Quail may soon be added to T&T’s cui­sine.

The Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus used its re­cent cel­e­bra­tion of Eat Lo­cal Day to launch the In­ten­sive Quail Pro­duc­tion Unit.

The launch, held at the Uni­ver­si­ty’s Field Sta­tion in Val­sayn, saw mem­bers of the pub­lic be­ing ed­u­cat­ed about quail pro­duc­tion and the ben­e­fits of rear­ing the bird, both for do­mes­tic and com­mer­cial use.

Pro­fes­sor Wayne Gan­pat, Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture, not­ed that there is a grow­ing de­mand for lo­cal food.

“But can we feed them? Not on­ly are we giv­ing peo­ple an al­ter­na­tive to chick­en but it is al­so ide­al for en­tre­pre­neurs who want to get in­to food pro­duc­tion and get fast re­turns,” Gan­pat said.

“This, in turn, con­tributes to food se­cu­ri­ty at the house­hold lev­el; for fam­i­lies who don’t have reg­u­lar ac­cess or can­not af­ford oth­er sources of pro­tein,” Gan­pat said.

The idea was born a cou­ple months ago when he vis­it­ed the Ba­hamas and got a first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the many pos­si­bil­i­ties from quail rear­ing.

“It was, in fact, a banker who was rear­ing quail and he was even think­ing about leav­ing his full-time job to go in­to this ven­ture,” Gan­pat said.

“He showed me how easy it was to rear the birds us­ing sim­ple wire mesh­ing cages,” he ex­plained.

Not­ing that the pro­duc­tion sys­tem is one which al­so does not re­quire much space, Gan­pat said that the birds can be raised in rooms or around the home.

“You need about a one me­tre square for the cage-type sys­tem which will ac­com­mo­date about 100 birds. Lay­ing birds will re­quire a lit­tle more space,” he said.

“En­ter­prise can be scaled up quick­ly; 100 birds could move to 1,000 birds in one year or less re­sult­ing in in­creased rev­enues. Af­ter the ini­tial in­vest­ment is paid off, then rev­enue in­creas­es and prof­its will in­crease,” Gan­pat sad.

He said this ven­ture can be done part time as care of 100 birds will re­quire about one hour of ca­su­al work per day.

How­ev­er, 1,000 birds will re­quire a lit­tle more time.

“The birds are raised on broil­er feed most­ly with ad­di­tion of lo­cal for­ages. No ad­di­tives or an­tibi­otics are nec­es­sary mak­ing it a health­i­er choice of meat.”

He said if the coun­try is to tru­ly car­ry out its di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion plan it must recog­nise that agri­cul­ture plays an im­por­tant role.

“We are giv­ing quail rear­ing as op­tion for young en­tre­pre­neurs es­pe­cial­ly. There are end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties in agri­cul­ture and we need to of­fer these op­tions to them,” Gan­pat added.

Quail pos­si­bil­i­ties

Agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­mist Omar­dath Ma­haraj said amidst the ef­forts of the UWI to sus­tain­ably and con­sis­tent­ly ed­u­cate the na­tion­al

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taste bud about where their food comes from and how it is pro­duced, the sce­nario has changed from pro­mot­ing de­mand for lo­cal food to re­quir­ing ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tions of the sup­ply ca­pac­i­ty of T&T’s lo­cal food sys­tems to sus­tain 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple.

“With the fad­ing and out­right dis­ap­pear­ance of the eco­nom­i­cal­ly and so­cial­ly im­por­tant rice, sug­ar, cit­rus, co­coa and cof­fee in­dus­tries; the miss­ing link in the on-go­ing na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion is an un­der­stand­ing of the true an­nu­al con­tri­bu­tion of the lo­cal food and agri­cul­ture sec­tor,” Ma­haraj said.

