The Hindu Business Line : TN poultry sector breathes easy

The sector relies heavily on inter-State road transport for its two-way traffic — to despatch the harvested egg and poultry meat to distant markets and to bring feed ingredients for feed mix preparation in production centres.

Poultry feed is highly critical to the survival of the birds. With crores of birds in the field at various ages, feed needs to reach the birds. “As the raw materials have to be sourced from other places such as Maharashtra (soyameal and de-oiled cake), Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (maize), these materials are not able to reach our feed mills. Even feed stocks can’t be sent to the farms due to the strike. The one-day-old chicks are highly fragile and need to be placed in farms within a maximum of eight days, otherwise they will perish,” said Mr B. Soundararajan, Managing Director, Coimbatore-based Suguna Poultry Farms Ltd, in a press release. With a placement of 70 lakh chicks every week in Tamil Nadu, Suguna has over 4.2 crore birds on the field in various stages. These birds are facing the threat of feed starvation. “We have to resort to giving them smaller feeds, which do not satisfy their daily requirements. Even with the rationing our feed stocks will only last barely one or two more days. If the strike is not lifted by tomorrow, then we are looking at a full scale disaster in the poultry industry,” he added.

Broiler producers seem to be a more worried lot than the shell egg producing poultry farmers and egg traders. While the latter can stock eggs up to 15 days in normal weather conditions, chicken producers will have to quickly find a market to sell their produce or the commodity will perish causing a big loss to farmers.

The farmers have very little feed left and they are rationing whatever feed is available. This situation will reach alarming proportions if the strike continues even for one more day, sources in National Egg Coordination Committee said.