Poultry production, management and bio-security measures

Banshi Sharma

Poultry health management is the emerging issue along with bio-security measure. Livestock and poultry birds are major causes of zoonotic diseases transmission chain. The food from livestock sources need to be free from disease causing agents to safe guard public health. Farm to fork chain must be clean and hygienic. Therefore, bio-security is foremost important to poultry farmers. It reduces losses in long terms. It promotes organic farming in rural area. Bio-security measures, poultry farm management and organic farming become sustainable development cycle in rural area. Farmers used to keep few birds in scavenging system in villages and have been keeping native chicken in backyards. Therefore there is a chance of spreading of poultry disease in livestock and human population due to close contact. It should be avoided for better sanitation practices in long run. There is a tremendous growth of poultry farming in the last six decades and it creates income generation in urban and per urban area. The demand of poultry meat has increased due to tourism and changing food habits.

In the year 2004/2005, poultry meat production was 15,461 MT. There is a gradual increase in poultry meat production. Duck is basically raised for religious purposes in different places. The duck is localized in towns, roadside area, peri-urban area and swamp area of villages. They are more concentrated in riverside and water logging areas. High duck population may serve as carrier of HPAI and Low Pathogenic Avian Influenza (LPAI) in poultry population.

There has been gradual increase in poultry egg production, and in the year 2006/2007, it reached 614,848,000 in Nepal (MOAC, 2008). The poultry population including layers and broilers are gradually increasing. There had been 6,643,350 layers in Nepal in the year 2004/2005.

A lot of women are involved in poultry processing. Development of infrastructure for slaughter house has been very slow. Local government should participate with private sector. The land for slaughterhouse, water supply, sewage and organic materials decomposition place should be well organized. The construction of slaughterhouse is to beprovided by municipalities, private entrepreneurs and VDC in joint venture programme. The key role of maintenance should be given to private sector for making sustainable development.

Now a days people enjoy different types of poultry meats such as Mandarin chicken, chilly chicken and Thai chicken. They have developed habit of eating frozen meat. When people have exposure to outside work, they learn to eat different varieties with their changing lifestyles. The processed and frozen meat has local market and tourists are major consumers. The government may help by providing opportunity of exporting in neighbouring countries as well as overseas. For that there must be eradication of Salmonella in poultry birds. Therefore, zoning concept may be applied for this. As Nepal becomes member of WTO, if we met SPS standards on poultry meat and eggs, export becomes easier than expected.

Bio-security policy, rules, and regulation can be accommodated to the existing laws of Nepal. In the advent of bird flu outbreak in Nepal, bio-security policy formulation has been initiated. Therefore, in order to obtain hygienic poultry production, livestock market, processing activities and farm should follow bio-security to make hygienic environment. The objective of the review is to help develop environment friendly poultry farming system to obtain maximum production without damage to environment.

[Continue reading at http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/AEJ/art… ]