From NTV
Quail farming is an uncommon business in Kenya, but the few people who have embraced it are laughing all the way to the bank. In Nyeri County, one farmer who has ventured into rearing the little birds now says this was the best decision he ever made after retirement.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caU2GDVI2lY?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Story By JAMES KARIUKI
From Africa Review.
Seventy two-year-old Philip Gichohi is busy making money ‘restoring’ men’s vitality via sale of quail eggs — a rare venture licensed by the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) to help farmers earn handsomely from the wild birds.
Mr Gichohi’s project — the first in Kenya’s Nyandarua County — has won him orders from four-star hotels in the capital Nairobi, which have been receiving eight egg trays every week form his farm.
Further, he has also been giving lectures on the benefit of eating quail eggs by men keen on boosting their vitality within and without his home county.
“Age is just but a number as all we need is to eat the right food like the Japanese, Chinese and Indians have done for ages. They prefer eating wild fruits, animals and drinking water from springs thereby avoiding highly-processed foods and drinks,” he says.
His venture into quail farming was motivated by a visit to a quail farm in Kiambu County where he saw a farmer rearing the wild birds as a commercial enterprise and was surprised at the low input and maintenance cost required.
While a mature hen consumes an average of 150 grammes of food per day and requires a regular administration of drugs, a quail eats 20 grammes per day and hardly requires any drugs.
Additionally, while a kilo of poultry meat goes for Sh280 ($3.30) on average, quail, which hardly weighs half-a-kilo at maturity attracts, Sh500 (about $6). (more…)
Story by By MUNENE KAMAU
From Standard Digital News
As many youths grumble over soaring unemployment, Leonard Mbucho is a happy man. In his early 30s and with modest education, he is pocketing an average of Sh100,000 a month from a rare bird business.
In his one-storey structure in Gacharu village, Kirinyaga County, Mbucho rears hundreds of birds which include quails, turkey, the Egyptian goose, ordinary goose, the Ugandan cranes, ducks, turkey, pigeons, and guinea fowls, among other varieties of poultry.
But the rare quails stand out. The birds are highly valued for their pricey meat and eggs and their proven medicinal value.
The investment started a year ago after he came across the quails in Karatina where Mzee Kiongo Kamau had stocked the birds.
“I had just paid a visit to Mzee Kamau and within his homestead I could hear bird sounds coming from a wooden structure,” he said.
He developed interest in the tiny birds and secured 15 of them after learning from Kamau how they mature as demand for the eggs continues to grow.
In the Bible, God provided the Israelites with quails and manna in order to survive as they traversed the hot desert from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan.
Today the tamed bird is a delicacy especially among the Luhya who refer to it as Isidu. The Luo call the bird Aluru.
And the bird sells like hot cake in select restaurants within Nairobi and other restaurants are slowly adopting to it. It is also highly sought after for its medicinal value. (more…)
The average quail producer cannot read about a disease or look at a picture and make an accurate diagnosis in the field without training, equipment, and experience. Seldom,without training, can you diagnose more than a few internal parasites with the unaided eye.Properly equipped and experienced poultry service people are of invaluable assistance to you in the field.
Much is still unknown and unsolved in diseases of quail.
This is the most common and destructive disease of captive reared quail. Losses in young birds may reach 100 percent if not controlled. It is most commonly seen in ground- or litter-reared quail, but can occur in wire-reared birds. It is caused by a bacterium found in the intestinal tract.
If all birds on a given farm were inoculated with the disease the same day, the peak of mortality would occur in 5-14 days. However, this is not the normal situation. Since
individual birds usually contact the disease organisms over a period of time, some mortality may occur almost continuously.
Symptoms
You can identify ulcerative enteritis yourself by opening a sick or dead bird. Usually, ulcers are observed on the internal (more…)
You can ruin a perfectly good egg by improper care. Each egg lost is costly since it represents one less bird for sale.
Observing the following tips will help you get better quality eggs:
Quail Eggs
Incubation
Improper adjustment of the incubator and careless egg incubation can ruin all plans. The following pointers may serve as reminders of correct incubation procedures:
Marketing
Here are some suggestions to assist you with marketing.
