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Post by crdj81 on Mar 4, 2009 11:29:26 GMT 10
Hi guys,
After losing my last lot of young I had almost lost hope. The task of separating the young as they get older from the parents seeming to be a juggling act. But this week with the new system in place came the hatching of a clutch of 11 and with the father and the other hens to help with keeping the babies warm all seem to be growing it will be interesting to see how they go.
Now the reason for my post of the of the 20 or so birds breed from this male that have reached maturity so far there has only been 6 boys all the rest have been girls obviously this is a good thing since there is always a shortage of girls around, but will this trend continue with his off spring. Now I figure that since the male is responsible for the sex in people I asume that is the case in birds too. And if so will that mean that his boys produce mainly girls?
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Karen
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Post by Karen on Mar 4, 2009 21:00:57 GMT 10
I believe in birds it is the female that chooses the sex of the chicks by deciding the incubation temperature. I think to get boys the eggs need to be incubated about 1.5 degrees cooler than the girls.
As you've been getting lots of girls I reckon your mother quail is very happy with the situation in her home. It's important in the propagation of any species for many more females to be born/hatched than males. Often males will have a harem - look at the eckie species, males have a harem of 7 or more females that they service and generally more females are born than males to continue the cycle.
In other words, it is perfectly okay what is happening with the quail - just remove the young males at around 7-8 weeks old. That was about the age at when daddy quail stopped being so nice to his sons.
Remove females at about 12 weeks as daddy will see them as more females to "service".
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Post by avinet on Mar 4, 2009 22:21:35 GMT 10
I believe in birds it is the female that chooses the sex of the chicks by deciding the incubation temperature. I think to get boys the eggs need to be incubated about 1.5 degrees cooler than the girls. Often males will have a harem - look at the eckie species, males have a harem of 7 or more females that they service and generally more females are born than males to continue the cycle. The sex of birds is decided at the time of fusion of the egg and spermatozoa, as it is in humans. If it was temperature decided then all of any single clutch would be either male or female, however most of mine are pretty well 50-50. Similarly it would be possible to manipulate the sex of an egg being artificially incubated by adjusting the temperature of the incubator. In practise eggs are all incubated at the same temperature, and sexes come out randomly. Eclectus are a species that have traditionally been considered to be able to control the sex of the babies, by some unknown method. However studies of Eclectus in the wild seem to indicate this is not true. These studies journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=141943 indicate that the babies come out of the nest in even numbers for either sex. They also show that it is the female that has a harem of males, and not the other way round. The female is the lucky one not the male with a single breeding female being observed to mate with up to 4 males, and being fed by up to 5 males. cheers, Mike |
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Post by madaussie on Mar 4, 2009 23:46:34 GMT 10
Yes Eclectus hens have the good life so i just learnt from a dvd i brought (Australia land of parrots) not a bad dvd at all .
j
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Karen
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Post by Karen on Mar 5, 2009 7:44:59 GMT 10
oops! got the eckys ass about  I've seen that show too madaussie - don't know what made me say it the wrong way.  When I used to breed quail for the pet shops it was always very hot and my girls bred twice as many males as females. When I stopped and parted with most of my quail and when the temperature was more moderate I ended up getting more females than males. I used to be in regular contact with many breeders and the general consensus was that when the hens percieve that more food is available they would breed higher numbers of females and when they perceived there would be less food they'd breed more males. Something to do with "natural instinct". I personally think it had more to do with the temperature as when it was perfect mine'd breed around 60% female & 40% male. Those are my experiences of when I bred quail.  |
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Post by avinet on Mar 5, 2009 21:58:07 GMT 10
I've been doing a bit of research on this temperature stuff and I can say with confidence that the sex of baby birds is not temperature related.. The sex of a baby bird is determined exactly the same way as in mammals, including humans, when the egg is fertilised and the fused chromosomes form. Anything that happens after that moment, including temperature, has no influence on the sex of that baby. Once the sex chromosomes are formed in that initial single cell, they are incapable of being changed.
Perhaps the best practical proof of this is from the chicken industry, since chickens are related to quail. In the chicken industry the males from egg producing chicken breeds are essentially useless, they can't lay eggs and they make very poor meat.
