FEATURE - Singapore bird farm booms as world turns to colourful pets
Date: 19-Jun-00
Country: SINGAPORE
Author: Nao Nakanishi
Quek runs one of the world's few commercial bird farms, breeding more than 1,000
birds a year of more than 150 rare and exotic species, including pigeons,
parakeets, pheasants and even chickens, for export to countries in Asia, Europe
and America.
The practising medical doctor is riding a wave of politically-correct exotic bird
ownership, where people would rather keep an elegant pheasant or two strolling in
the garden, than trapped in cages.
"The demand is growing. But there's a limit to what we can produce," he told
Reuters at his 3.8-hectare (9.4-acre) farm in northern Singapore which houses
several thousand squawking birds.
His farm, Avifauna Breeding & Research Pte Ltd, now enjoys an annual turnover of
about S$800,000.
NOISY BIRD HAVEN
Surrounded by a tract of rainforest, the farm has specially designed half-open
breeding houses vibrant with cacophonous birdcalls and greener for the birds.
The birds, many registered as endangered species with the Convention of
International Trade on Endangered Species, are shielded from tropical rain, the
scorching sun, humans and their natural enemies such as cats or snakes.
"You can be sure my birds are not diseased, traumatised or stressed the way wild
birds can be," Quek said.
"Snakes cannot get into the houses. The birds cannot even see them even if they
came close...They are also tame, trained."
Quek's fancy birds do not come cheap. Prices range from more than S$100 ($57.80)
to more than S$1,000.
"This little thing is worth S$100," he said of a two-day old pheasant, still grey
and featherless with closed eyes.
"We breed only high-value birds. Otherwise you cannot make business," he says.
Some 10 staff - including his wife Alice from Indonesia - look after the bird
menagerie, which has about 100 newborns that demand much attention.
One of Alice's charges, a baby parrot, trotted out of an incubator in one of the
nurseries, gawking curiously at a photographer's camera.
"(African) grey parrots are the smartest," she said. "They know how to open the
door. The glass doors are dirty because they are now learning how to eat (by)
themselves."
During the first three months of their life, the birds are hand-fed every few
hours with Quek's own secret formula.
When eggs are laid, they are separated immediately from the birds to prevent
accidental or deliberate damage by th parent birds. This also means that Quek
collects eggs as often as 10 times a year from each bird couple, instead of only
once a year in the wild.
RAINBOW-HUED DIVERSITY
In selecting and matching birds for breeding, Quek uses an endoscope - an
instrument for examining internal organs - to examine the sex, age and the health
of each bird.
"If you put a young female to an old male, the young one will kill the old one,"
Quek said, moving about in one of his 18 breeding houses filled with nestling
boxes for Indonesian lories - parrots of mostly bright red and purple with yellow
beaks.
Quek's lovebirds, small parrots from Africa, come in every conceivable
combination of yellow, green, orange, blue, grey, red, olive and cream, although
their original colours were green and orange. He breeds birds that have acquired
unusual colours through mutations and thus fetch sky-high prices.
Also prized are a breed of rare Asian pigeons that sport green and blue bodies
and purple heads.
Quek's love for birds goes back to his childhood - he was born in 1946 - when he
bred budgies.
To meet requests from friends in Europe in the 1970s, he travelled to remote
Indonesian islands hunting for certain types of tropical birds. He then began
trading birds as a hobby.
"We bought birds from trappers. Our job was to handle birds well. In the hands of
middlemen, birds suffered. They went through stress," Quek said.
The business has since developed as an increasing number of species have come
under national or international protection, prompted by a
