Poultry Farming For Livelihood Improvement of Rural Area

Training on poultry farming for livelihood improvement of rural area was held at Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav (MGMG) village Supliang on 17 - 18th August 2017.

Dr. Tilling Tayo SMS Anial Science, ICAR, KVK Anjaw, thoroughly thought about sustainable poultry farming through power point presentation in different aspect of housing, feeding, vaccination and rearing management including biosecurity measures. He exhorted that poultry are part and partial of rural livelihood, every household keep 5-10 numbers of birds to meet their social and religious obligations. Many a times disease outbreak occur sweeping whole poultry, leaving tears in the eye of hard earn, hand to mouth dependent farmers. He said that introduction of new poultry breeds in rural area have not much improve in poultry production system in Arunachal, without taking care of health/disease management, because once disease outbreak occurs, irrespective of improved/local breeds succumb to disease, unless disease resistance birds develops by scientists to introduce in rural area.

He clearly stated that there are five major diseases of poultry: IBD, Ranikhet, CRD, Fowl cholera and Fowl pox. Vaccination against Ranikhet disease, the bird will be protected to that disease only, not all the disease and if same vaccinated birds suffers from other unvaccinated disease and succumbed to disease, veterinarian should not blame for bird died against unvaccinated disease.

He further stress on out of box topic, that in agriculture a term ‘post harvest loss’ is used which account for 10-15 percent depend upon varieties of crops during entire production cycle. Similarly, poultry loss by disease outbreak in village is roughly estimated to be 40-50 percent in village. Therefore, if we could protect another 40-50% mortality of poultry from disease like IBD, Ranikhet, CRD, Fowl cholera and Fowl pox through regular vaccination and corrections of other nutrients deficiency on time, the rural poultry production with local chicken itself will be self sufficient to meet not only the social and religious needs but also local market demand of Hayuliang. “Doubling farmers income by 2022” is a Buzz word in current Agri & Allied sector as target set by Hon’ble Prime minister of India to achieve the same by 2022. Therefore, regular vaccination to poultry can be one of the strategies for “Doubling farmers income by 2022” in veterinary & animal science section. On the next days, demonstrations on vaccination were carried out, farmers were bit reluctant to vaccinate their birds because it was for the first time they heard that, there is vaccine for poultry also, because so far they heard vaccination in human only. Few early adopter farmers came forward to vaccinate their bird, however all the farmers wanted to vaccinate their birds but they wanted to see/observe first to those vaccinated birds protected against Ranikhet disease. Altogether 28 birds have vaccinated against Ranikhet disease using Lasota and R2B strain vaccine depending upon the age of birds. Altogether 36 trainees attended the programme including rural youths, farmers, farmwomen and Goan bura. .