RAISING QUAIL BIRDS FOR PROFIT.

RAISING QUAIL BIRDS FOR PROFIT. Quail birds are small sized birds that lay small sized tinted eggs but are packed with vitamins. The sizes of the birds make it easy to manage, and their life cycle also encourages rearing in-house or out in the barn. The most common species are the Bob white quail and the Japanese quail; Coturnix japonlca. The quails have some advantages over the chicken; 1) the female quail begin to lay at 6 weeks and this continues for a year.2)They require minimal space for raising; the requirement is about 2 birds per square metre. 3) The quails are efficient feed converters; each quail egg is about 8% of the weight, while the chicken gives 3% of her weight. 4) They can also be slaughtered at 6 weeks. QUAIL MANAGEMENT. Males and females are raised to produce fertile eggs, which is a ratio-of 2 females to one male. It’s important to maintain this ratio because more males exposed to caged females will result in one male dominating, and pecking and injuring the other males. The ideal method is to have 1 male +2 females in a cage, and within 24 hours the egg produced is fertile and fertility is maintained for 3 weeks even after the male has been removed.(Woodward et al 73).The quails don’t sit on their eggs, so eggs collected are set in the incubator. The eggs hatch in 16 days.