“This con­tri­bu­tion far ex­ceeds the lim­it­ed con­tri­bu­tion to GDP sta­tis­tic, out­side of es­ti­mates of com­mod­i­ty vol­umes trad­ed at some of the Namde­v­co whole­sale mar­kets and the nar­row pump­kin and bha­ji rhetoric that masks the prob­lems as­so­ci­at­ed with the fu­ture of our food es­pe­cial­ly pol­i­cy and in­vest­ment,” he said.

He not­ed that quail meat is rich in mi­cronu­tri­ents and a wide range of vi­t­a­mins, adding that it is there­fore rec­om­mend­ed for peo­ple with high cho­les­terol lev­els and in­di­vid­u­als who may want to main­tain a low lev­el of cho­les­terol.

“Re­search has re­vealed that, quail eggs are health­i­er than oth­er eggs for hu­man con­sump­tion. Un­like chick­en eggs, quail eggs can be con­sumed by se­nior cit­i­zens be­cause they are rich in choline (a chem­i­cal es­sen­tial for brain func­tion) and they have low cho­les­terol val­ue,” Ma­haraj said.

“Oth­er wider ben­e­fits as­so­ci­at­ed with the in­take of quail eggs in­clude: treat­ment of anaemia, re­moval of tox­ins and heavy met­als from the blood and strength­en­ing of the im­mune sys­tem as well as heart mus­cle,” he ex­plained.

He said there is cur­rent­ly a lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty for quail meat lo­cal­ly which can be on­ly bought in cer­tain su­per­mar­kets and spe­cial­i­ty shops.

“Al­though the typ­i­cal con­sumer may per­ceive the en­try of this food source as nov­el, our evolv­ing food­ie cul­ture or broad­er mi­grant pop­u­la­tion in T&T may in fact be in­creas­ing and in­flu­enc­ing de­mand where re­sources are al­ready scarce but pop­u­la­tion de­mo­graph­ic changes, cli­mate change and di­et change,” Ma­haraj said.
“All this prompts us to con­tin­u­ous­ly re­think our per­cep­tion of food and agri­cul­ture. We must al­so reach the un­der­stand­ing that the sec­tor can on­ly move for­ward through open con­sul­ta­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and co-or­di­na­tion,” he ad­vised.

He added that the Fac­ul­ty of Food and Agri­cul­ture com­mits to work­ing with the wider food pro­duc­tion sec­tor, farm­ers and new en­tre­pre­neurs seek­ing to en­gage in quail pro­duc­tion and oth­er forms of food pro­duc­tion, mar­keters in its pro­mo­tion, and all oth­er stake­hold­ers in the agri-food val­ue chain lo­cal­ly.

SIDE­BAR

ES­TI­MAT­ED COST FOR START-UP QUAIL PRO­DUC­TION

PRO­VID­ED BY UWI

Japan­ese Quail, al­so known as Co­turnix

Es­ti­mat­ed start-up cost for a 100 head pro­duc­tion unit.

Deep lit­ter unit =$2200 (pre­ferred for lay­ing of fer­tile eggs)

In­ten­sive bat­tery cage sys­tem = $4500 (for meat and in­fer­tile eggs)

Cost of bird

Chicks two weeks old chicks $20- $25 each

Eco­nom­ic life span and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

Meat birds will be ready in – 16-20 weeks and will have an av­er­age weight of 4-5 ounces (0.25-0.3lbs) of meat /bird

Lay­ing birds – 2-21/2 years – 200-250 eggs /bird/ year

Av­er­age Cost of feed to pro­duce 100 birds

$3200 in feed and oth­er costs for meat birds (16 weeks)

Egg birds will lay for 21/2 years and will cost $7,000 per year

Sale of prod­uct

Meat—$125/lb (whole­sale) (about 4 birds per lb.

Eggs—$15/dozen (whole­sale)

Es­ti­mat­ed rev­enue per pro­duc­tion unit at 100 heads

Eggs—$25,000 in rev­enue / year

Meat—11,600/ year

Fig­ures are based on the cur­rent mar­ket prices in Trinidad and were ver­i­fied with lo­cal quail farm­ers