Myanmar Quail Feed Ring Die Pellet Mill Case Study — Hongyang HYPM Series & Custom Ring Die Engineering

Executive Summary

The quail farming subsector in Myanmar has expanded substantially over the past half-decade, driven by rising domestic demand for quail eggs and meat across Yangon, Mandalay, and the Ayeyarwady Delta. A significant share of small and medium-sized quail operations, however, continues to rely on mash-type rations — a feeding method that carries inherent drawbacks: ingredient segregation during transport, elevated dust levels that irritate birds’ respiratory systems, and selective feeding behavior that undermines nutritional uniformity. This case study documents the experience of a 60,000-bird quail layer cooperative in Bago Region that replaced its mash-based feeding program with a pelletized system built around the Hongyang HYPM series ring die pellet mill and a custom-engineered ring die. Twelve months of production data are analyzed to assess pellet quality, feed efficiency, bird performance, and operational stability.

1. Myanmar’s Quail Sector and the Pellet Gap

Myanmar’s poultry industry has historically centered on broiler and layer chickens, yet quail farming — particularly Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) raised for egg production — has emerged as a fast-growing niche. Government data compiled by the Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department indicate that the national quail population surpassed 8 million birds in 2025, with Bago Region, the Yangon periphery, and Sagaing accounting for over 60% of holdings. Most operations are structured as cooperatives or contract-growing networks that aggregate feed procurement, veterinary services, and market access for individual smallholders.

Despite this growth, feed technology adoption lags. A 2024 survey conducted by Myanmar’s Livestock Federation found that roughly 70% of quail egg producers still administered mash diets, compared to fewer than 30% using crumbles or pellets. The reasons were partly economic — pellet mills represent a capital outlay — and partly a knowledge gap regarding the production benefits that pelleting can deliver for a bird as small and metabolically sensitive as the quail.

2. The Cooperative’s Starting Condition

The subject cooperative, located 90 km northeast of Yangon in Bago Region, operates at a scale of approximately 60,000 laying quail housed across six open-sided sheds with tunnel ventilation. Prior to the equipment upgrade, the cooperative sourced a corn-soybean meal concentrate from a nearby commercial feed mill and mixed it on-site with locally procured rice bran and limestone, administering the finished ration as a dry mash.

Baseline metrics collected over a six-month pre-upgrade period revealed the following:

Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR): 2.85 kg feed per kg of eggs produced (weighted average across six sheds). Daily Feed Intake per bird: 26.5 g, with estimated spillage and dust loss of approximately 8–10% between mixing troughs and feeding trays. Hen-Day Egg Production: 82.3% (mean across sheds; best-performing shed at 85.1%, weakest at 78.6%). Mortality: 1.9% per 28-day production cycle, with respiratory issues accounting for a notable share of culls.

Cooperative management identified three pain points: excessive feed wastage at the point of feeding, inconsistent nutrient intake because birds selectively picked larger particles and left fine powder behind, and periodic dust-induced respiratory flare-ups during the dry season (November–February).

3. The Decision Pathway

After evaluating proposals from three equipment suppliers, the cooperative selected a Hongyang HYPM series ring die pellet mill rated at 3–5 tonnes per hour — a scale aligned with the cooperative’s throughput, which hovers around 3.2 tonnes per day. The decision rested on several considerations:

1. Local reference installations. Hongyang had commissioned a HYPM unit at a Yangon-based layer feed mill 14 months earlier; cooperative representatives visited the site and observed steady-state operation.

2. Ring die customization capability. Quail feed requires a finished pellet diameter between 1.5 mm and 2.5 mm — substantially smaller than the 3–5 mm pellets used for broilers and layers. Hongyang’s engineering team offered a purpose-built ring die with the appropriate hole diameter, compression ratio, and metallurgy for this application.

3. After-sales proximity. A Hongyang-trained technician based in Yangon was able to supervise installation and conduct the first scheduled maintenance cycle on-site.

4. Ring Die Engineering for Quail Feed

The ring die represents the heart of any pellet mill, and its design parameters directly govern pellet quality, throughput rate, and energy consumption per tonne. For this quail feed application, Hongyang supplied a ring die configured to the following specifications:

Die material: 20CrMnTi alloy steel, carburized and vacuum-quenched. Surface hardness: HRC 58–62. Hole diameter: 2.0 mm. Effective compression ratio (L/D): 1:8.5. Die working width: 140 mm. Relief configuration: Tapered inlet with cylindrical relief, 3-stage counterbore. Post-processing: Multi-stage polishing to Ra ≤ 0.8 µm inner hole roughness.

Why these choices matter. The 1:8.5 compression ratio is deliberately conservative for a high-fiber quail layer ration (crude fiber ≈ 4.2%) to avoid excessive die friction and heat generation, which can degrade heat-labile vitamins and synthetic amino acids. The 20CrMnTi alloy with vacuum quenching yields a martensitic surface layer that is both wear-resistant and dimensionally stable under the thermal cycling typical of daily start-stop operations. The three-stage counterbore relief reduces back-pressure at the die exit, lowering specific energy consumption while maintaining pellet integrity. Hole diameter tolerance is held to ±0.05 mm, ensuring that each of the 1,400+ die holes produces pellets within a tight size band — a factor that matters when feeding a bird with a beak width of only a few millimeters.

