January 16, 2013

Over the last two years, Pakistan region of Punjab experienced a significant drop in the number of poultry farms, following export bans to the country's largest market, Afghanistan.

Chick farming has been suffering from the poor law and order situation, acute power shortages, high prices of poultry feed and scant resources to combat outbreaks of poultry diseases, a report in local publication states.

"It is fact that Pakistan's poultry industry is facing a lot of problems and challenges. In spite of that the sector is one of the largest and fastest growing agro-industries everywhere in the world just due to an increasing demand for poultry meat and egg products," said Akram Ch, Chairman of Department of Poultry Production, University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences.

"If academia and poultry farmers sit together, share experiences and get guidance from various aspects of farming, then basic learning about farming can be accomplished by farmers, which is, presently done by the UVAS's Poultry Production Department in Pakistan."

Despite a reported decline of over 2,500 poultry farms, the average farm production of poultry birds has been going up, as chicks population have soared to almost 710 million this year from about 390 million of 2010, Akram said.

Poultry production in traditional rural set-ups is also being gradually modernised, as farmers' income has improved on the back of high support prices of their crops. Latest data shows that banks made net loans of PKR4 billion (US$41 million) in 2011 to poultry sector and distributed loans of around PKR3 billion (US$31 million) in 2012.