Japanese (Coturnix) Quail

[sallu00]

Hi Guys,

Gary, I hope your system is fixed soon and you can start collecting the eggs again to put in your incubator. Did you ended eating the eggs?

The quails do grow fast, thats for sure. I bought an aviary from Ebay for $100 and made another platform inside it, so now I have ground floor and 1st floor. I have put 4 quail hens and 1 quail rooster in each floor. I also have a Bob White which but he is a problem as he is always restless and I have put him with the peach faces.

I got into a bit of trouble as I mixed the males in different pens, they all started fighting and also some females are vicious as I added some same colour birds. It just doesn't work, I have to remember this. I ended up cutting 4 birds and just finished my dinner. Very tasty I must admit, how fresher can you get, straight from your own backyard. I fed the Jade Perch with all the guts, they loved it.

I was anxiously waiting for the quails to lay eggs and it finally happened 2 days ago. I now have 8 eggs in all. I will collect around 25 or so before firing up my incubator. Gary, how long can I keep the eggs before I put them in the incubator?

Salman

[GaryD]

Hi Salman,

Ideally, the eggs should be kept for no longer than a week.

Since you have nothing to lose (except a bit of hatchability) gather them up for up to two weeks or whatever shorter time will give you your setting of 25 eggs.

Keep the eggs in a cool dark place - not the refrigerator.

While you are taking an innovative approach to disposing of the quail guts, I'd suggest that, in future, you divide the guts up into small portions and freeze it.

If you feed it out frozen, the fish will consume it as it thaws and you won't end up with a mess in your tank. We feed our Jades frozen duckweed for the same reason.

Gary

[GaryD]

Hi,

A couple of days ago, I set another 6 dozen quail eggs in my electric incubator.

Our last setting went belly up when my incubator failed so I'm keen to see this one turn out.

Over the past couple days, the temperature in the incubator has been swinging over a degree or so. The ether wafer capsule controller is technology that has remained unchanged in about 70 years. It is reliable and usually fairly accurate. I have some that have controlled temperature within a band of a quarter of a degree. My current controller, however, is a bit more lax.

GaryD

[sallu00]

HI Gary,

How many days will Jap quails take to hatch? I have them set at 100 deg C with an egg turner.

Salman.

[GaryD]

Hi Salman,

You should be looking at an average temperature of 99.75 degrees F.

If your temperature is too high, your chicks will begin to hatch early and a large proportion will not hatch at all.

Having said that, every incubator behaves a tiny bit different to the next one, so use the results of this hatch to determine what is the best operating strategy for your machine.

Japanese Quail take between 15 - 17 days to hatch. The variation will depend on the genetics of the birds, incubator temperature and other factors.

Gary

[GaryD]

Hi,

Today, we had a blessed event (as Tiny Tim use to say).....when our quail hatched.

We have about 45 chicks.....each one about 28mm high.

The last photo shows why it is necessary to put glass marbles in the waterers for day old quail. They will drown in 6mm of water.

I set another 76 eggs.

Gary

[GaryD]

Hi,

The quail chicks are now three days old and they spend their entire day doing two things.....eating and sleeping (quite often in the same place).

Given their tiny size, they are quite fearless. They will quite happily walk around my hands while I'm working in the pen.

Gary

[Jimbo]

Hi Gary,
when I was growing Japanese quail about 20 years ago we used to feed the newly hatched chicks on turkey starter as it was recommended by almost all the books at the time. However I was horrified at the number of antibiotics (up to six different ones) in the crumbles we could get then. We weaned them onto normal chicken crumbles with a week or two I think.
You mention a quail starter feed-does it have a specific name? or composition?

[GaryD]

Hi Jimbo,

Like you, we're unhappy about the chemicals/drugs in commercial turkey rations.

We use a premium chicken layer ration to which we add meatmeal and/or soybean meal to boost the protein level.

I'm still keen to develop a completely homemade ration. For the small quantities that we use it shouldn't be too big a challenge.

Gary

[GaryD]

Hi,

We had another quail hatch today.

The attached photos seek to put the size of day old quail into some sort of scale for you.



Gary