Male or Female Quail?

[wombleydoo]

Hi!

I'm a newbie here. We were given 3 quail and were told two were female and one was male. My 13 yo is keen in incubate eggs and breed them. We tried incubating a batch of eggs and nothing happened. Our second batch is in now, but I am starting to suspect that we have 3 females.

First of all, we seem to get a lot of eggs, more than what I would expect for two quail. I was looking at them and I think I can categorise them into 3 groups. See picture

I have included pictures of the 3 birds. Would someone be able to tell me the breed of the quails and if they are male or female?

Thanks in advance!!

Cathy

 

[SeptemberQuail]

Hi,
I think they're coturnix/japanese quail, judging by their size and eggs. They all have different colour variations and are beautiful! c: Normally, to determine the gender by their feathers in general: females should have spots on their chest and males would have a plain orange chest. However, this only applies to specific colour variations. Also note that breeding season occurs from September to March (in the southern hemisphere), or March to September (in the northern hemisphere), so if you're up in the Northern Hemisphere, it may explain as to why you're not getting any fertile eggs.

The first one looks somewhat like a rosetta. Gender can't be determined by colours.
Second one looks like some sort of fancy mixture between a white quail and something else. Gender hard to tell, but I feel as if he's a male judging from his face... It just looks more like a male quail to me, but that's just a lucky guess.
Third one looks like a regular brown/pharoah. Definitely female.

A female should also appear to be a little larger than the male in terms of width.
I don't know if you can tell, but the male is the white one on the very left in this picture below. He's skinnier than the girls and is the only one with a black beak. I've found that from all the quail I've raised, most of them had dark beaks and the females would always have lighter beaks. Not sure if its genetics or a common thing.


Another way to determine the gender is by sexing to which you'll need to be looking around their backside under the tail feather.
A really useful and in-depth guide in determining gender can be found here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/102281/coturnix-quail-basics-information-and-pictures-galore

Good luck!