Those don't look like mine. Mine look like this
Journey into quail
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Rabbit Tree Farm
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My mutts don't have any white on the wings but some have beautiful little throat patches.
@TamiPac Yeah they are not looking like the ones you linked. Though the White Wings I did purchase eggs for came from them.
Here are some pics of one of the chicks. It was rather grumpy with me taking pics of the wings. Most of them still don't have their breast feathers so I can't sex them yet. With 20 chicks I should have at least 1 Roo I believe, and hoping for 2.
Here are some pics of one of the chicks. It was rather grumpy with me taking pics of the wings. Most of them still don't have their breast feathers so I can't sex them yet. With 20 chicks I should have at least 1 Roo I believe, and hoping for 2.
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I have to agree they look like white wings. As for sex, I seem to have about 1/3 female with each hatch. If you have more than 1 roo to each 4-6 hens you will have problems. I dispatch the extras no later than 9 weeks. I have my fingers crossed for you that you have a ton of hens.
I really hope to have a ton of hens but the extras will be processed if there are a bunch of roos lol
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We love our jumbo pharoh coturnix. Hubby's gotten good at grilling any extra birds, and we find one bird is plenty when you add some side dishes and salad if you take time to eat it all. Too many just pull breasts and toss the rest. I've heard a chef say he hates cooking them for that reason. My problem is a low hatch rate (25 percent) even though the eggs are fertile. Any tips on your easy hatch would be appreciated.
We're primarily carnivore so the amount of meat we eat per meal is quite high.
I have found my hatch rates skyrocketed when I started doing "dry" hatches. I don't put any water in the incubator until I lockdown the eggs. We do live in a very humid climate but between the A/C and dehumidifiers we run it's not too humid in the house. I'm not sure why this works but it does. I went from about 25% to right around 75%. I'm also finding that the ones that aren't making it seem to have some microscopic cracks in the shelld that are extremely hard to see.
So y'all don't let the quail raise their own babies? I've not done incubation to date. I let broody hens do that for me.
Nope, if I let the quails do it I wouldn't have any. I'm not set up for that.
Well I have spent the day trying to design the new cages for the quail once they get out of the "brooder" hutch. So far I have come up with a cage foot-print of 21" x 28" x 12". I have it figured out to be 4 cages to a stack and 3 stacks side by side for my breeders. I will have to reach in to collect eggs but that is fine as I won't have to worry about snakes getting in. As I have extra god kennel trays that wont be an issue either for waste management. I already had an old wine fridge that I had converted into an incubator for reptile eggs when I was breeding ball pythons that I am just sourcing the automatic turners for the quail now. It will be able to hold 6 shelves at 120 eggs each with the turners. I won't need to use all of that space any time really soon but I will have that potential for the future.
Each cage is calculated to hold 6 birds, 1 Rooster to 5 Hens. I found what might be my first rooster in the flock today. Granted his feathers are still coming in but I caught the little guy crowing. I'll be watching that one closely and seeing how things progress. I did purchase some ID bands that are 8mm for marking my roosters when they are old enough. IF those don't work out I am probably going to do Zip ties as I want to be able to ID them quick so that I can change out the boys every 6-9 months. The girls will be changed out every year and a half to two years by cage.
I am already working with my local feed mill with their feed and I plan on growing some extra grasses for them for during the winter and as extra treats. My hope to be able to sell extra eggs and meat birds to help supplement what my SO makes so we can be a little more self-sufficient out here. Though definitely not going to lie, I am really looking forward to having baked goods and my own personal rotisseries to eat again. Though right now I am enjoying the heck out of being able to hold and touch birds again.
Each cage is calculated to hold 6 birds, 1 Rooster to 5 Hens. I found what might be my first rooster in the flock today. Granted his feathers are still coming in but I caught the little guy crowing. I'll be watching that one closely and seeing how things progress. I did purchase some ID bands that are 8mm for marking my roosters when they are old enough. IF those don't work out I am probably going to do Zip ties as I want to be able to ID them quick so that I can change out the boys every 6-9 months. The girls will be changed out every year and a half to two years by cage.
I am already working with my local feed mill with their feed and I plan on growing some extra grasses for them for during the winter and as extra treats. My hope to be able to sell extra eggs and meat birds to help supplement what my SO makes so we can be a little more self-sufficient out here. Though definitely not going to lie, I am really looking forward to having baked goods and my own personal rotisseries to eat again. Though right now I am enjoying the heck out of being able to hold and touch birds again.
