Tips on How to Get Quails to Lay Eggs
Here are some easy-to-follow tips and tricks on how to make quails lay eggs if your birds have stopped laying or haven’t produced anything yet.
1. Choose a Secure Housing
There’s a myriad of quail housing options in the market, including cages, pens, chicken coops, rabbit hutches, and aviaries.
You can go all out with a fancy chicken coop, but if you’re on a budget, rabbit hutches will already do. But you can also DIY if you want to provide the best quail cage for them. The most important thing to consider here is your laying quails’ security.
You need to ensure that predators can’t enter and the quails can’t escape. It’s a given that each housing must have a roof but don’t forget to add a catch pan or barrier below the wire base if you put them in a raised cage. This way, predators can’t reach their feet from below.
If your quail’s cage is made entirely of wire, we suggest adding logs, plywood, or anything they can step on to keep them entertained. It can also help protect their feet since standing directly on the wire for a long time can hurt them.
2. Make Sure They Have Enough Floor Space
Each quail need at least 1 square foot or 0.0093 square meters of floor space. If there’s not enough space, quail birds will feel confined and stressed, affecting their egg production. Quails are unlikely to lay eggs if they’re stressed.
3. Put Hay or Straws in the Quail’s Cage
Each quail has different nesting behavior. Like those in community pens, some quails prefer to lay on the ground instead of building nests, while others like to lay in a nest.
To accommodate these birds’ needs, it’d be best to put some hay or straw in their cage so that those who want to lay in a nest can create one for themselves.
4. Avoid Disturbing Your Laying Quails
Since disruptions can hinder quails from laying eggs, it’s best to clean the cage every 1 to 2 weeks. It can help your laying quail’s performance be at its best and reduce the chance of you destroying their nest.
However, they need access to fresh food and water every day, so tending to those needs should be part of your daily routine.
5. Put Them in a Quiet and Calm Environment
Since quails will not lay well if there are loud noises and other disturbances, we suggest keeping them in a peaceful place. The presence of predators like cats and dogs can easily scare them, so it’d be best to keep your laying quails away from them.
6. Feed Them With The Right Quail Food
The food you’re feeding to your quails is one of the most crucial factors when it comes to egg production. So, if you want to maximize their egg-laying capabilities, you must give them the right quail feed and diet that meets quails’ basic nutrient requirements and supports their growth.
Developer diet
Quails aged 6 to 20 weeks need the best feed for quail that contains at least 18% protein and 0.5% phosphorus to help them produce more eggs. It also helps to make the eggshells thicker.
Layer diet
When a quail reaches the age of 20 weeks old, it’s time to upgrade to a layer diet with at least 19% protein and 0.65% phosphorus.
Additional calcium supplement
If the egg production is low, laying quails must be supplemented with calcium such as limestone, crushed oyster shells, or calcium premix.
It will not only help increase the production because it’s also essential for quails to produce high-quality eggs.
7. Ensure They Meet the Daylight Requirements
Laying quails need 14 to 16 hours of sunlight hours per day. Their laying mechanism will shut down if their hours of light falls below 12 hours. That explains why quails have fewer eggs during winter because there are lower sunlight hours during this season.
The simple trick to solve this problem is to keep your cage in a sunny area or put artificial lighting above their cage during winter to encourage the quails to lay eggs.
