Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 7:06 am Post subject: Advice on how birds lay and sit o eggs
Hello all,
We are very new to owning Kaks, and i wondered if any of you could give me some help!
We have four birds, 3 of which we believe are males, They live in an outside aviary,
Anyway back on August the 27th we noticed that our female had two little eggs, couple of days later she had 1 more, the male is always feeding her etc, but she is never in the nesting box for any length of time, The longest they are in there is at night! Both birds are in and out of the box a couple of times a day, but never long periods of time, Is this normal? Not sure if it makes any difference but the weather here has been very warm, even in the evenings, we are in the south of England
There is a common mis believe birdsa start laying eggs and sit on them staight away...
No.
They start laying egss and it is not utill they are all laid or untill the last couple they decide to sit on them. It is when they sit on them the eggs are 'activated'
Ther is a period of 6 to 12 days, depending on the species which the eggs can just lay around unattened.
When breeding quail for example, one collects the egds out of the avairy /cages for 8 to 10 days..they can just sit in a bowl on a shelf in the kitchen...and after 10 days they are put in an incubater....because the incubator is very consistant they will all hatch within a couple hrs of each other.
Cheers
Steps _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
Steps, when your quail lay eggs do you let them hatch naturally or do you use an incubator yourself?
We have an incubator..never used it, thu the Father in law used it very sucessfully
We have breed in the avariies , occassinally...BUT there are not many females that know how to sit on a nest....it has been breed out of them due to incubator breeding over generations....of about 6 pair that i recently brought from different sources (females are hard to get) I have only 1 that is currentlt sitting solid....the rest eat the eggs cause they dont know what they are to just dropping around the place to actually laying all in one place and not know what to do from there.
We have button quails as little vaccuum cleared...the bigger quail eat too much and make a mess and they are really stupid....good eating thu and the tiny eggs great in salids. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
Thank you for you reply, will just see what happens then, only i was concerned as the eggs were laid some time ago now, and she seems to have pushed them into the corner and basically ignoring them! She did however go in there for a while today, and was scratching around.
Thanks again Dawn
thx for the info, I bought a button quail trio around a month ago, and the quarantine cage... the bottom grid slid a bit and they escaped. Very stupid of me, but lesson learned, next time I'll secure the trays better.
I have contacted a breeder, will buy 2 pairs from him, I hope one of the females sits on the eggs, so I can fill up the remaining aviaries for free. (I have 4 conventional aviaries, and my gf has 2).
I had the vague idea of buying them, but I went to a wholesaler to sell some cockatiels and saw them in the bottom of the aviaries, and I found them funny to watch, so I decided to buy the first trio. They are cute.
Large quail? You mean the game bird?
My guess is that they are probably very flighty, I don't know if they are calm like the typical domestic chicken.
Cheers / Pablo _________________ AD ASTRA PER ASPERA
Around the base of your flights u need a 250 to 300 mm kick board to stop the chicks jumping thru the mesh they go thru a 17mm square mesh nps...
And shallow water dish...we have deep water trays so they cant jump in, with auto water every day that over flows into an old suacer then into the sump hole in the ground underneath. _________________ My Spelling is Not Incorrect...It's 'Creative'
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