That's awesome!!! I also use crate trays under my cages and they work so well! If it crows, 100% it's a roo.
If you have quail that actually go broody and raise their own chicks you have a very rare bunch of quail there. I'd see about selling some for people who'd want that trait for self sufficiency and such.
Quail have been bred to not go broody and just lay eggs for centuries.
Rabbit Tree Farm
Well-known member
I agree with eating it all! I cook the entire bird and we gnaw away.
I maybe have just been lucky with hatching...i have a nurture rite 360. I so far have put in as many as 16 eggs...first batch every single one made it to hatch and two died in hatching. This last hatch out of 16 eggs i hatched 12 birds...2 were infertile and 2 died sometime early in week two. 1 bird did not clear the shell immediately..i had to remove what i guess was the umbilical. It was just a smaller chick and made it 48 hours then died.
I have the incubator in a dark quiet room...i find that helps with this incubators temp fluctuations. I lost almost an entire hatch of broilers not realizing it was getting some sun in thr afternoon that was really messing with the temp.
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Everything I've read claims coturnix have been domesticated so long they seldom hatch their own. I wondered if it was because many are raised on wire? Mine are in an aviary with sand, chopped leaves, and wood shavings. What kind of quail? Can you give more details? What's your set up?
Yes, that's what we've found - the quail most often raised for meat and eggs, coturnix (coturnix is Latin for quail, so I don't call them coturnix quail
) do not go broody, even when given nest boxes, brush and grass to hide in, etc. However...many years ago we had a few coturnix escape into the swamp on the edge of our property, and for years and years we continued to hear the distinctive crowing of the male coturnix out there. Either they were longest-living coturnix in history, or they found a way to reproduce on their own. My kids are fond of quoting Jurassic Park, "Life...finds a way." But we never discovered any way to encourage them to do so in captivity.Although we originally kept the quail on wire, we quit doing that when we discovered that keeping them on solid bedding greatly extended their lifespan (from 2 to 5-6 years), kept them much healthier (their feet weren't destroyed by scratching on the wire while they ate), and allowed them to maintain their feathers beautifully, which they couldn't do on wire even when we provided sand boxes.
Regarding hatch success, barring some exceptions due to power outages, we've always had between 80%-100% hatch rates with the coturnix, much more consistent than our chicken hatches. For good hatches we take the following precautions:
Reject eggs that are (or might be) cracked, or are very dirty.
As @TamiPac points out, you have to be very careful about cracks in the eggs - cracks are hard to spot because of the coloration on the eggs, and because the membrane is so sturdy that a crack in the shell is not always easily noticed. We had a lot more trouble with cracks when we kept the quail on wire; now that we keep them on the ground in the grass in a tractor, we have very little trouble. We also find that it's another reason to keep the number of males to a minimum (1-2 cocks per 4-8 hens), which keeps the chasing and flailing around to a minimum as well.
Collect eggs multiple times a day.
This keeps the eggs clean, and out of harm's way from quail that are scratching, mating or bickering.
Let the eggs rest (but do turn them) before incubating, up to 10 days after they were laid.
Keep collected eggs at room temperature and turn them a minimum of 3-4 times a day.
We keep the eggs in egg cartons on a table in the living room where we will see them and remember to turn them, with one end of the carton propped up on a book; we rotate the carton in the morning, at bedtime, and at least 1 or 2 more times during the day. Even easier is to keep the eggs in an automatic turner, which fits in the old-style foam incubators but can also be used by itself on a table:
Jumbo coturnix eggs are plenty big enough to fit in the rails designed for chicken eggs; in fact many of them are too big to fit in the rails designed for quail. Anyway, with the auto turner you don't have to remember to keep turning the eggs yourself. We've never done anything in terms of regulating humidity or temperature; we just keep everything on the table.
Give the eggs an extra day in the incubator, at least, after the first ones start hatching.
Maybe it's because of thousands of years of domestication, but quail eggs don't seem to have nearly the hatching synchronization that chickens do. We frequently have eggs still pipping and successfully hatching 48 hours after the first chicks come out. We had a funny/sad episode when, after 36 hours of hatching, I dumped the remaining unhatched eggs over our 6' fence into the compost pile (which is warm, but we're in Alaska, so it's never that warm). A few hours later we heard peeping that was undeniably quail-like. No less than five more eggs had hatched after being tossed, and several more were pipped but didn't make it (probably from being thrown out of the incubator!). Collecting those "composted" chicks put that hatch at over 90%.
