The bird flu outbreak across the border has emptied Tsirang’s hatcheries

30 April, 2009 - Farmer Dorji in Goshingling village has the answer to the disappearing chicken and egg meal from his dinner table. There are only vegetable curries. His poultry farm was running out of pullets (young female chicken).

“I’ve been visiting the gewog livestock office twice every week since December but in vain,” said Dorji. He opened the farm big enough to house 2,000 hens in 2006, but has 33 chickens today. Pointing to the empty shed, Dorji said: “See how much I am in need of the pullets.”

About 155 semi-commercial and small backyard poultry farms owners in the dzongkhag are in dire need of pullets. About 95 such farms are empty and out of work.

Tshomo from Tsirangtoe said that she could not even repay the money she borrowed from a neighbour to start her farm. “I didn’t get a single pullet,” she said.

Beteni gup Changye Tshering said that many farmers approached the gewog daily to ask the livestock office to do something. “They are willing to pay and get the pullets if there were any such options,” he said.

Livestock officials said that, since the ban on poultry and poultry products from India was imposed, they have not been able to meet people’s demand for pullets. A livestock official said the present demand in the dzongkhag was 22,000 pullets. The poultry farms, however, have not met even a quarter of that demand.

The Beteni gup said that what initially started as a trial period for six poultry farmers’ group in the dzongkhag in 2004 has today risen to 155 poultry farms.

After the ban from India and the Gelephu poultry was shifted to Sarpang, the demand for pullets skyrocketed within months in Tsirang. Livestock officials said that they have asked for pullets from poultry farms in Paro. “But until the ban is lifted, nothing much can be done.”