Besides having Vietnam's largest quail flock, Phạm Văn Thịnh of Hố Nai Ward, Biên Hòa City, Đồng Nai, is pursuing his ambition to build a clean quail-egg canning factory, a bold project no one has undertaken before.
We visited Phạm Văn Thịnh's home as spring quietly approached. Thịnh sat “immersed” among millions of quail eggs alongside many workers. On each of these days leading up to Tết, Thịnh supplies the market with 6 million quail eggs, 4 times the normal daily volume.
Phạm Văn Thịnh
Only after bankruptcy… building climate-controlled housing
I have known the Hố Nai quail-farming village since its early days around 30 years ago. Back then, only a few households raised quail, with just a few hundred birds per household. They raised them right inside their homes, eating and sleeping alongside them. The smell of quail droppings was everywhere. To hatch chicks, they put eggs into burlap sacks and warmed them with oil lamps; there were no industrial incubators like today.
Thịnh's family was among the first quail-farming households in Hố Nai's quail village, starting with 700 birds. Each day, Thịnh and his siblings took turns washing water troughs, mixing feed, feeding the quail, collecting eggs… Day after day, the family lived entirely on income from quail.
About 10 years ago, an epidemic swept through the quail-farming village, leaving many farmers with nothing. “My farm, with thousands of laying quail and eggs, was wiped out, costing me a billion VND. That was not all: I was also a poultry feed dealer. Many quail farmers hit by the epidemic could not pay their feed debts to my family. I was nearly bankrupt, with debts of about ten billion VND. The shock almost crushed my family and me; we thought we would never recover…” Thịnh confided.
Thịnh said that the outbreak taught him that the main reasons quails frequently fell ill and contracted epidemics were inadequately enclosed housing, poor control of people entering and leaving the farm, unsafe water and other environmental hygiene issues… Gathering his remaining capital, he decided to invest in planning and building quail farms based on a closed industrial farming model. He now has 4 quail farms with more than 200.000 birds raised entirely in cooled buildings with a ventilation system that completely eliminates odors. The farm also has its own drinking-water filtration system for the quails and fishponds to treat livestock waste. Visitors must pass through a disinfection system before entering.
Using a professional farming system keeps female quail healthy and disease-free, with high egg-laying rates. Their eggs are consistently uniform in size, color and quality, free of antibiotics and disinfected through an ozone system before leaving the warehouse. “I obtain health-check documents and test samples from the flock every month to ensure clean quail eggs and give consumers peace of mind,” Thịnh shared.
Helping clean quail eggs soar
Previously, Thịnh and his siblings had to wash each quail drinking tray, collect every egg and scoop up manure daily. These tasks are now automated. Remarkably, Thịnh invented the system himself. At set times, the conveyor starts and carries eggs or manure out, leaving workers only to load trays and take them to the collection station. Thịnh says he now sells more than 200 million clean quail eggs domestically and exports more than 3 million to Japan each year. “Japanese importers inspect and assess quality and antibiotic residues very strictly, so selling to them requires standardized farming processes and eggs free of antibiotics,” he said.
After we watched workers sort eggs and pack trays, Thịnh took us to see his “legacy project.” The young farmer’s short, stocky figure radiated a willingness to think and act boldly. Perhaps no other quail farmer in Hố Nai village dared to make such breakthroughs to help quail “fly higher and farther” and develop the craft village steadily and sustainably. Thịnh stopped before a plot of about 300 m2, where a well-organized factory had arisen. He said this was a VND 5 billion closed-loop clean quail egg canning factory using modern Japanese technology, set to start in 2017. Eggs entering the factory would be washed, steamed, shelled, and canned entirely automatically.
To create a supply of clean quail eggs sufficient for the canning factory, Thịnh said he would continue upgrading 4 climate-controlled quail farms. These 4 farms would be almost 100% automated, while the number of laying quails would rise to 500,000 in 2017. Thịnh would then supply the market with 400 million clean quail eggs each year.
Before implementing this project, Thịnh surveyed the market and meal portions at local industrial parks and kindergartens. He found that quail eggs formed a substantial part of children's and workers' daily meals.
I told Thịnh that Đồng Nai's total quail population was now down more than 50% from the same period last year, to fewer than 4 million birds. Farmers had been leaving quail farming throughout the past year, and quite a few now had to sell off their cages and facilities cheaply and switch occupations because of continuous losses. This was because quail egg prices had fallen for a long time and remained quite low, while animal feed prices had kept rising since the start of the year. Investing in a quail farm at this point was essentially a high-risk investment. Hearing this, Thịnh smiled: ‘The main reason farmers abandon their flocks is the spontaneous rush into quail farming when profits are high. I do not follow trends. My investments have always been carefully planned and sustainable, with established buyers. Every day, I can tell whether I am making a profit or a loss. I am not afraid of failure…’
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