Poor demand is holding quail production back
FAST FACTS
Quail meat and eggs are highly nutritious, even more so than chicken products.
Despite being flighty birds, quails are relatively easy to raise in a small space.
Quails’ eggs need to be incubated, and take between 15 and 18 days to hatch.
Cape Town boxing club owner Arran Mckenzie, owner of Mckenzie Quail Farm in Atlantis, always dreamt of being self-sufficient, so he planted vegetables and bought 12 quails as part of a farming experiment to see if he could grow and raise healthy, ethically produced food for his family. “I chose quails because their meat and eggs are three to four times more nutritious than chicken meat and eggs,” Mckenzie explains.
The birds were kept in a home-made tractor, which he moved every two days to maximise their foraging. “Most of the birds came from a cage-reared background, so it was amazing to give them an opportunity to roam outside,” he
