Quail Farming and its prospect at Chattogram in Bangladesh

Abstract

Quail farming is highly recognized and well established all over the world; however, it is not well known in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional study was conducted to understand the socio-economic status and the factors associated with quail farming such as perception of the farmers, requirements, challenges and prospects in Chattogram, Bangladesh. A total of 15 quail farms were surveyed in Hathazari and Rawzan upazilla, Chattogram for a period of 2 months from March to April 2018 with a pre-structured questionnaire. From the multivariate analysis, identified major variables those influencing in the profit gaining through quail farming are education, farming experience and financial support from non-government or government organization (NGO/GO). Education and profitability have been found to have exponential relations because the higher the education the better the benefit. Here found 60% farmer was secondary school certificate (SSC) passed, that means they are educated. Another significant variable was the experience of farmers, 60% of farmers started farming 2015-2018 with 9 years of farming experience with a net profit >150 thousand BDT and rest 40% 2010-2014 with 4 year experience with a net profit <150 thousand BDT. Notably, 73.3% of farmers did not get any support from NGO/GO and 26.7% farmers got help which also has a positive correlation with their profit. Within the study, the identified requirements for farmers are specific feed formulation 46.6%, training 26.7% and veterinary health care 26.7%. Farmers reported challenges in quail farming are poor marketing facilities (53.3%), higher chick mortality (33.3%) and unavailability of incubator (13.4%) to hatch eggs. Furthermore, about 60% of farmers made a general agreement with the possibility to expand this farming as agro-industry. To sum up, though low investment requirement, short generation gap per batch and early marketing are attracting the farmers to go for quail farming, and the challenges mentioned above highly restrict this enormous profitable field.