How many quail eggs to get started?

[Battlepants]

Strongly considering getting into raising quail, but still really early into the planning process. Wondering how many quail eggs I should start with in order to get a good starter population going. Ideally, I would like to end up with 1-2 males and an appropriate amount of females for each male (it sounds like 7 females per male ideally) with the intention to grow out the initial lot and brood their eggs for additional population.

The area I will be building out will, in total, be about 64 cubic feet of living space - 8x2 foot rows, divided into 4x2 foot sections with this setup being stacked 4 high. Living space will be 1 foot tall.
*The suggested living space I have heard was 1 square foot per bird and the ideal male to female ratio I hear is 1:7. This ratio I understand is on the high end of female, so fertility may be questionable, but over-mating should be a non-issue. I would prefer to favor poor fertility than have my birds get injured.

Considering the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail: https://www.southwestgamebirds.com/shop/hatching-eggs/jumbo-brown-quail-hatching-eggs/

The quantities available are:
15 - I think this would be too few as I expect at least a few to not hatch or the ratio being too off for a sustainable population
30 - I'm stuck between thinking this is still too few or maybe being just right. I just don't know the expected hatch rates and there's always the wildcard of getting a bunch of males.
50 - This feels like too many, but again not really sure. If I end up with a poor hatch rate, this might actually be ideal.

 

[Nabiki]

Since this is your first time with quail, I would expect a 50% or less hatch rate. You're going to hatch on average half male, half female. If you want 8-15 birds, I would probably get the 30 count. You can always get more later.

Edit: You sound very much like I did when I started. I started with a 30 count and got 13 chicks.

 

[CountrifiedCoturnix]

Strongly considering getting into raising quail, but still really early into the planning process. Wondering how many quail eggs I should start with in order to get a good starter population going. Ideally, I would like to end up with 1-2 males and an appropriate amount of females for each male (it sounds like 7 females per male ideally) with the intention to grow out the initial lot and brood their eggs for additional population.

The area I will be building out will, in total, be about 64 cubic feet of living space - 8x2 foot rows, divided into 4x2 foot sections with this setup being stacked 4 high. Living space will be 1 foot tall.
*The suggested living space I have heard was 1 square foot per bird and the ideal male to female ratio I hear is 1:7. This ratio I understand is on the high end of female, so fertility may be questionable, but over-mating should be a non-issue. I would prefer to favor poor fertility than have my birds get injured.

Considering the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail: https://www.southwestgamebirds.com/shop/hatching-eggs/jumbo-brown-quail-hatching-eggs/

The quantities available are:
15 - I think this would be too few as I expect at least a few to not hatch or the ratio being too off for a sustainable population
30 - I'm stuck between thinking this is still too few or maybe being just right. I just don't know the expected hatch rates and there's always the wildcard of getting a bunch of males.
50 - This feels like too many, but again not really sure. If I end up with a poor hatch rate, this might actually be ideal.

I highly recommend the jumbo browns - the whites are gorgeous, but difficult to sex each bird for a beginner. I only stick with feather-sexable colors. Vent sexing is more difficult to me.

And I too started with a 1:7 ratio. I agree with @Nabiki that there will be a low fertility rate, but that doesn’t totally bother me. I have a friend with 1:4 ratio and his male overbreeds the females enough to where he has to separate the male for a day.

I live in the east valley (AZ) and wanted to do both live birds and hatching eggs - hatching eggs for the experience, and live birds for the immediate eggs.

 

[Whiskybear]

FWIW: Last year I had sixty eggs shipped from Arizona (Southwest Gamebirds) to Ky; 25 hatched. Then I drove to pick up 120 eggs collected that morning (Myshire in Southern Ohio), had them in the incubator that night; 78 hatched.
Nothing conclusive, but I tend to think shipping has an effect.
Also, it might be wise to expect some losses after hatch.

 

[FloorCandy]

FWIW: Last year I had sixty eggs shipped from Arizona (Southwest Gamebirds) to Ky; 25 hatched. Then I drove to pick up 120 eggs collected that morning (Myshire in Southern Ohio), had them in the incubator that night; 78 hatched.
Nothing conclusive, but I tend to think shipping has an effect.
Also, it might be wise to expect some losses after hatch.

A lot depends on the postal workers along the route. I’ve had eggs shipped from NC to NJ, they were lost in the mail for 9 days, and hatched 19/36. I had 50 sent from Myshire, I believe I received about 55, and a couple cracked, but I ended up with 39 hatching, I hatched from K dale Coturnix, I think they’re in Ohio, and hatched I think maybe 40 of 55, I hatched from Garrie Landry in Louisiana all winter this year and had an overall maybe 85% hatch rate over about 4 shipments. The last shipment I ordered 10 eggs, received 14, I think, and hatched 11. I just received 15 eggs from southwest gamebirds, and my mail carrier left them upside down on my porch in the freezing rain without ringing the bell, I’m not sure how long they sat there, and I’m concerned for their success.

