1 April 2022
A new quail breed, Uglich, has been developed in Yaroslavl Region. The birds are smaller than other quail and consume 30% less feed. At the same time, they have high egg production of around 300 eggs per year, 7–8% more than other breeds.
These results were achieved through selective breeding by specialists at Uglich Poultry Farm JSC, a second-tier quail breeding farm. The enterprise plans to obtain a patent for the new breed from the Russian Ministry of Agriculture in the near future.
“At the beginning of 2022, the farm had 1.41 million birds, more than half of them laying birds,” said Valentina Shishina, deputy director of the Yaroslavl Region Department of the Agro-Industrial Complex and Consumer Market. “Last year, the farm produced 164.1 million eggs and sold more than a thousand tonnes of poultry meat in live weight.”
Selective breeding is one of the enterprise’s key activities. In 2020, it began developing a separate site for its breeding operation, which will supply young quail both to its own production facilities and to farms and private keepers.
“Sanctions are passing us by because we have our own breeding and genetics service,” said the farm’s general director, Ruslan Bushuyev. “In addition to the Uglich laying breed, we have developed our own meat breed, Pharaoh. In other words, we are fully self-sufficient in parent flocks of both meat and laying breeds and can even sell breeding eggs.”
Uglich Poultry Farm is one of Russia’s oldest and, according to the Russian Poultry Union, the largest in Russia and Europe.
Since January 2008, the enterprise has been entirely dedicated to quail production. It uses equipment manufactured using Japanese technology for the full production cycle, from obtaining hatching eggs to slaughtering birds and packaging products.