Quail chicks, days 14 to 30: the teenage phase

Weeks three and four are when your box of identical chicks turns into a group of individuals with opinions — and when you find out how many of them are male.

That second part is the one to plan for. Everything else this fortnight is straightforward.

Sexing coturnix quail

From around three weeks, most coturnix can be sexed by their chest feathers. It's one of the nicest things about the breed — no waiting months, no guesswork.

• Females: speckled or mottled breast — cream or pale fawn with distinct dark spots.
• Males: plain, unspotted breast in a solid rusty or cinnamon brown.

Hold the bird gently and look at the chest in good daylight. Once you've seen a clear pair side by side it becomes obvious very quickly.

When it doesn't work

Feather sexing only works on pharaoh-type (wild-coloured) birds. If you've hatched english white, tuxedo, or very pale italian quail, there's no pattern to read and you'll have to wait for behaviour.

For those, the giveaways from around five to six weeks:

• Crowing. Males only. A rasping, squeaky noise rather like a rusty gate — quite unlike a cockerel, and much quieter.
• The foam test. Mature males produce a distinctive white foam from the vent when gently pressed. Definitive, but leave it until at least six weeks and be gentle.
• Size. Females are usually slightly larger and heavier, which surprises people.

The ratio problem, and why it's urgent

You'll have hatched roughly 50/50. That's a problem, because the right ratio for a quail group is one male to four or five females.

Left as hatched, an over-male group goes wrong fast, and it goes wrong in ways that are genuinely distressing to watch:

• Males fight seriously. They target each other's heads, and "scalping" — the skin torn from the top of the head — is the classic sign. Once there's blood, others join in.
• Hens get over-mated. Bald patches on the back and the back of the head, and constant harassment. Genuinely stressed birds that stop laying.
• Everyone is miserable, and injuries get infected.

This escalates over days, not weeks. Once males start crowing at five to six weeks, you need the ratio sorted.

The options

There are only really four, and it's worth having decided before you set eggs:

1. Keep one male, rehome the rest. Local poultry groups and selling pages. Be honest that they're males — everyone has the same surplus, so demand is limited.
2. Keep no males at all. Hens lay perfectly well without one; you simply won't get fertile eggs. For anyone keeping quail purely for eggs, this is the quietest and easiest answer.
3. A bachelor group, kept entirely separately. This can work, but only if the males cannot see or hear any hens. Within earshot of females they'll fight regardless.
4. Dispatch them for the table. Coturnix are a dual-purpose bird and this is a normal part of keeping them. If you go this route, learn a humane method properly from an experienced keeper first, and make sure you understand the welfare requirements that apply.

None of these is the wrong answer, but "I'll sort it out later" is. Later means an injured bird.

Temperature and coming off heat

Keep stepping down: around 29 °C for days 15–21, then 26 °C for days 22–28.

By four weeks, fully feathered quail don't need supplementary heat provided their housing is dry and out of the wind. In a British spring that's usually fine; if you've hatched in February, give them longer and be guided by the weather rather than the calendar.

Take the heat away gradually rather than in one go — a few hours off, then longer, over several days.

Moving them outside

Around four weeks, once fully feathered and off heat.

The housing rules are the same as for adults, and the full detail is in Quail 101, but the essentials:

• Ground level, one floor. No ramps or upper storeys — quail don't use them.
• Low or soft roof. They launch vertically when startled and can injure themselves on a hard ceiling.
• At least 0.1 m² per bird, and more if you can.
• Dry and sheltered. Cold is survivable; damp is not.
• Somewhere to hide, and a sand tray to dust bathe in.
• Properly predator-proof. Weldmesh, not chicken wire, and secured underneath as well — rats will take quail chicks and are a bigger threat than most people realise.

Move them on a mild day, in the morning, so they've got daylight to find the food and water before dark.

Feed

Stay on game bird starter crumb at 24–30% protein for now. Switch to a layer or maintenance feed at around six weeks, as they come into lay.

Don't move to layers feed early — the calcium is too high for birds still growing.

Once they're on anything other than crumb, they need grit. From point of lay, hens additionally need oyster shell or crushed eggshell for calcium. Two separate things, both needed, offered in separate pots so birds take what they want.

Behaviour this fortnight

They become properly entertaining now. Dust bathing in earnest, sparring, sudden collective panics over nothing at all, and a pecking order sorting itself out.

Some squabbling is completely normal and you shouldn't intervene. What's not normal, and needs action:

• Any blood. Separate the injured bird immediately — quail will target a wound relentlessly.
• One bird constantly cornered and unable to reach food or water.
• Persistent head-pecking between males. That's the ratio talking.

If pecking starts, the fixes in order: more space, lower the light, check the protein, add hiding places. Reducing light levels is remarkably effective and often overlooked.

What's coming

Somewhere between six and eight weeks you'll find the first egg — small, oddly shaped, and lying in the middle of the floor, because quail have no interest whatsoever in nest boxes.

From there they're adults, and the whole arc is done: seventeen days in an incubator, six weeks of growing, and you're collecting eggs from birds you hatched yourself.

It's a genuinely satisfying thing to have done. And if you've enjoyed it, be warned — the incubator never really goes back in the cupboard.