Shameer P’s quail story is about his growing up. Much before high school, he bought quail eggs from Mukkam market and sold them for an egg a rupee at school. “I have heard other children call me kaada (Malayalam for quail),” says the 24-year-old matter-of-factly.
Quails have shaped Shameer’s life and livelihood since class VII when he reared a quail among 25 hens.
When other children scrambled to finish homework, Shameer tended to his quail. Ten years after his first quail, Shameer has thousands of them in his five farms. Each farm is segregated and caters to different markets; if one houses the parent birds and hatchery, another supplies egg, while the third contributes the meat. Quails are a means of livelihood not just for him, but for many others who work for him now.
Shameer and his 24-year-old cousin Faisal drive through the rubber plantations of Anayamkunnu in their Toyota Innova and we follow. As we reach farmer and friend Johny’s house, the quiet plantation air is broken with the cackle of quails. “I have taken the land on lease. Johny is a friend who has pitched in, even financially, for this farm,” says Shameer. The quail farm is Shameer’s baby, but many helped him make it. Coming from a family where no one had ever tried bird farming, learning was through experience. He first hatched birds in the backyard of his ancestral home. “The first batch of 54 quails I hatched with a home-made incubator was eaten up by cats,” recalls Shameer.
Support from experts
Yet the boy’s resolve impressed many. When he attempted to hatch quail eggs, Mina Kumar of the Regional Poultry Centre, guided him to make his incubator with plywood.
Whenever he fretted over the correct proportion of feed for his birds, Dr Abdul Muneer, assistant professor at the veterinary college Wayanad, pitched in. Now as the quail farm has grown with clients across Kerala, his cousin Faisal, a post graduate in Commerce, takes care of the accounts. The Karassery panchayat recently honoured Shameer with the Yuva Karshakan Award (Young Farmer Award).
“Wherever I go, I tell people I am not well-educated, I am, in fact, a class 10 pass. I am not savvy on the internet or Facebook,” he says. His lessons come from outside the text books. “I know my quails well. I know their behaviour, the exact amount of food they need and if something is wrong, I am the first to know,” he says.
It helps that the farm-bred Japanese quails are relatively unfussy birds. Diseases are few, maintenance easy. They are happy as long as they get their feed and water. Unlike the hen, quails start laying eggs in 45 days.
“There are six sheds here and each has two units. In each unit, I house 600 females and 200 males. On an average, I get 500 eggs from each unit. Unlike the hen, the quail lays its egg late afternoon,” explains Shameer.
Chores, though, begin in the morning. “Everyday, we have to till the soil in each unit and then supply water and feed. If the soil is not tilled well or if the birds are shifted, it affects their egg-laying,” he adds.
The eggs are shifted to the hatchery equipped with sophisticated machines. Shameer opens the door and inside are neatly stacked egg trays with the dates neatly marked on each of them. “The eggs hatch in 18 days and the person employed here works in shifts. The hatchery needs constant power supply,” says Shameer.
Once the birds are born, he sells them each for Rs. 6.50 and those buying it range from agents and shopkeepers to Kudumbashree women and homemakers.
Quail meat and eggs, says Shameer, are particularly popular in Malappuram where street food is a star. “We even got orders for a couple of weddings,” he adds. Immersed among quails as he is, Shameer has worked out his own brand of quail feed — SPA. “Quail feed is merely maize and soya. But the art is in getting the proportion right. When I banked on feed bought from outside, there would be some shortage or other. I began by hiring a mill to make my own feed. Now I bought one to make it.”
What drives Shameer is the passion with which he began. “I am at the farm till noon everyday. There are people to help, yet if I don’t step in, I am not satisfied.”
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Sweet fruits of labour
Nikhil Anthony has made pineapple cultivation his calling
The patch of sky gets harder to see as we follow Nikhil Anthony’s Toyota Innova up and down the winding rubber plantations of Engapuzha. And then, the 29-year-old farmer parks by the side, gets down and begins to walk. We follow into a sudden burst of sunshine and cloudless, powdery blue sky. At the edge of miles of rubber, is a small hill; 30 acres, says Nikhil, taken on lease and packed tight with bushy pineapple plants.
Getting into farming
Nikhil has been into pineapple cultivation for the past 10 years. It was something his father began and he stoically took it forward after his father’s death. “Even when he was around, I used to come here regularly and watch the work in progress,” says Nikhil. Agriculture, for him, is a passion. “One cannot do a job if your heart is not in it, isn’t it?” he asks. His decision to stick to farming after graduating in Commerce was wholeheartedly welcomed by family. While his elder brother settled in London, Nikhil chose home and family business. Now, he has pineapple farms in Thamarassery, Thiruvambady, Perinthalmanna and Mangalore and he spends at least two days a week in most of them.
Pineapple cultivation, says Nikhil, is now popular in the Malabar. “South Kerala has been cultivating it for a long time now.” The once-a-year crop requires labour round the year, especially if the fields are large. “In this farm, I have about 25 people working through the year. Earlier, all our labourers were from the region. Now, I have people from other States too.”
After harvest, planting for the new season began in March, says Nikhil. “We get the area cleared, make mud pathways and nourish it with cow dung, compost and waste of hens.” Once the land is ready, planting takes over. “There are specialists who do the job and they freelance for the farms. It requires expertise to correctly plant two saplings one-and-a-half feet apart on a single mud pathway. Each pathway has two rows of plants,” explains Nikhil. It takes almost a year for the fruits to reach full growth. In this farm spread over 30 acres, he says there would be around three lakh plants. “For the markets that are far away, we cut the pineapples when they are still green and they ripen on their journey to the market which may take 5-6 days,” he says. Apart from the domestic market and a wholesale shop he runs, Nikhil’s pineapples also find their way to Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat and other markets. With those he takes home, the family has their heart’s fill and spare some for jams.
With agriculture, slumps are part of the job, says Nikhil. “Every year, there will be a dull period. From December to January, when it is winter up North, the business dips. Last year for instance, a kilo of the fruit at its best came for Rs. 40, these days it is around Rs. 14. But when one has multiple gardens, one manages to keep it going.” For the yield that happens once a year, labourers have to be paid round the year. “Whenever it is necessary, I take loans.” It also helps those like Nikhil that they grow other crops such as rubber and areca. But the high for him is the contentment. “The image that stays is that of the trucks loaded with pineapples driving away from my farm.”
