Nearly going bust during MCO, Siti Noor Hasmah takes off with quails

PADANG BESAR: Nearing the end of her business in the crushing Covid-19 pandemic that hit the world two years ago, former printing shop operator Siti Noor Hasmah Mohd Baharuddin, 29, who switched to a quail breeding, is now dreaming of marketing her products internationally.

The mother of two said she chose to switch to quail farming from November 2020 after the family printing shop was hardly minting any money for a living when the country enforced the Movement Control Order (MCO) in stages from March 2020 to December 2021.

“At that time, I and four siblings in my family were desperately scouring for an idea to save the family enterprise but then we also started raising quails on a small scale with a capital of RM8,000 and built our own coop behind our house in Felda Mata Ayer,“ Siti Noor Hasmah, who eventually became the founder of Puyuh Kayangan Enterprise, told Bernama today.

With the printing shop closed, she embarked on her new enterprise by raising 4,000 quails and now Siti Noor Hasmah managed to produce 4,000 quails for sale in a month.

She said besides that, her farm also produces 1,500 seed eggs and 2,000 quail chicks.

She said apart from raising quail, she also produced marinated quail products for markets around Perlis, Kedah and Penang.

“In the future, we aspire to spread our wings to the Singapore market as the demand for quail meat there is high,“ she mused.

Meanwhile, the big picture comes from Perlis Veterinary Services Department (JPV) director Dr Adam Abdullah who explained that the quail breeding industry in the state had tripled in six years starting from 2015.

“The production of quails in Perlis in 2015 was 17,000 birds and it increased to 50,089 birds in 2021,“ he said.

He attributed the uptrend to the National Agro-Food Policy, whereby Perlis received an incentive of RM125,000 to stimulate activities to develop the quail industry in the state.

“The development of the industry is in terms of the distribution of quail chicks, egg hatcheries for breeding, upgrading of coops and the development of young quail Agropreneurs consisting of youths,“ he said.

He said as a result of the policy and enterprising efforts of pioneers, the number of quail breeders in the state has increased from eight to 24 farms for the period 2015 to 2021.-Bernama

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