Aussie Finch Forum

Well there is certainly nothing wrong with their fertility then.
Dead in shell could be due to trying to keep so many eggs warm in cold weather.
And with quail I have been line breeding - cousins to 2nd cousins for 10 years - - so as long as you watch for signs of weakness and outcross - which I do. That does not seem to be much of a problem.
Yes I had a pied back then and am trying to draw the gene back out of the gene pool.
LML

I have a concrete floor in the enclosed area of my Aviary and have 40mm loam soil with forest mulch covering it and my quails had 11 eggs hatch with 10 surviving. Now are 5 weeks old.Usually lose 50% with quial's though as the young are very week. I feed mini meal worms twice a day for the first two weeks and always gave the plenty before a cold night.
Maybe spreed some soil to completely cover the enclosed area.
Sorry to hear of all your losses cranberry.
You don't have snail pellets or anything getting into you cage?
Must be very frustrating for you.

Frustrating is not the word. Downhearted more like it. I know it's all to do with the way I keep them and I will learn from my mistakes but the lessons are sometimes unpleasant. Rest assured, I will persist. I may change what type of birds I keep but I will always keep birds.

I don't personally keep quail but I remember listening to a talk by a bloke who was a expert at keeping quail,& the 1 thing that stuck in my mind was him saying how young quail are insectiverious ? until a certain age ?.
He was saying the reason a lot of young quail are lost is because they are kept on surfaces where there is not a ready supply of insects...Maybe you need more than a few earwigs/

Your problem may be just lack of cover.
Most King Quail chicks die of drowning or lost/exhaustion.
To stop drowning fill the water dish up with small stones about the size of a large grape,then fill the water bowl and the quail will take the water between the stones and not drown.
There is nothing of them in the size department and if they keep chasing after their parents then they just simply drop get cold and die.
If you make 3 or 4 shelter spots in your aviary(small branch with some grass draped over it) the brooding birds will be more settled and won't move around as much so the chicks stay warm and don't get as tired. Because of their size you will get losses.Dead in the shell are generally late layed eggs and still need 24/.48 hours to hatch but the parents want to move the chicks that have already hatched.This generally applies to large number of eggs in a setting.
I think bird keeping gets easier the longer you keep them. I must admit I get furious when parent birds fledge chicks then don't finish them off, such a waste of time and their effort.

i don't keep quail - but at a guess your floor is definitely too cold. my aviary floor is a mixture of granetic sand (paths and feeding areas) and heavily mulched planted areas. dry and warm.

try the suspended inverted flower pot with a globe for warmth.

and maybe try mealworms over the odd earwig.

there are plenty of reasons why they might be dying form the sounds of things so i wouldn't give up yet!

good luck!