Breeding Stock
If you start with undesirable breeders, you end up with undesirable offspring. It’s just this simple; so be cautious when selecting breeder stock from your stock or from someone else’s. The following suggestions help with selection of the best breeding stock:
If you plan to buy birds or eggs
Management of quails
1. At the age of six- weeks , female Quails usually weight ‘’ 175- 200 gms.’’ And the males weight about ‘’125-150 gm.’’
2. Females start laying eggs at 7 –weeks of age and continue upto 22-weeksof age
3. Usually egg laying happens during the evening time of the day .
4. The Quails egg usually weight about ‘’ 9 to 10 gm.,and also goes to 12gm. With properly nutrition- care.
5. The breast of the male is usually narrow , and covered with equally distribute brown and white feathers. But the female quail has a broad breast covered with brown feathers with black- dots.
6. The male and female quails should be separated at the age of 4- weeks .
7. Sixteen hours of light perday should be available to the egg laying Quails . (more…)
It is best to have your machine running for at least 1 to 2 days prior to setting your eggs. This will ensure that your temperature and humidity are exactly where they should be prior to putting the eggs in. Above is a chart showing the recommended incubation temperature and humidity for bobwhite quail eggs.
Your eggs are incubator ready, there is no need to wash the eggs.
Always have clean hands when handling the eggs as your skin produces oil and can clog the pores of the shell.
Always set your eggs with the big end up. This enables the embryo to remain oriented in a proper position for hatching.
Eggs must be turned during incubation at least 2 -4 times per day.
Do not turn eggs during the last 3 days before hatching.
The air vents should be almost fully open during the latter stages of hatching. (more…)
We have a network of farmers selling fertile eggs for hatching. We provide contacts of these suppliers to our customers as a value addition after buying an incubator. We have severally repeated that you need a KWS licence to start quail farming. Visit their offices at Keren for more details. We always advise these suppliers to sell the freshest hatching eggs that are not older than 5 days. The common breed in Kenya is Coturnix Quai. If you are supplying fertile quail eggs please leave a comment here with your contact details
COMMON NAME | LATIN NAME | INCUBATION PERIOD | CLUTCH SIZE | EGG COLOR | NOTES |
| Bobwhite | Colinus virginianus | 21-23 days | 7 to 28 | White | Circulated Air incubators: 99 3/4 degrees F; 84 to 86 degrees F wet bulb, reduce during last week of incubation. |
| California Valley Quail | Callipepla californica | 22-23 days | 10 to 14 eggs | Buff/cream with brown spots | Incubation as in Bobwhite. |
| Gambel’s Quail | Callipepla gambelii | 21-23 days | 6 to 19 eggs | Pale buff to white with moderate pink/brown spots | Lower humidity than two above species, wet bulb of 83 F; hens will lay several clutches in captivity, reports of 50 eggs per hen are not uncommon. |
| Scaled Quail | Callipepla squamata | 22-23 days | 8 to 14 eggs | Pale Buff to cream, light spotting. | Humidity: 82 to 84 degrees F wet bulb. |
| Elegant Quail | Callipepla douglasii | 22-23 days | 8 to 12 eggs | White | Humidity as in Scaled; chicks may not start eating on their own. Also known as Benson or Douglas Quail. |
| Montezuma Quail | Cyrtonyx montezuma | 24-25 days | 6 to 16 eggs | White | Keep wet bulb at 82 degrees F; chicks will need help to learn to eat. |
| Mountain Quail | Oreortyx pictus | 24-25 days | 6 to 15 | Pale buff to cream, no spotting | Wet Bulb of 82 to 84 degrees F. |
| Chinese Painted Quail | Coturnix chinensis | 16 days | 4-7 | Brown, mottled with black | Very tiny chicks, can slip through 1/2 inch hardware cloth; better known as the Button Quail. |
| Coturnix Quail | Coturnix coturnix | 16-17 days | 8 to 13 eggs in the wild; captive hens known to lay over 100 eggs in a season. | As in above species. | Also known as the Pharaoh Quail and Migratory Quail; commercially raised for meat and eggs. |
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
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 (more…)
