Lockdown hit poultry business of nepal

Poultry farming in the district has fallen into crisis after the implementation of the national blockade.
Poultry farming has been severely affected due to food shortages, while chicken sales have been halted by the effective blockade as of Tuesday, poultry farmers said.
According to Dovantar poultry farmer Kamalamai Municipality-4 Ramchandra Karki, chicken sales had almost stopped due to the blockade.
There are around 250 broilers on my farm that are ready to sell, but I was unable to sell them due to the blockage, he said.
He said there was a food shortage and that almost all meat stores were closed after the announcement of the closure that has severely affected the poultry business.
After the meat stores close, he has started selling his chickens reaching people's doorsteps through personal contact, he said.
He said he started selling Rs 600 per chicken (hen) and Rs 700 for chicken (rooster) weighing 3.5 kilograms.
Another farmer from Kamalamai Municipality-5 Simale, Govinda Khadka, said he had faced a food shortage for his 8,000 chickens.
Right now I am only feeding around two feeding bags for 8,000 chickens, whereas I generally used to feed around 15/16 bags daily before this critical situation, he said.
He said he has about 3,000 15-day-old broilers and 5,000 28-day-old broilers on his farm.
There is no alternative to creating an environment for selling chickens and allowing transport vehicles to supply food to businesses and chickens to the market as soon as possible, he said.
The owner of the Kamalamai hatchery industry, Om Prakash Shrestha, said more than 500 poultry farms in the Sindhuli district were facing problems due to the closure.
 Around 300 farms where he used to supply chicks in the district with around 200 additional farms are operating in the district. About 20 tons of feed are required just for those farms where he used to supply chicks. Currently, there is no stock of feed. There is no alternative to destroying the chicks if there is no supply in the next two days, he said.
According to him, farmers began to reduce the feeding of chickens, while some farmers began to feed their chicks with rice.
 The government has stopped transporting chickens from farmers' farms. I was surprised that coronavirus was transmitted while transporting chickens from one location to another, he said.
Similarly, our Bharatpur correspondent adds: The direct impact of confinement has been seen in poultry. The government has imposed a national blockade to prevent and control the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).
Farmers face not only a problem in selling their chicken products, but also a food shortage for chickens.
 Poultry is a very sensitive sector, as they are affected even in normal situations. But this time, everyone is facing a crisis due to the coronavirus. Our business has been affected by the closure, said poultry farmer Madan Pokharel of Purbi-Chiwtan, Parbatipur.
According to him, there was no stock of feed and no situation to carry at the moment. Around 5,000 layer hens are on his farm laying around 3,000 eggs daily.
 3,000 eggs are produced daily, but there is no situation to take them to the market. Egg demand is still high in Kathmandu, but there is no possibility of supplying them, he said.
The chief president of the Nepalese Farm Association, Tikaram Pokharel, said there was a big problem with live chickens.
 We have a problem bringing in the necessary raw materials for food manufacturing, as the Indian government has also imposed the blockade, he said.
He said a situation would develop to destroy the chicken by digging wells if this situation continues for a few weeks.
According to statistics, around 2.5 million eggs are produced daily from four million chickens.
About 52.6 million broilers are raised in the country for meat supply.