Jorhat, March 3: The Assam Agricultural University (AAU) is recommending a new ingredient in farmers' diet to increase the nutrition quotient - quail meat and egg.

According to AAU scientists, quail meat has less than one-third the cholesterol content of chicken and three times more vitamin A, making it a good diet option.

The Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Jorhat, based at Kaliapani in Teok, Jorhat district, is advocating the consumption of domestic quails to nearby villages as part of nutritional security and has even created a cheap incubator so the eggs can be hatched.

Rupam Borgohain, scientist and in-charge of the Kendra, said the Supreme Court had banned rearing of the bird under the Wildlife Protection Act but the ban was lifted in 2012. Now, farming can be done after obtaining permission from the chief wildlife warden of the state, he added.

'Even the chicken was once a wild fowl but after it was bred for decades, it is considered a domestic bird, which can be reared on a commercial basis. The domestic breed of quails, which we are promoting, is known as the Japanese quail. Though the ban was lifted by the Supreme Court in 2012, the codicil that the permission of the state chief wildlife warden would be required stands as a hindrance,' Borgohain said.

In remote areas, children of farmers are deprived of nutritious food, so the quail egg would help them get the essential vitamin A and that is why we have asked the farmers to rear about 60-70 of them for consumption at home, he added.

The scientist said it was much easier to rear a quail as it took only about 40 days to reach maturity and was disease-free compared to the regular chicken. Further, 1kg of live quail yielded 700gm of meat, whereas a kg of live chicken yielded 600gm of meat, Borgohain said.

'We call the egg of the domestic quail a vitamin bomb as it is loaded with 300mg vitamin A compared to 100mg in a normal egg. The protein content is also slightly more at 13.23mg to 12.80mg in hen egg. The fat content in a quail egg is also less at 10.83mg compared to the hen's egg, which has 11.50mg fat. Quail meat has 57 per cent cholesterol whereas the meat of chicken has 183 per cent cholesterol. Only calcium content in a hen's egg is more at 20mg to the quail egg at 7.31mg,' he said.

Borgohain said another issue in the breeding of domestic quails is that once they get domesticated, they are no longer interested in hatching eggs. To solve this problem, we have made a cheap incubator, which can be powered by kerosene oil and will aid the farmer to hatch eggs, he added.

The requirement for hatching a quail egg is to provide 37 degrees Celsius for 18 days and keep it at a relative humidity of 80 per cent.