Coturnix Quail Oversize Eggs

.elle.

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Hi. I have jumbo quail, whose free ranging ensures I will never be self sufficient vege-wise. My favourite, at 175g, is laying the occasional 33g egg. She doesn't get these quite properly 'shelled' and I'm not surprised. But should I be worried - or maybe caring for her differently? Her other, usual, eggs are generally well formed 14g googs.

.elle.
 

Mandy Onderwater

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I'm not entirely sure but she might be having a calcium deficiency when trying to produce the larger eggs.
Just by logic I'd say that smaller eggs require less calcium and bigger more as there is a larger surface area.
Personally I wouldn't worry about it too much if she seems happy and healthy, especially since the smaller eggs are laid succesfully.
 

.elle.

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Thank you Mandy. I fully expect it is lack of available calcium to do a really firm shell on the whoppers. Any idea why she might throw them though? L.
 

desman

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I think over sized eggs are from too much protein in their diet, so add some food that has carbohydrate. She might be preferencing protein food if it’s cold, for example. Chickens (and I presume quail as well) can also lay fart eggs: yes, it’s actually a term. Fart eggs are tiny eggs. I only know this stuff as one week by chance one of our chooks laid a fart egg (an egg about the same size as the end of a teaspoon) while my step sister’s chook laid a massive egg about the size of a very small avocado. We caught up for lunch and told our egg stories and curiosity got the better of us so we ended up googling and reading about extra big/small eggs.
 

Mandy Onderwater

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Thank you Mandy. I fully expect it is lack of available calcium to do a really firm shell on the whoppers. Any idea why she might throw them though? L.
I'm not sure which type of quaill we had, I think some kind of dwarf asian quaill I believe. They were reeaaally bad at keeping up with their eggs and continuesly kept knocking them out of their nests and whatnot. My dad always said that it was a quail thing and that every single one he'd owned did it. Whenever we wanted to have a nest of them we'd take the eggs and incubate them in a machine as the parents just wouldn't. Or they'd knock the egg away and tend to it there, being a bad place and the young would die anyway.
 

.elle.

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Thank you very much Desmond. I did try to google, but 'giant', 'large', 'oversize etc all came back explaining jumbo quail as a phenotype, rather than anything to do with eggs.

She certainly does go the protein. Breeder mix is high anyway, but dropping a worm in there turns the little run into something like a moshpit at a pre-Covid grunge concert.

L.
 

.elle.

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I think over sized eggs are from too much protein in their diet, so add some food that has carbohydrate. She might be preferencing protein food if it’s cold, for example. Chickens (and I presume quail as well) can also lay fart eggs: yes, it’s actually a term. Fart eggs are tiny eggs. I only know this stuff as one week by chance one of our chooks laid a fart egg (an egg about the same size as the end of a teaspoon) while my step sister’s chook laid a massive egg about the size of a very small avocado. We caught up for lunch and told our egg stories and curiosity got the better of us so we ended up googling and reading about extra big/small eggs.
Sorry Desmond Desman. I HATE autocorrect!
 

desman

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Thank you very much Desmond. I did try to google, but 'giant', 'large', 'oversize etc all came back explaining jumbo quail as a phenotype, rather than anything to do with eggs.

She certainly does go the protein. Breeder mix is high anyway, but dropping a worm in there turns the little run into something like a moshpit at a pre-Covid grunge concert.

L.
Haha, love the sight of poultry arguing over a worm. The stuff I read was referring to chooks, not quail, but I guess it might apply to all poultry. It might be she preferences protein for some reason over a short period of time (ie ignores carbs). But overall I think random big and small eggs can be normal. The big ones though - geez some look like they must hurt when the bird passes them. Do you big ones have double yokes?
 

.elle.

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I've only had a couple of double yolkers, and those eggs weren't significantly larger. I read that double yolks can be caused by an unformed egg (ie the ovum before shell added) being pushed back into the oviduct - maybe by fear/body expecting to need to take flight, or by accident due to people handling/holding.

Apparently, the article said, the biology of quails and presumably chickens is pretty rudimentary.
 

.elle.

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On one really surprising occasion I found a complete egg sans hard shell inside a largish (23g) properly shelled egg. That was early on, and made me think twice about hard boiled eggs for a quick lunch!
 

Mark

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Odd sized eggs are pretty common - I think if your quail is laying mostly normal eggs with the odd large one it's nothing to worry about. I wouldn't incubate them though...
 

.elle.

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Still trying to buy a decent small incubator Mark. I think the last one broke her tiny bottom. No eggs since the 33g.one. c'est la vie - she is otherwise happy, hungry, social and inquisitive.

Love my quail. Dont understand why more suburbanites don't have them.
 
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