ISLAMABAD – Poultry farmers, concerned over increasing feed prices, said that a large number of farms are being closed – rendering hundreds of workers jobless. “We consider this an unbearable cost and sheer injustice as in poultry – the return is too little, while there is hardly any attraction for investments to operate the same on large scales,” Adil Chaudhry, a poultry farmer told APP on Saturday. He said that poultry feed, by its quality and price, is the major factor in determining the cost of poultry products like eggs and broilers and profitability of the poultry farm. He stated that poultry meat is an easy and relatively cheap method of raising dietary standard of the people. In addition, it is the only reasonably priced meat after beef, mutton, fish and sometimes more reasonable than those of pulses and vegetables.
Poultry production commenced in Pakistan in 1963, as hens were mostly maintained in the backyard of the houses in villages on a small scale, with very little investment by the villagers in terms of money and material. The poultry feed gained importance with emergence of poultry farming on a wide scale in the country. Currently, poultry feed is produced by commercial feed mills, in addition to home mixture. He asserted that global changes in the price structure of cereal grains and other feed stuffs have handicapped the poultry industry on account of high feed cost.
Surging feed prices hurting poultry farmers