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Good to know that I should hold on for ~48 hours after the first one has hatched. Judging by the size of the eggs in the incubator and the size of the current chicks, I currently have Standard quail. My jumbo White Wings should be arriving in the next 2.5 weeks.
I let the chicks stay in the incubator for 24 hours then move them to the brooder. Lightly mist the remaining eggs with hot water in a spray bottle and let them go another 2 days.
I don't mist eggs, in fact I go to some lengths to make sure eggs never get wet. During storage or incubation, moisture on the shell can cause bacteria to move into the egg. During pipping or hatching, believe it or not, chicks can actually drown from a poorly-placed water droplet.
I use the old-style foam box incubator with an automatic turner for all hatches, removing the eggs from the turner a few days before the hatch is due to happen. I frequently leave hatched chicks in the incubator far longer than 24 hours to avoid disturbing the ones still hatching, and have not had issues with that in terms of chick health. I've left chicken chicks in there up to 40 hours. In my experience, there is a bigger risk to chicks still in the process of hatching (i.e. becoming stuck to the membrane when the humidity drops as a result of opening the incubator), than there is to leaving already hatched chicks in there longer than recommended.
When and if I do eventually open the incubator to pull chicks out before the hatch is finished, I add very warm water to the reservoir in the bottom of the incubator and let evaporation increase the humidity, rather than spraying water over the eggs. I've also learned to watch out for excessive condensation on the lid of the incubator, which can allow water to drip onto the eggs, which, again, I have found causes problem.
I use the old-style foam box incubator with an automatic turner for all hatches, removing the eggs from the turner a few days before the hatch is due to happen. I frequently leave hatched chicks in the incubator far longer than 24 hours to avoid disturbing the ones still hatching, and have not had issues with that in terms of chick health. I've left chicken chicks in there up to 40 hours. In my experience, there is a bigger risk to chicks still in the process of hatching (i.e. becoming stuck to the membrane when the humidity drops as a result of opening the incubator), than there is to leaving already hatched chicks in there longer than recommended.
When and if I do eventually open the incubator to pull chicks out before the hatch is finished, I add very warm water to the reservoir in the bottom of the incubator and let evaporation increase the humidity, rather than spraying water over the eggs. I've also learned to watch out for excessive condensation on the lid of the incubator, which can allow water to drip onto the eggs, which, again, I have found causes problem.
That's the same incubator I use. I have a 360 but I don't like my hatch rates in it so it sits in a closet.I don't mist eggs, in fact I go to some lengths to make sure eggs never get wet. During storage or incubation, moisture on the shell can cause bacteria to move into the egg. During pipping or hatching, believe it or not, chicks can actually drown from a poorly-placed water droplet.
I use the old-style foam box incubator with an automatic turner for all hatches, removing the eggs from the turner a few days before the hatch is due to happen. I frequently leave hatched chicks in the incubator far longer than 24 hours to avoid disturbing the ones still hatching, and have not had issues with that in terms of chick health. I've left chicken chicks in there up to 40 hours. In my experience, there is a bigger risk to chicks still in the process of hatching (i.e. becoming stuck to the membrane when the humidity drops as a result of opening the incubator), than there is to leaving already hatched chicks in there longer than recommended.
When and if I do eventually open the incubator to pull chicks out before the hatch is finished, I add very warm water to the reservoir in the bottom of the incubator and let evaporation increase the humidity, rather than spraying water over the eggs. I've also learned to watch out for excessive condensation on the lid of the incubator, which can allow water to drip onto the eggs, which, again, I have found causes problem.
With my current hatch (eggs received when I got my chicks) I am using my Reptibator so I have to manually turn them. I am currently on day 7 of incubation. It has a foam insert that looks like an old mattress topper which when it comes to lockdown I will turn it over and put the eggs on top so they have a flat place to hatch on. Since I do not have the rails yet I am not using the big boy incubator as it still has the original shelves. I would just use plastic shoeboxes to incubate my eggs in for my Ball Pythons and Bearded Dragons.
pic of eggs just after putting them into incubator. I'll have the new rails before the new eggs arrive.
pic of eggs just after putting them into incubator. I'll have the new rails before the new eggs arrive.
