chicks in the pile. They figure that out real fast. For the water, I do dip the beaks of a couple of them in the waterer. Then the rest see what's up and figure that out too.

Thanks for the thumbs up!

[Irving]

You're already missing out on money, get that done. You'll need to start an AdSense account as well.

[GilpinGuy]

Probably going to dive into this tonight.