Farm owners doubt official chicken toll
Amit Bathla
Tribune News Service
Panchkula, January 7
The owners of poultry farms in the Barwala-Raipur Rani belt have raised a serious doubt over the official chicken toll, saying the figure appears to be too low.
The official figures say approximately 4.37 lakh birds have died due to a mysterious disease at Barwala since December. Pramod Pandey of Nature Poultry Farm, located in Dandlawar village of Raipur Rani tehsil, claimed he lost around 1 lakh birds in the past one month.
“Now, we are left with only less than 15,000. The number of birds is gradually decreasing with 300-325 mortalities every day. We have no clue to the reason behind such a high mortality among poultry birds. The mysterious disease has swept through a majority of poultry farms in the region and almost every farm is hit,” he said.
“Our poultry farm witnessed the daily mortality of less than 50 on December 21 to as high as 25,000 on December 25. Earlier, we thought it could be because of extreme weather conditions and E. coli, but the fatality count is unusual,” Pandey stated.
The situation was worse at Rajeev Poultry Farm where the entire population of birds died within a period of one month. “On December 1, we had a livestock of around 98,000, including 60,000 layer chickens. By December 30, the farm was left with only 400-500 birds,” said Dr Rajeev Kumar Modi, promoter of the farm.
He added that now, the death rate of birds was going down as they were being inoculated with a vaccine, ND Pullet Castle, so that they develop adequate antibody to fight against the infection.
Raipur Rani and Barwala, which is considered as Asia’s largest belt with daily production capacity of over 1 crore eggs, have around 140 poultry farms, employing over 10,000 people.
