Rates of poultry feed decline, farmers suffer losses

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, January 9

The poultry crisis, first due to Covid and now owing to the bird flu scare, has not just hit the poultry farmers, but also the agriculturists in the state as prices of crops used as feed have witnessed a fall.

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Maize which fetched farmers Rs 2,600 per quintal in 2018-19 sold for as low a price as Rs 900 per quintal this year while millet that sold for Rs 1,900 per quintal or more two years back is selling for Rs 1,350 per quintal now, according to Jasbir Singh, a trader at Ellenabad in Sirsa district.

“The prices have witnessed a further fall during the past one week ever since the bird flu scare has hit the poultry industry,” said Surinder Bhutani, general secretary of Haryana Poultry Farmers Association, adding that 60 per cent of the maize and millets produced in this part of the country is consumed in poultry farms alone. Besides these, broken rice is used as feed in the poultry industry.

The poultry industry in the state had suffered a setback with the Covid pandemic hitting the country in March last year. “The business had just revived partially when the bird flu scare hit the industry, forcing poultry farmers to sell their products at rates lower than their costs. As a result, most of the farmers have consciously been decreasing the number of birds in their farms so that they have to spend less on the feed, resulting in lesser demand for maize, millets and broken rice,” said Bhutani.

Meanwhile, poultry farmers whose birds are to be culled are unhappy with the government’s decision to cull even those birds which are not affected by the disease.

A delegation of poultry farmers from Panchkula last evening met Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar with Speaker Gian Chand Gupta who is also the MLA from Panchkula.

Gupta said that culling would be done only for those birds which are necessary to be culled under the protocol.

Raja Sekhar Vundru, Principal Secretary of the Animal Husbandry and Dairying Department, said that adhering to the guidelines, 1,66,128 birds of five poultry farms which fall within the 1 km radius of the two infected farms would be culled under the supervision of experts to prevent further spread of the disease. The poultry farm owners would be given compensation for it.

Poultry farmers, meanwhile, have termed the compensation to be paid to them against the culling as too little.

As per the department’s notification, the poultry farmers are to be compensated at rate of Rs 20 per layer bird if the age if less than eight weeks and Rs 90 if the age is more than eight weeks. For broiler, the compensation price is Rs 20 for less than six-week age and Rs 70 for above six weeks.

The compensation for eggs and feed is Rs 3 per unit and Rs 12 per kg, respectively.