Sonali chicken farming in southern part of Bangladesh

Abstract

The study was conducted to identify the socio-economic status and problems faced by the Sonali farmers at Wazirpur Upazila in Barishal District. A total of 90 respondents from 9 unions were selected randomly for primary data collection. The farmers and their farming were evaluated through the analysis of data collected in a pre-structured questionnaire. This study revealed that a maximum portion of the farmers were middle-aged (52.2%), male (92.2%), and had a secondary level of education (54.4%). Most farmers had medium-sized farm (38.9%) and invested their own capital in farming (54.9%). Although major farmers had low experience in Sonali chicken farming, they had high management skills (63.9%). In terms of occupation, the highest percentage of farmers (38.9%) had a conjugated occupation of poultry and crop. Most of the farmers had their own tube-well (74.7%) and use sanitary latrine (71.1%). Nevertheless, only 17% of the farmers had good health condition. About 49% of the farmers had only one chicken house, and 87.8% followed the floor system for rearing Sonali chicken. Surprisingly, all the farms followed an all-in-all-out marketing system for Sonali chicken. Most of the farmers (96.7%) vaccinated their poultry birds and added coccidiostat (73.3%) and vitamin mineral premix (94.4%) to the feed. A major portion of the farmers identified the irregular fluctuation in the market price of feeds (95.6%) and day-old chicks (93.3%) as severe problem, followed by high price of feed but low price of meat (87.8%). A disorganized marketing channel was the next major problem faced by the poultry farmers (83.3%). Taken together, the Sonali farmers of Barishal were middle-aged; poorly educated, and invested their own capital for farming, and they faced a variety of challenges during farming and marketing their chickens. To enhance Sonali farmers’ socio-economic conditions and alleviate their problems, the government should take appropriate steps to provide finance and farm-based training, including modern animal husbandry practices. Bangladesh Journal of Animal Science. 2022. 51 (1): 1-11

Mapping of dressed and processed poultry products in Bangladesh: identifying the food safety risks for policy intervention

“…The phenotypic homogeneity of exotic broiler chickens such as Hubbard Classic, Cobb-500, Ross, and Hybro-PN (Tan et al 2021) has facilitated the global development of standardized and automatized processing plants (Owens 2001), with this growth being fostered by advances in food science, food microbiology, engineering, and marketing (EFSA/ECDC 2019). Sonali chickens are a crossbred variety between Rhode Island Red males and Fayoumi females introduced to Bangladesh in the 1990s as part of the Department of Livestock Services' (DLS) rural poultry program (Howlader et al 2022) and an increasingly common variety to produce (Hennessey et al 2021). Most poultry meat in Bangladesh is produced on commercial poultry farms (60%) with the rest occurring on traditional backyard farms (LightCastle 2020).…”