Accordingly there would be a great incentive for commercial breeders to be able to breed a preponderance of females. Breeding 95% females would make them far more money that only 50% females with half the hatched chicks being worthless. Unfortunately for breeders, no way has been found to bias the sexes, and 50% of chickens hatch as female and 50% as male. Article in the Journal World Poultry Science Journal, 2008, vol 64 pp 391- 399 is a good source for this information.
Thus a run of female or male babies is pure chance - eventually the numbers will even up. I see that in our shop with quail and other species. Sometimes we get in lots of females, other times males predominate, but over the year it all evens out.
To put it in a human perspective, back in my Canberra days when I was a geologist, I had two good friends who were also geologists. Between our three families we had 10 children all of which were girls, with no boys. The odds of that are 1:1024! Now I could, on those numbers, mount an argument that geologists only produce daughters. Of course, when we has large get-togethers with multiple families, there was equal numbers of boys and girls running around, and given a large enough sample the 10 girls that the three of us had was just a statistical blip cancelled out by families with mainly boys.
I've probably laboured the topic a bit, but I hate to see inaccurate information gain acceptance on the Internet - there is far too much around as it is.
cheers,
Mike
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Post by madaussie on Mar 5, 2009 22:03:43 GMT 10
Cool to know in my family we have 8 girls 5 mine 3 to my sister and my brother none as he is gay so we are not like turtles then .
j
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Post by avinet on Mar 5, 2009 22:20:33 GMT 10
Cool to know in my family we have 8 girls 5 mine 3 to my sister . j Hey, you must be a geologist  |
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Post by crdj81 on Mar 11, 2009 13:14:04 GMT 10
I thought that must have been the case. He is obivously genetically enclined to produce girls. As far as I know the person who breed him has the same results alot more girls than boys. Now the big test will his boys breed the same. Around my area and the area I sell to in Melbourn they have a shortage of girl quails being breed for that reason they seem to be asking alot higher price for girls I have seen them in pet shops for as much as $20 ea for silver females and selling the males for half that. I guess it is just supply and demand.
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Post by avinet on Mar 12, 2009 21:27:48 GMT 10
Around my area and the area I sell to in Melbourn they have a shortage of girl quails being breed for that reason they seem to be asking alot higher price for girls I have seen them in pet shops for as much as $20 ea for silver females and selling the males for half that. I guess it is just supply and demand. It is more likely a result of what people are buying rather than supply. Since only one male can be kept with one or more females, due to fighting amongst males, most of our customers will buy a couple of hens for each cock. We get equal numbers of each sex brought in for us to buy, and so always have extra cocks left over and are short of hens. We therefore charge twice as much for the hens as the cocks. In addition we pay $5 a pair for quail, and also pay $5 each for hens. We love customers who bring in an excess of hens. cheers, Mike |
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Post by finchperson on Sept 20, 2009 14:21:43 GMT 10
Hi people- i know this is kind of off topic but does anyone know why you cant keep 2 male king quails together. i have a breeding pair of king quail along with a pair of Gouldian Finches, Many Many pairs of Zebra Finches 2 Budgerigars & a Cockatiel. Please Reaply  |
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Post by lingardrobert on Sept 29, 2009 6:32:03 GMT 10
I'd like to add a couple of comments:
1. Yes, it is the female bird which determines the sex of the offspring (opposite to us), but rather than X & Y chromosomes, the birds have W & Z. A female is WZ and male is ZZ (sort of opposite to us).
2. Most breeders (me included) complain of too many male offspring and birds which produce a high proportion of females is something to be envied. It will be interesting to hear what the next generation does. ??Is there a genetic basis for this proportion??
3. Keeping 2 males together is generally OK - any number of males, with sufficient space is OK - but don't add a female or the feathers will fly!
Robert L
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Post by finchbreeder on Jun 9, 2010 20:47:59 GMT 10
I have to agree with lngardrobert. After 25 years of breeding quail and other birds, and having a daughter doing a degree in Wildlife Biology. Females determine the sex in birds and moths, males determine the sex in all other species. You can keep 2 males together but best to get sibblings who have not been with a female.
LML
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I've seen that show too madaussie - don't know what made me say it the wrong way. 
