Quail Sexing - How to find out if it's a male or female?

We get a lot of emails in which you guys ask how to sex quails i.e. how to tell which one is a male or a female. I have a bit of time now so I'll give you a little guide here.

With the standard wild color Japanese or Jumbo Japanese Quail it's fairly easy as the color pattern of their chests will tell you who is the boy and who is the girl bird.

The female of the Japanese quail has brown speckled chest on a cream or pale brown base. The male has a plain chest with reddish brown tan. It's easy as that. You have a similar situation with the Golden Manchurian (Italian) and the Red Cap Quail; The female's chests are speckled and the male's chests are plain. You can obviously use the above method only after the quail is feathered enough, from about 2-3 weeks of age.

Quail Sexing - How to find out if it's a male or female?

If you keep mixed colour quail, like Texas Quail for example, you're not going to get off that easy as with the wild coloured ones. You cannot sex mix coloured quail by the color of their feather. You will have to examine their bottom side for this purpose. The way you do it is to hold the quail securely but gently. Turn it bottom up and examine the cloaca (exit hole). The way you do this is to blow the feathers apart to expose the cloaca and press down with two fingers above and below the opening. If a small ball pops forward when slightly pressed then it's a male.

If no ball shows up then it's a female. In the case of a male there might be a lump of white foam that comes out when pressed too. Don't worry about it, it's natural. Some breeders advice that the foam will tell you if it's a male or female but my advice is not to rely on that alone as if for example you check a bird shortly after mating foam will come out and it can still be a female as that foam was passed to her by the male.