Quail houses and cages

Before applying for licence at KWS(Kenya Wildlife Serices) for quail farming, you need to have built a housing for quails and provide photos and sketches  in the application form.

A quail cage
A quail cage

One of the advantages in the rearing of quails is the relatively small space that is required. This also means that the cost of putting up a cage is less.
A good general guideline is to have two square feet allotted for every adult bird. Construction does not have to be overly robust, as walls made of wire won’t encounter many shear forces from the wind, and need only keep small birds inside. The bottom half of the cage, however, should be made sturdy enough to prevent animals such as skunks, cats, or dogs from breaking in. It is also wise to extend the chicken wire a foot into the ground so that animals cannot tunnel in or out.
Give your birds a place where they can have shelter from the rain and shade from the hot sun. Also, cover the food and the water so that they don’t get drenched in downpours
Keep the cage clean and put the feed in a place where rats can’t get to them. Cockroaches can be a problem if the cage isn’t clean
The materials commonly used in making quail cages are:
1) plywood
2) ¼ inch mesh wire
3) 1” x 1” lumber to serve as framework for every stage in the quail’s life, space requirement varies.
Generally the following tips will help you in constructing your quail birds structure:
1. Six Quails can be reared in a square ft. of floor space.
2. After 2- weeks Quails can be reared in cages. This will help to gain good body- weight as un-necessary wandering of animals is avoided.
3. Cage- system: Quails in cage system of rearing should be followed in this way:-

4. Each unit is about 6 feet in length and 1- foot in width and sub-divided in to 6 sub units.
5. To save space, the cages can be arranged up to 6 tiers high, they can be 4 to 5 cages in a row.
6. The bottom of cage is fixed with removable wooden plates to clean the biro- droppings.
7. Long narrow feed through are placed in front of the cages .water through are placed at the back of the cages.
8. Commercial egg layers are usually housed in colonies of 10—12 birds per cage.
9. For breeding purposes, male Quails are introduced in the cages in the ratio of 1 to3 – Females.

Space Requirements

The requirement of space vary with the type of housing. In intensive system a grown quail requires 200 to 250 sq. cm space per quail. Whereas in cage system each bird require on 150 to 175 sq. cm for staying. Accordingly we can calculate the space requirement for 25 or 50 quail in the deep litter system given here.

Space requirement for one quail = 200 sq. cm

For 25 quail = 200 x 25              = 5000 sq.cm

Next we must convert sq. cm into length and width of the room. Thus 5000 sq. cm may be broken in to 100 x 50 cm size box (room). However, if we want to rear 100 quails the space requirement will be 100 x 250 cm = 25000 sq. cm. which converted into a room of 250 cm long and 100 cm width. Similarly the floor space for 25 or 100 quails can be determined for a cage system as shown here.

Space for one quail in cage system = 150 sq. cm

For 25 quails = 150 x 25 = 3750 sq. cm

For 100 quails = 150 x 100 = 15000 sq. cm

These areas can be converted into 100 x 37.5 cm and 150 x 100 centimetre to make cages. The height of the housing for quail house depends on the type of housing system, the size of the housing which depend on the number of quails we want to keep. It also depends on whether the keeper wants to enter the room for doing various operations like feeding, cleaning and management operations.

 

If the keeper wants to enter the room the height should be at least 6 to 7 feet. But for keeping quail such a high room is a wasteful use of space. If cage system is followed in the same space we can have 10-15 cages fixed one above the other. The height for cages for the birds to move around freely is 25 cm on an average. Additional 5 cm high tray is to be fixed below every cage to collect the quail droppings.

Thus a height of 30 cm per cage will be sufficient for cage system. Therefore within the one metre height three cage can be fitted easily.

To grow the Japanese quails the recommended size of cage with respect to the number of birds is as follows.

1. For a pair of quail require a cage of 12.5 x 20 x 25 cm size.

2. For 25 quails 60 x 60 x 25 cm size cage

3. For 50 quails require 120 x 60 x 25 cmsize cage.

 Order quail houses from us for intensive system or cage system . Contact us at [email protected] or call 0727087285

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