pecking (male on female)

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Dean&Laura

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Our male and female have just been moved into a new cage. It is very wide and spacious and offers them alot of running space.

A few days ago, our solitary male started pecking at his mate's tail feathers when she was offering herself to him for mating. He pecked her quite a bit so we seperated them. 12 hours later we reintroduced them and all was fine. Until he started to do it again.

Once more, he was placed in the naughty cage and then 12 hours later, reintroduced.

And it keeps happening. ]

He seems to like playing with her feathers and even calls and offers them to her as he would a meal worm or some chick crumb. They are very bonded and call for each other constantly when apart and we hate keeping them apart as they pine for each other but we don't want our female to be bald or injured.

Are there any tips on how long we should keep them seperate? Any creams we could use to stop him from pecking? Any toys we could give him to stop him pecking her?

We're worried for them both as he frets without her and she calls to him all night.


thanks in advance for any help.
 
Had you thought of getting another female, or preferably a couple, to spread the load a bit? Is she sitting on her eggs yet? If you think she might be going to sit, obviously the situation is different from if she's just laying eggs but not going broody. Maybe if he had another female or two, she could settle to the job and he would be happy with a new wife? Don't know how it would work out, to introduce another female to this cage at this stage - you would have to have another cage ready and remove anyone who was getting bullied I suppose. Best might be to put male + new female(s) in another cage and see how they got on?
I really dont know, as you see- just sharing ideas here!
 
As Marigold suggests, more females would serve as a distraction to your male, so your resident hen will not be receiving his undivided attention. Is he eating the feathers he plucks? Feather eating may suggest a protein deficiency in the diet, but if you are already offering livefood and chick crumbs, this shouldnt be the problem?
There are anti-peck sprays available on the market, some designed specifically for Gallinaceous birds others for more general Cage and Aviary species, either may prove effective for Quail.
 
Not sure if they are actually calling to each other as individuals, though this may be the case - maybe they are just distressed at being on their own? I know other sorts of poultry like chickens get very upset if isolated, being a flocking species. And when I move a group of quail one by one from their cage to clean it out, and put them in another cage whilst I do it, the ones left till last, on their own, get visibly more distressed until all are together again.

Generally speaking I have read that it's best, when introducing new quail and mixing them with an established pair or group, to put them all together in a different cage at the same time. Then the resident ones don't feel so dispossessed of their territory and all have to reassess the social situation. But an experienced coturnix breeder friend of mine says it's not good to mix in newbies of a different age, especially if they are much younger, ie POL. I don't think the male would mind going with a new group of females, but the hen might not like the idea - and who could blame her?

The other possibility that occurred to me was to divide the cage with a mesh barrier, so they could see each other but the hen would be out of harms way. How big is the cage, and would this be feasible? It might be a way to introduce new birds if you wanted to, as well.
 
Got a message back from my friend - a very short answer, but he did answer - I am sure he would be happy to answer anything else. This is in response to the first thread where you asked about behaviour.

regarding the CPQ question, he is displaying to her. Normally a male would have 6 or 7 females to display too however, 1 lonley female with him is going to get battered. Yet another reason not to keep 1 male and 1 female together. And, dont worry about the eggs hatching, the success rates for CPQ parents to hatch chicks is not too bad, to raise them sucessfully is minimal.
Click to expand...

Hope this has been of help!
 
If she isn't sitting, had you thought of hatching the eggs in an incubator?
Whereabouts are you? If anywhere near Hampshire, you're welcome to borrow my inci as I shant be doing any more hatching for at least 2-3 months. It's a small Brinsea Mini Advance and takes 12 quail eggs.
 
Sorry, it's taken so long to reply, we've had a chaotic week. :S

Thank you all so much for your help, we took your advice and bought a silver female. Unfortunately, our hen was a bit annoyed at her 'husband' displaying for a new lady and got snappy. The new female ran to her hideyhole (we made her a hut out of an icecream tub) and now its all quiet.

We're guarding them to make sure nobody loses any feathers or draws any blood and apart from initial screams of: GET AWAY FROM MY EGGS! from our hen it was quite easy.

We can't afford an incubator but hopefully the new female will let the other female sit on her eggs.

Thank you all so much for your help.

