Good news and , ,

[MalcolmP]

Yea! The good news is that I have atleast 1 female!
They are 7weeks old and today I found two eggs,

The bad news is that they were both laid by the bird that has been in isolation since a while ago after being attacked, so they wont be fertile and now I have the problem of introducing a boy to her. , , ,
Or re-introducing her into the tribe,
or perhaps better, moving the tribe into her pen ???

Contrary birds !!!
Grrr!

 

[Marigold]

Hi Malcolm, glad about the lovely eggs. I think you are right about reintegrating her, it needs to be done somehow. Adding just one male would be unfair on her, she wouldn't be able to stand all the mating. When I had an injured quail who had been bullied I kept her in a hamster cage within the larger cage whilst she recovered. The others were very interested and rather indignant at seeing her in there, and at first they tried to attack her through the bars. But they did get used to her within the two weeks it took for her to get better and I was able to reintroduce her by moving everybody to a different cage at the same time. I guess its like chickens, if you just add one new bird to a flock without preparation she will always get bullied, and then you have to remove her and are back to Square One.
I wouldn't be in too much of a hurry to breed from them - its probable that, like all poultry, the first eggs will be smaller because the bird is still not quite fully developed, and if you wait a while you will get larger eggs that will produce bigger, stronger chicks. With chickens this means waiting until they are several months older, but I should think with quails it would be OK after a month of regular laying. If she had been mated regularly during this time, fertility will also have a chance to build up.

 

[MalcolmP]

Many thanks for your interesting thoughts M.
I like the "cage within a cage " idea, I'll give that a go.

I agree that it will be good to wait till they are all more mature for breeding, my intention was to eventually select the best/biggest 3 girls and a boy as breeding stock and the rest would be general purpose eggs/meat. However, meanwhile, I was keen to hatch the early eggs as an insurance policy, having once lost all my quail some time ago !

It is interesting that the isolation girl is the first to lay, presumably lack of stress even though it has only been 2 weeks.