Opening a quail farm is one of the types of business that every aspiring entrepreneur can do. Birds grow quickly, and literally after 2 months from the birth of quails, you can get 2 types of products - eggs and meat. Let's look at the features of setting up a quail farm, organizing the keeping of birds at home, and how to organize the sale of products.
Pros and cons of business
The quail business has more advantages than disadvantages. Experienced poultry farmers find the following benefits:
- quick return on investment;
- low costs;
- sufficient demand for products;
- weak competition among entrepreneurs.
Quail farms have become popular due to the fashion for natural products and proper nutrition. In addition to eggs and meat, you can raise breeding young animals, and also sell litter for fertilizer. This will become an additional source of income. Therefore, the business of raising quails is considered profitable in many countries.
Disadvantages of keeping a quail farm:
- laying hens wear out quickly, the stock must be changed every year;
- birds can die from infections.
If you minimize the risk of disease, breeding and raising quails will be much more profitable.
Arrangement of the premises
A mini-farm for quails should be located in a separate room specially designated for this purpose. For the first season, it is enough to have five thousand quails. Purchase cages for breeding and productive birds, equipment, feed, medicines.
For five thousand quails you will need at least 15-18 square meters. m. premises. The poultry house must be insulated, without drafts, with a ventilation system. Quails do not like cold and drafts, dampness and polluted air; in such conditions they grow slowly and lay poorly. All year round, the farm premises must be maintained at a temperature of 20 °C and a humidity of 60%. In winter, you should definitely heat the quail house; if it is not heated with radiators, install a wood stove or oil heaters.
Lighting is also important; daylight hours should be 18 hours. Lighting should not be bright; infrared lamps are used to raise quails, which simultaneously warm and illuminate the birds.It is recommended to purchase automatic drinkers and bunker feeders for the farm, which greatly simplify the process of feeding and watering birds and save owners time. All equipment, as well as inventory, must be purchased in advance.
You will also need a room for incubators, brooders for chicks and the devices themselves. The area of such a room is 15-20 square meters. m.
Purchase of livestock
The breeding quail stock consists of 1 cockerel and 3-4 hens. The breeding stock is renewed every year; eggs for incubation are taken only from young females. When they reach a year of life, their egg production drops by about 2 times. You can leave the females for another year or slaughter them for meat and replace them with new ones.
Young animals must be purchased from breeding farms, since the birds must be purebred. Thoroughbred birds show better performance than quails of the so-called folk selection. In the future, you can start breeding your own quails.
Staff
A quail mini-farm can be maintained by only 2-3 people. Their job will be to care for the birds, market products, maintain breeding records and record expenses and income. One family can handle keeping 0.5-1 thousand quails; there is no need to hire anyone. But with an increase in the quail population and, accordingly, work, it is no longer possible to do without it. Employee salaries should be considered expenses.
You will need to feed and care for the quails every day, without weekends or holidays, so you need to distribute responsibilities among workers so that the birds are never left unattended.
General expenses
At first, you will have to spend money on arranging a poultry house, purchasing cages and equipment, young animals and feed.How much will need to be spent on everything depends on the cost of equipment and inventory in each region.
It will be necessary to purchase drugs against major diseases for preventive treatment of livestock and for treatment. Carrying out preventive measures is mandatory, since on a farm where hundreds of birds are kept at the same time, the emergence of infections is inevitable. You also need to obtain business documents and a permit to trade products.
Business income and expenses
Let's look at the approximate costs of a quail farm for a thousand heads. When purchasing 1-week-old young animals, rather than day-old quails, you will need to spend 50 thousand rubles. (50 rubles per quail). For cells – up to 100 thousand rubles. An incubator for 300 eggs will cost 20 thousand rubles. But you can purchase a smaller incubator, which will cost less. You need to set aside 10 thousand rubles to pay for lighting and heating. In a month, a thousand quails will eat food worth 15 thousand rubles, in 10 months of their use - 150 thousand rubles.
After 2 months from the beginning of its existence, the quail farm will begin to generate income from the sale of eggs. Depending on the cost of their products, in a month you can sell, on average, 50 thousand rubles. Another 25 thousand rubles. You can earn money by selling meat. In this situation, the quail farm will begin to consistently generate profits in six months.
To decide whether it is worth growing quails, you can conduct an experiment - first get 100-200 of them and raise them in warm weather in the country. This approach has its advantages: you don’t need to spend money on heating and lighting, you can ventilate the house rather than use a ventilation system, and feed the birds fresh herbs.After the end of the season, you should calculate the expenses and income of the farm and find out whether it is worth running the business throughout the year.
Sales of products
You can sell quail eggs and meat at the market, from home, or take them to private stores and restaurants, retail chains. Documents will be required for implementation. Supplies must be arranged so that farm products are constantly available for sale.
Breeding at home
All that is required to set up a quail farm is a medium-sized utility room, which is found in any estate. It is not necessary to buy cages and equipment; you can make them yourself and thus save on it.
Raising quail on a quail farm involves producing your own quail. To do this, they purchase incubators of such a capacity that the hatched chicks can replace the old laying hens and select the best ones for the parent stock.
If you breed quail every month, you can sell them as purebred young animals, which will also bring profit. The ease of keeping quails and their small size make it possible to organize a quail farm in any private farm. Growing this bird is profitable; you can not only provide your family with quail eggs and meat, but also make a profit all year round.