Usually people suggest to expect no more than 50% success from shipped hatching eggs, and if you get more than that, consider it fantastic results. Your incubator and equipment will play a large role as well. With a good setup and calibrated equipment, you can expect better results than if you just plop an incubator onto a table, fresh from the box and just trust the readings it gives, and the overall quality of the incubator itself is important.

 

[Battlepants]

I highly recommend the jumbo browns - the whites are gorgeous, but difficult to sex each bird for a beginner. I only stick with feather-sexable colors. Vent sexing is more difficult to me.

Yea, I was looking at the other ones as well, but thinking about settling on the jumbo browns for the sexlink feathers and the decent body size.

And I too started with a 1:7 ratio. I agree with @Nabiki that there will be a low fertility rate, but that doesn’t totally bother me. I have a friend with 1:4 ratio and his male overbreeds the females enough to where he has to separate the male for a day.

Low fertility rate won't bother me either. I'd prefer a more hands-off approach when dealing with my meat birds (don't want to get attached), so just want to set them up in an environment where I add food and water and take eggs, everything else is balanced to where I don't need to intervene.

But yea, if it ends up costing me something like 30 eggs to build out the next 1:7 breeding pod, I view that as acceptable.

On that note, are there any problems to be expected with mixing up the female population or adding more later in their maturity? Like, if I have a hatch that is light on females and not enough to get a full pod, can I pull females from the other pods to make sure a safe ratio is hit?

Also, is there a safe age variance between the rooster and hens that needs to be observed? I'm assuming a younger rooster with older hens will be safe as he shouldn't try to mate with them right away. But something like introducing a fresh-out-of-the-brooder female with an actively mating male seems risky. Or would he know to just leave her alone until she is dropping eggs?

 

[Nabiki]

You can move your hens around, but make sure to watch them for the first couple of weeks. Whether they get along or not depends on the personalities of the birds involved. For best results, you probably want to take all of the birds out, clean and rearrange their pen, then put all of the birds in at the same time.

As long as all of the birds are full sized, age doesn't really matter when mixing them. If you're breeding, keep in mind that for breeders, the male is usually replaced every six months, and the females every year.

 

[CountrifiedCoturnix]

On that note, are there any problems to be expected with mixing up the female population or adding more later in their maturity? Like, if I have a hatch that is light on females and not enough to get a full pod, can I pull females from the other pods to make sure a safe ratio is hit?

I’ve not done this myself, but I heard the best way to repopulate birds is to move them from into a different location together. Even taking them out and changing the habitat or pen a little and then reintroducing them all together should work.

 

[BrandonsBirbs]

Strongly considering getting into raising quail, but still really early into the planning process. Wondering how many quail eggs I should start with in order to get a good starter population going. Ideally, I would like to end up with 1-2 males and an appropriate amount of females for each male (it sounds like 7 females per male ideally) with the intention to grow out the initial lot and brood their eggs for additional population.

The area I will be building out will, in total, be about 64 cubic feet of living space - 8x2 foot rows, divided into 4x2 foot sections with this setup being stacked 4 high. Living space will be 1 foot tall.
*The suggested living space I have heard was 1 square foot per bird and the ideal male to female ratio I hear is 1:7. This ratio I understand is on the high end of female, so fertility may be questionable, but over-mating should be a non-issue. I would prefer to favor poor fertility than have my birds get injured.

Considering the Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail: https://www.southwestgamebirds.com/shop/hatching-eggs/jumbo-brown-quail-hatching-eggs/

The quantities available are:
15 - I think this would be too few as I expect at least a few to not hatch or the ratio being too off for a sustainable population
30 - I'm stuck between thinking this is still too few or maybe being just right. I just don't know the expected hatch rates and there's always the wildcard of getting a bunch of males.
50 - This feels like too many, but again not really sure. If I end up with a poor hatch rate, this might actually be ideal.

Depends on your incubation process, if you're using a cheaper one or a homemade one for the first hatch I would expect poorer results. Most people here say shipped eggs generally have pretty poor results too, like 40-60%.

With good practices, such as keeping the eggs big side up for 24 hours previous to incubating you can raise your chances of success. With a good incubator too you can raise it even higher. I've never had less than 75% success from shipped eggs and I was using a rubbish Chinese incubator just being sensible with it.

I would start with 24-36 and see how you go, they don't even take 3 weeks to incubate so there's really no rush to buy a lot. Account for brooding too as depending on your location you may need to brood them for quite a few weeks before putting them in their cages.

Chances are you're going to get 50/50 males and females so account for that and once old enough either sell the males or fatten them up in a bachelor cage and cull them around 9 weeks old. But as this is the start maybe you wouldn't want to cull, so try selling/gifting them. (Most people don't want more males though unfortunately).

In terms of cage setups I would recommend 4 or 5 females with each male, if your male is aggressive or not fantastic then swap him for another male. 7 females will give poorer fertility.