5. Production Ramp-Up and Steady-State Performance

Installation was completed over a five-day window during a scheduled production pause. The pellet mill was integrated downstream of an existing ribbon mixer and upstream of a counterflow cooler, forming a continuous pelleting line. Conditioning temperature was stabilized at 78–82°C with a residence time of 45–50 seconds, using dry saturated steam at 2.5 bar — parameters arrived at through a structured commissioning protocol that involved incremental adjustments over 14 batches.

The cooperative transitioned all six sheds to pelleted feed over a three-week period to allow birds to adapt gradually. Post-transition data were collected from month 4 through month 12, once the system had reached steady state and bird cohorts had fully acclimated:

FCR (kg feed / kg eggs): 2.85 pre-upgrade vs 2.47 post-upgrade, a reduction of 13.3%. Daily feed intake (g/bird): 26.5 pre-upgrade vs 24.8 post-upgrade, a reduction of 6.4%. Feed wastage (% of delivered feed): 8–10% pre-upgrade vs less than 2% post-upgrade, an approximate 80% reduction. Hen-day egg production: 82.3% pre-upgrade vs 86.9% post-upgrade, an increase of 4.6 percentage points. Pellet Durability Index (PDI): 96.8% post-upgrade (not applicable pre-upgrade). Pellet hardness: 1.2–1.5 kg post-upgrade (not applicable pre-upgrade). Mortality per cycle: 1.9% pre-upgrade vs 1.3% post-upgrade, a reduction of 0.6 percentage points. Electricity: 14.8 kWh/tonne pellet post-upgrade (not applicable pre-upgrade).

The PDI value of 96.8%, measured quarterly using a Holmen tester, indicates strong pellet integrity through conveying, bin storage, and auger distribution. The fines fraction — material passing a 1.0 mm sieve — remained consistently below 1.5% of total throughput, which cooperative staff attributed to the uniform hole geometry and polished inner surfaces of the Hongyang ring die.

6. Tangible Outcomes for the Cooperative

Beyond the numerical gains, several operational changes became apparent during supervisory visits and farmer interviews conducted over the post-upgrade period:

Feeding behavior uniformity. The incidence of selective feeding — birds scratching through feed to isolate preferred particles — dropped markedly. Because pellets contain all dietary components in each discrete unit, every peck delivers a nutritionally complete dose.

Respiratory health. Dust concentrations measured inside the sheds fell from an average of 2.8 mg/m³ to 0.7 mg/m³ during the dry season, coinciding with a reduction in respiratory-related culls from 0.7% to 0.3% per cycle.

Egg shell quality. Eggs from pelleted-fed flocks exhibited a mean shell thickness of 0.196 mm versus 0.183 mm under the mash regimen, an improvement the cooperative’s nutritionist attributed to the higher bioavailability of calcium and phosphorus in a pelletized matrix where limestone fines are bound rather than settling out.

Operator confidence. The pellet mill ran continuously for 22–23 days per 28-day cycle with scheduled downtime limited to die inspection and routine lubrication. No unplanned stoppages attributable to the pellet mill or ring die were recorded during the 9-month evaluation window.

7. Hongyang’s Quality Framework

The performance observed at this Bago cooperative reflects a set of manufacturing disciplines embedded in Hongyang’s ring die production line:

Raw material traceability. Each ring die blank is assigned a heat number that maps to the original steel mill certificate, recording chemical composition and mechanical properties before machining begins.

Vacuum quenching protocol. Heat treatment is conducted in a vacuum furnace with multi-zone temperature control, followed by deep cryogenic treatment to transform retained austenite into martensite — a step that stabilizes the die’s microstructure and extends service life under repetitive thermal stress.

Metrology at multiple stations. Hole diameter, pitch, and counterbore geometry are inspected with coordinate measuring machines (CMM) at three stages: after gun-drilling, after heat treatment, and after final polishing. Dies that fall outside the ±0.05 mm tolerance are rejected before shipment.

Pre-dispatch run-in. Every HYPM pellet mill undergoes a no-load run-in and a short-duration loaded test at the factory before crating, ensuring that the roller-die clearance, bearing temperatures, and vibration levels meet specification.

These are not marketing claims; they are logged quality-control gates that a buyer can verify during a factory audit — an option that the cooperative intends to exercise when it expands to a second production line.

8. Summary

The Bago cooperative’s experience demonstrates that transitioning quail layer rations from mash to pellet form, using correctly specified pelleting equipment and a ring die engineered for the application, can yield a double-digit improvement in feed conversion efficiency while reducing waste, stabilizing flock health, and raising egg output. The Hongyang HYPM series ring die pellet mill, paired with a custom 20CrMnTi ring die built to tight dimensional tolerances and a conservative compression ratio, delivered reliable throughput across nine months of continuous commercial operation — without a single unplanned outage linked to the pelleting line. For Myanmar’s growing quail sector, where margins are shaped as much by feed cost as by egg price, this kind of targeted equipment investment offers a practical path toward better unit economics.

Data sources: Cooperative production logs (January 2025 – March 2026), quarterly pellet analysis reports, Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department quail census (2025), Myanmar Livestock Federation feed practice survey (2024). Photos and site visit notes available upon request.