Quail meat and eggs open new opportunities for Rockspring Farms
Published:Monday | July 6, 2020 | 12:16 AM
Lured by the high-end demand for quail meat and eggs, Rockspring Farms has put in a batch of quail, a small, ground-nesting game bird in the pheasant family, which it hopes will find favour locally.
Quail eggs are sought after in many parts of the world, including Asia, Europe, and North America. In Japanese cuisine, they are sometimes used raw or cooked as tamago in sushi and often found in Bento lunch boxes.
They are rapidly gaining traction in cooking as a tiny and cute alternative to chicken eggs. They taste remarkably like chicken eggs but are small – typically just one-third the size of a standard chicken egg. They have cream-coloured shells with brown splotches and deep-yellow yolks.
Rockspring Farm is hopeful that its experimentation with this small bird will provide a major windfall.
NICHE MARKET
“We have done some research and found that it’s a niche market. So these are three- to four-week-old quail. We got the eggs, incubated them, and started with this, the first set. We hope to market them in packages of three quails, and we realise, also, that quail egg is expensive.
“So there is a market for quail, duck, and turkey, and we are aiming to do quail and duck. We aim to do a batch of processed pork products. Last Christmas, we did hams, so this Christmas, we are aiming to do ham, smoked pork loin, and smoked pork chops and some sausages. We’re trained by Scientific Research Council, so we are looking to use their facility there. It’s part of our drive; wherever we can find a niche market, we want to go for it.” Myers said.
To place your order, contact Rockspring Farms at rockspringspig@gmail.com, or check out their Instagram or Facebook page.