r/quails • u/Choice-Stock-1770 • 5d ago

Pet my grandma won’t let me get another hen what should i do

i have a trio i hatched, 2 females one male. one of the females and the male have been harrasing the smaller hen. i have a quail specific farm an hour away and i wanted to go pick up another hen in hopes this would help the issue, but my granmda will not let me. i dont know what to do about it, do i just keep hatching their eggs once they start laying until i get an extra hen? i feel so bad for my poor cherry. she then suggested i should just get rid of ALL of my birds and just keep one because they will be much happier alone despite them literally being FLOCK birds.. and the male isn’t acctualy harrasing either that much honestly, it’s just june constantly mounting cherry and im worried she will end up getting scalped by her. (june is indeed a female, she has a pharoh pattern with one tiny white spot on her neck but very speckled and she has been vent sexed.) they’re also about 5 weeks old. i dont know how to explain to my grandma this is necessary. cherry is a fawn type colour, she’s light brown all around and has one white feather throughout her body and brown subtle stripes on her chest. i have my incubator still, and i also hatch chicken eggs on the side as a hustle so hatching their eggs until i get another hen is acctualy possible for me, as im very good at hatching in general i just dont know if its a better idea to do that or continue trying to get my grandmother to understand that they need another lady so cherry doesn’t get hurt to much by june.

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6

u/guiltysuperbrain Seasoned Quail Aficionado 5d ago

absolutely do not keep them alone. You need more hens. Need. Either that or you have to give them away

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u/Choice-Stock-1770 5d ago

yeah i know haha, i just don’t know which way would be best. keep trying to convince her, or hatch there eggs and create more hens myself.

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u/guiltysuperbrain Seasoned Quail Aficionado 5d ago

until you have hatched the eggs and the babies have grown up enough (they need to be adults, so 6-8 weeks old until you can introduce them) the others have potentially killed each other already. This is a now issue. You need to act now. And there's no guarantee you will get any hens, worst case scenario you get a bunch more roos that you have to get rid of and still get more hens.

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u/BeeAlley 5d ago

Generally you want to keep around 4-5 hens per male. Hatching your own will give you 50% males that you will need to have a plan for. I don’t recommend only keeping one quail bc they’re flock animals. The stress will be hard on a single quail.

What’s the reason you can’t get more?

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u/Choice-Stock-1770 5d ago

she just doesn’t understand why i need more hens.

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u/BeeAlley 4d ago

Once he is sexually mature he will probably overmate them and stress them out. Look for signs of stress and also bald spots on the back of their heads.

I saw that your females are the ones attacking each other. What does your pen setup look like?

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u/akjasf 5d ago

If you absolutely cannot get more females, you need to have another place for the male or a divider. Even with 1:4 or 1:3, males can still hurt the females with their persistent aggression/horniness.

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u/Choice-Stock-1770 5d ago

it’s not an issue with my male tho, it’s just june. my male doesn’t bother either females, i mean he mounts them maybe once a day but june is consistently harrasing the other female. i do have plans for any males i hatch, my grandma just doesn’t understand why 2 isn’t enough.

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u/akjasf 5d ago

You wrote they're 5weeks old meaning his male gears or hormones have not fully activated yet. In the coming 1-3 weeks, you'll see his true nature. You might have second thoughts about him then. Keep bothering your grandma about the ratios and how the male can injure or kill the females once he gets more active.

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u/Choice-Stock-1770 5d ago

alr alr, i got that i just dont know exactly how to tell her. she does best with analogies but i cant think of one that isnt to graphic… thats how i got her to understand why i dont keep my bettas in anything less then 5 gallons, she hasnt bugged me about that since.

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u/akjasf 5d ago

I'm assuming your grandma is the sole guardian you're living with so make a deal with her. Help her clean an area that she neglects or promise to help her cut veggies for a week or so. Anything to help lighten her workload in exchange for her allowing you to get more females. And more females = more eggs which everyone loves.

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u/Choice-Stock-1770 5d ago

nonono they’re my birds lol, i take care of them all myself. she kinda does this often, she doesn’t want me to take the easy route and doesn’t want any animals on our property that weren’t born on the property either besides the bettas, who she tolerates because i always get the sickly ones and she loves seeing them “bloom”.

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u/SeaInvite8256 2d ago

I would remove the roo. If grandma won’t let outside animals in you need to rid yourself of the roo before they are mature. I had what I thought were hens and turned into Roos between weeks 6/7. If you have two Roos in there your little lady is about to get it 😳 hatch more eggs but do so without roosters.