:)
 
That's brilliant - who could blame your girl when a new woman moved in? I love the idea of her little beach hut! Who knows, she may even turn out to be one who does the sitting! Do keep us up to date with developments, won't you?
I've given up on my hen - when it got to 15 eggs, overflowing the nest area, and no sign of her going broody, I blended them all, shells and all, and scrambled them as a high-protein treat for the hens, who were delighted at this unusual bounty. As I didn';t know where each egg came in the sequence I couldn't just save the freshest ones for us to eat. The quail hen didn't seem to mind, still laying an egg a day neatly in the nest though. I took one out today, put it briefly on the ground whilst I picked something else up, and the dog ate it.
 
We've installed a seethrough barrier so they can look at each other but can't peck at each other.

Our new female is being extremely calm. She was bought from a quail breeder who had a very impressive stock of multiple breeds who all seemed to be very cheerful and happy. She was calm during the drive back and when she was being picked on she was quite cool about it.

You may have to self incubate but incubators can be so expensive, one day we hope to get one and have quail babies. :) We considered refeeding our 'cold' eggs to them but it felt weird so Dean just cracked them into the bin. Your dog is very lucky! Fresh quail eggs for a snack! :D

We were wondering, can Quail eat bananas or tomatoes? I know they can't have avacado and wondered what else they could eat from fruit and veg. Also can they eat chicken eggs? We wanted to give them an extra calcium and protein boost and planned to hard boil an egg, blend it, then serve it on a small plate for them. We want to give them a varied diet. So far they have chick crumb, trill, watercress, lettuce, mealworms (on occasion), millet and cuttlefish.

Thanks for your help! :)
 
If you hard boil an egg (any kind!) and just crumble the yolk for them they will love it, also very good for chicks when you get some one day, only just give enough for eating in one go as it goes off quickly.
Mine like anything that comes in a mixed salad bag, also sliced pointed cabbage and similar tender greens. I don't buy specially for them they just have a bit of what we eat ( dog likes raw greens as well as quail eggs too) also try small quantities of sliced pear or grapes cut in half so they can get at the juicy middle. I expect a grape is bigger than her eggs, isn't it? Also try young shoots of goose grass (cleavers, that stuff growing wild that climbs up hedges and clings to you) - mine like that and so do the chickens.
Great to have found a good breeder, I expect you took the chance to ask lots of questions.
 
so just the yolk? No problem! Lucky little things eat better than we do. :) We'll try buying them a fruit bag and test them with a bit of everything (except avacado) and see what they fancy. :)

The breeder was brilliant, he hatched 300 eggs per hatch and raised them into fine, healthy looking quails of all breeds. The quails weren't afraid of him either which was a brilliant sign. I bombarded him with questions and he told me to watch my first hen with her as she may take offense at her presence so we've devised a scheme.

Their big cage is seperated by the seethrought barrier and every so often i'll pop our male into her side for a minute or so just to get used to her. He tried to titbit for her but she wasn't interested (we think she's very young as she is quite small and is making soft noises rather than full blown calling). Our first hen ( the first lady as we are now calling her) isn't happy but i hope she realized that its in her best interests.

We can't find a good name for her as she is quite calm and gentle and white, Dean wants to call her 'wraith' because of her ghostlike colour, i want to call her Mag (short for magnesium which is silver). It's all so exciting!
 
Ahh, she's lovely! I've got tow whites in my first batch of coturnix, now 7 weeks old, but didn't realise you could get white CPQs as well. Does she have a darker spot on her head? Moine have that and one of them also has ba little bit of a dark collar round the neck.
She looks quite young, point of lay I'd think, from the rather uncertain way she's sitting there and also not being full-size yet (however tiny that is for a CPQ!) so may get picked on for that as well by the First Lady. Has she given the male something more to dream about, ie is he giving the older one a bit of peace now?
 
Well, this is the strange thing.

We let them mix a little after seperating them for 30 hours using a clear barrier. After the initial panicking, they started to let each other wander. Then all of a sudden, we caught them all, three of them, cuddled up in the corner, bums together. Molly is sat against our new hen, and houdini is sat against molly--occasionally pleading for a grooming.

It's a very eerie, but welcome silence.

She doesn't have any markings really, just a solid grey coat which makes her tricky to name because she doesn't have any distinguishing marks although she does squeak and is making stranger noises than our adults. She seems very juvenile, doesn't do the titbitting response, seems to be very inquisitive to the point of being told off and seems more ready to try new things.

Dean is delighted with his 'pile of quail' XD
 
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