BREEDING QUAILS.

Breeding Quails. The male-female rate should be 1:2.5 which means 4 quail cockerels to 10 quail hens. The individual males and females placed separately and put the cockerels into the hen’s cages periodically. This way you will achieve high fertility rate and the breeding quality can also be well monitored. It’s a good practice on a small scale breeding. Incubating quail eggs. The domesticated quail don’t sit on their eggs hence incubators are necessary. An alternative choice is to place the eggs under a broody hen for hatching. If you choose this option you will need to remove any other egg types from under the broody hen . Collect the eggs 3-5 times a day to reduce infection rate. Select healthy looking eggs with strong looking shell, inspect them thoroughly looking for any cracks or other damage. Do NOT wash the quail eggs, this will remove their porous protective coating and they’ll become vulnerable against bacterial infections. It’s also advisable to perform a candling check. This will show you any possible cracks, the health of the yolks and the size of the airspace. If you get an egg Candler make sure you get the high intensity one because the standard Candler will not shine through the dark shell of the quail egg. Store the quail eggs in a dry, cool place on egg trays with pointed end down. The storing temperature should be between 13 – 17 degrees Celsius and the relative humidity around 70 - 80 %. Care is essential that the temperature does not rise above 18°C, or the development of the little embryos will start and your hatching quail eggs become useless. Do NOT store hatching quail eggs in the fridge; it’s too cold for them. The eggs should be fumigated after collection but some breeders do the fumigation when the quail eggs are placed in the incubator for hatching. The room where you set your incubator up should be of a steady constant temperature. The incubator must be clean and disinfected. Make sure you run the incubator for about a day with correctly set temperature and humidity before you place the quail eggs inside. Using a fan assisted incubator with automatic turning facility is ideal. If you get a fan assisted incubator you will not have any cold spots, with automatic turning facility you won’t forget to turn the eggs, so you’re half way there to achieve a successful hatching rate. If your incubator is not equipped with an automatic egg turning system turn the eggs manually 3-4 times day. Egg turning is very important to keep the little chick embryos in the middle of the egg and prevent them from sticking to the inside of the shell. There are only two major other things you have to watch out for, and that is to maintain the correct temperature which in the case of the quail is 37.8°C (100.04°F) and the humidity level of 45-55%. Even if you have a fully automatic digitally controlled incubator it’s recommended to place an extra temperature and humidity meter into the incubator in the way that you can check the values through the viewing window just to make sure that your incubator is at required temperature. The correct temperature level is very important. Under-incubating (temperature too low) will result in late hatching and over-incubating (temperature too high) will result in early hatching. None of them is beneficial, you will lose a lot of quail chicks if it happens. On the 7th day you can perform an egg candling to see how many eggs are fertile. At this stage you should already recognize the quail embryo inside the egg. Discard any “empty” quail eggs to prevent the transfer of infections onto the healthy eggs and carry on incubating for another 8 days. On the 15th day stop the turning mechanism or if you’ve been turning the eggs manually stop the turning and lower the temperature slightly to 37.5°C (99.5°F). At this stage raise the humidity level to above 80%. This will soften the shell and help the little quail chicks getting out easier. If your incubator has a separate hatching tray then put your quail eggs on the hatching tray. Quail chicks will begin to hatch from the 16th day of incubation, but most of them should hatch on the 17th day. Any quail chicks that hatch after the 18th day will probably die. If you achieve 75% of hatching rate or above, its a job well done . Important!!!!!! Quail chicks MUST come out on their own and don’t help them /DON’T CRACK SHELL. If they need help they are not strong enough to live and will die within a day or two. Keep the chicks in the incubator until they become dry and fluffy, then place them into the pre-heated brooder. Don’t rush this or they will catch a cold, get curled up feet and die. The quail chick can be left in the incubator for up to 24 hours after hatching.